Verlangen

Hebt u ooit staan staren naar een familie kikkervisjes in een stilstaande poel in een holte van een rots bij een stromende rivier? Dat is een griezelig specifieke vraag, maar wel een mooi zicht. Ver weg van alles blijft het aan je kleven, op een reis voorbij de denksystemen waarin je je tuis voelt. Als je je daaraan overgeeft, is het een radicaal zicht dat je beroert van kop tot teen.

A Puddle Called Desire

Have you ever stared at a family of tadpoles swimming in a puddle of still water in a dent in a rock by a flowing river? That’s an eerily specific question, but it’s a beautiful sight to see. Away from everything, it chaperones you on a journey from your humanity to your existence across systems of rationality you call home.  If you let it be, it is a radical sight that moves you from your leaves to your roots. It is a voice from the core, a voice you may not be used to except in mere echoes trapped within webs of alarmed systems that beep every time you attempt to be.

But this puddle exists, even if you haven't seen it. Especially because you haven't. This puddle of tadpoles exists outside of you, without you, but does not mind you. It knows that when you first look at it, you would judge. You would judge the speed of tadpoles swimming in it, the lust of gluttonous insects surrounding it, the surface of water boiling at low temperature, the movements that happen at speeds you cannot read. That puddle of tadpoles does not watch you watch it, but it does not mind you doing so. Violence, you think. Thrilling violence, you think, a spirit so addictive that you keep staring. You stare until this violence charms you, and you realize slowly that this is not violent at all.

This puddle of tadpoles exists outside of you and your exclusive systems that are not even yours. It exists outside of your spatial quotas, your balance of joy and misery, your spreadsheets of oxygen consumption. This is an existence outside of your violence, free of it. The speed of tadpoles swimming, the lust of gluttonous insects, the surface of water boiling at low temperature, movements that are free. Freedom, not violence. You stare, and freedom, not violence ignites your desire to be. Where animals can be free.  And not be afraid. You stare. And you continue to stare because now you lust.

You desire a puddle of your own at speeds outside alarmed systems. You want to be in languages you do not understand. You make them. Alarms beep. We stare at you. And judge. The speed of emotions swimming, the lust of gluttonous desires, the surface of your skin boiling at body temperature, movements that are free. The desire to make a home, outside of language, outside of rationality, that includes you, wholeheartedly, your conflicting universes, fully, including objects that may have been excluded for the comforts of logic. A desire that makes alarms beep. And us to stare. Not comment. Not critique. To stare. And lust for a desire of our own. To be. And make alarms beep. Until they die.