Desire
A jealous master, it answers to none,
And determines direction and fate.
But whether its prize is disease or cure,
Is revealed after it’s too late.
The full light of day through a cloudless sky shocked his eyes closed and restrained him from moving any farther. He reached back toward the door for support but it wasn’t there. He widened his stance for balance and dug his chin into his chest cupping his hands into a canopy over his eyes. He was standing in the center of a large grassy sloped plain. He strained his squinting eyes open and raised his head slowly to take in the mountain before him. Miles to his right rested a large body of water and the same distance to his left a forest prevailed. Behind him was a lifeless desert. In the midst of that desert was nestled a great city, and beyond the city was a chasm marking the end of the world.
The pressure increased around his feet and ankles as he began to sink into the earth. His first small step upward toward the mountain peak sunk into soft ground. He pulled his back foot out of the muck with a pop. He placed his feet together hoping to pause a moment to think, but, as he hesitated, the ground began to consume him as before. A hasty step forward drew him off balance. He stepped sideways to catch himself, surprised to see the ground wasn’t as soft in that direction. He took another step sideways for balance, and triggered a secondary force of gravity which established a sustained momentum. He eventually stopped himself, and began to sink again. He took a blind step backward toward the desert below where the ground was firm, and, even though his step was cautiously small, the momentum forced him to take several more steps in the same direction.
Playfully aggressive laughter told him he was not alone. He lifted his eyes uphill toward a young lady moving swiftly downward with another young man following a few strides behind. He plucked his feet out of the soft ground and leaned to the side to avoid her. She had a single key around her neck while the boy who chased her had several as well as one he held in his fist. She summoned him with a coy seductive gaze. Startled, he reconsidered his choice to avoid the collision but did nothing as she passed him by. The eyes of the young man that followed reflected a disturbed unquenchable hunger for dominance. He targeted the unsuspecting soul and changed his direction in an intentional attempt to ram him. As inviting to him as her eyes were, the countenance of the young man that followed was alarming, but he couldn’t move. His entire body was being drawn downward. He lifted himself up as far as he could and exposed himself as a target. With a slap and a thud of colliding flesh and bone the two young men met violently. The reckless attacker continued on after the girl while the newcomer rolled helplessly out of control toward the sun bleached city below. He eventually slowed himself down and made his way to his feet. He looked over his shoulder for another malicious attacker while taking cautious steps toward the city for fear of the ground softening beneath his feet from any other course.
In the desert ahead everything was moving. A multitude of souls made up one main route that surveyed the outer parameter of the city. The travelers that chose the main highway received consolation from four views: the majesty of the mountain, the novelty of the lake, the serenity of the forest and the awesome wonder of the chasm. This choice assured the variety of seasons, and posed little risk to travelers who confined themselves to the approved boundaries of the collective. Within the main highway a network of paths evolved, still dependant on the influence of the main route but redefined by the fluctuating whim of each fickle participant. These more intimate circles intersected at least one other without the convenience of posted signs for warning, information and direction. Each individual’s course was by default duly ordered by the uncertain steps of the person ahead of them.
Young souls tended to stray off the proven path toward the object of their curiosity. Boys and girls with an older physical appearance while on route toward their respective destinations often found themselves on a collision coarse with another individual. The brief encounter inevitably ended as the subordinate desire of the relationship always yielded to the dominant desire, whatever it happened to be. More experienced individuals, having forgotten the passionate thrill of adventure, resigned to cling to more familiar tracks. Men and women having passed through one or more intersections with another now kept a safe distance from the opposite sex by creating gender specific courses. Souls often developed convenient relationships with others within their traveling circle. Some of the more reckless natured pairs welcomed the temporary titillation of a collision even though it meant lingering pain afterward for at least one of the two. In every case those walking about had no apparent practical notion of where they were headed, or of the fact that even if they could reach their dream, it would be impossible to stay.
The young man approached the perimeter of the rotating wall, twenty to thirty individuals deep. He wasn’t able to quickly alter his speed or direction. There was a growing concern on the faces of the people with whom he was likely to have an unwelcome encounter. Everyone who walked the outer perimeter braced themselves and managed to avoid contact, but he wasn’t anticipated by those traveling in the center. He brushed into a person that set him slightly off balance and ran directly into a defenseless child who fell, but was soon righted by someone else. He bounced off someone much larger who intentionally pushed him into a spin. His momentum carried him onward through more unsuspecting travelers. Out of control, he endured several more blows while blurred visions of contemptuous expressions orbited around him.
He was moving too fast for someone who didn’t know what he wanted, and used no little effort and distance to slow himself down. He casually studied the souls of those nearby hoping somehow to determine from their faces or direction if there was anything valuable worth seeking. It didn’t seem to him that anyone knew what they wanted. There were those who preferred to go toward the lake side of the city and some who preferred the forest side. There were souls that were unsuccessful in becoming the object of someone else’s desire, and others being pursued because they didn’t want to be followed. Every situation was unique, but with the same theme and pointless end.
His eyes caught the attention of a young woman attempting to break out of the main highway into one of the smaller adjoining circles. The decision to change her course forced her to adjust to the swifter pace of the new current which left her vulnerable and unstable. She was soon overcome and steadied by a more experienced man who amused himself by attempting to take a key from the chain she wore around her neck. She succumbed to his advances and gave him the key freely and was afterward discarded like a spent toy spilling her inner spiritual substance which resembled steam and smelled of lilac and cinnamon. Her paralyzed body was cast about like leaves in a fierce wind. She was hit by another and another only to be groped by several unrelated young men. Each time she was passed, the appearance of her age changed significantly as her emotional maturity fluctuated from encounter to encounter. With each new hope of security, her initial relieved peaceful expression swiftly changed to despair as she was thrust away more violently than the time before. Those who grabbed her all appeared younger as they fed on the remnant of her vitality. Without the will to hold on any longer, she fell and began to sink where she was repeatedly kicked and trampled under a regiment of unaffected indifferent marching feet. The girl slowly disappeared into the dust without inspiring regret or leaving even a memory.
For the first time the young man knew what he didn’t want. He desired to never again see what he had just witnessed. He pondered how he could have interceded on behalf of the mistreated girl and went through the scenario in his mind, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could have done to protect her. And what’s to say he wouldn’t have behaved with the same ill manner as the other young men. “Maybe some of them did want to help at first but weren’t qualified and ended up escalating the problem. Who really knows?” He decided to move far from the center of the city where souls could be brought to behave in such a manner. He changed his direction toward the lake and immediately the ground began to soften beneath his feet. He increased his pace to keep up with the ground’s effect and noticed a girl who appeared to be about his age moving in the opposite direction.
Her focus never left the trees. They passed each other quickly, gently brushing arms. She had the same disheartened look on her face as he held within. He had never been touched like that before. He worked to suppress the memory, dismissing it as unimportant. He had been touched and hit and pushed violently by others several times. “It was nothing,” he tried to convince himself. “We brushed each others arms. So what.” Like a stubborn recurring dream, it invaded the forefront of his consciousness. He used his senses to overwhelm himself with his surroundings, but there was nothing that he could take in externally that would overshadow the distraction or pacify the new visitor that demanded all of his attention. The more he resisted, the more he was inclined to acknowledge its significance.
“What a persistent thought,” he thought and then corrected. “What an undisciplined mind.” Unable to shake himself free, he relented to the pressure of his desire’s hunger and allowed himself to feed on the image of the young girl and the instant that her skin met his. He reconstructed the moment of the encounter from his memory and formed a virtual environment that he could control. His fantasy became as familiar to him as his reality. From that place he studied her eyes and mouth and the way her hair framed her delicate face. He brought himself closer and closer to her as he allowed his imagination to run its course. Distracted he stumbled, and, like a ghost from the light of day, his fantasy was recoiled to its place among the less troublesome images cataloged in his mind. He shook his head and began to reason. “It’s unlikely our paths will cross again. Even if she had the same idea, there was no way of knowing if either of us has the stamina to trudge upward through the muck to the mountain’s peak.”
Every step forward in this new direction was forbidding yet rich with purpose, motivated by something far from certain. And, there it was, another form of gravity; an intangible source of power originating from within him. Hope. Since the momentum from the pull of the lake led him in the same direction he almost didn’t notice it. Two forces urged him onward, one tangible influence pushing him based on the negative consequence of stagnancy and the other pulling him toward an intangible possibility. It’s a hard thing to gage whether momentum is maintained in order to bring someone closer to the object of its desire or farther away from its discontentment. If he was a fool, he was a fool with hope. Inspiration gained from even the impossible must certainly be more valuable than having no encouragement at all. But what were the options at hand? Turning completely around would take time and require a complete stop in the midst of others where the risk was greatest. It seemed that circumstance and a newfound passion left him with no choice but to move through the city outward across the main highway toward the lake and then turn gradually upward to the mountain’s peak.
His eyes focused on the great chasm to his right. There were thousands playing the same game dangerously near the world’s end. Hundreds flocked together like birds running parallel to the cliff and turning toward the drop off to see how close they could come to the edge before turning back. There were cheers of delight when someone came close to the drop off and a roar if someone actually succeeded in touching the border and survived. But for the bold thrill seeker who misjudged the distance or angle or speed and crossed the line and fell into the unknown, these unfortunate inevitabilities injected a different kind of entertainment for the rest. Horrified onlookers and screams of terror sparked exactly what was needed to keep the game alive and exciting for the survivors.
With the lake still a good distance in front of him, he assigned himself to one of the trails that led directly to the lake. Every so often another soul would pass him by. They were always cordial, assuming that everyone walking in their direction was likeminded and therefore accepted. As he was drawn closer to the lake, he was now able to see with clarity where the trail met the water. To his astonishment, those ahead of him weren’t veering away from the water but being pulled directly into the lake. There was no one swimming or struggling. They simply entered the water and were no more. It seemed from his perspective that they blindly accepted their fate and chose to exit this place. Whether they ceased to exist or ended up back in the hallway was not a wager he was willing to make. Unlike the others on this route, he wasn’t merely trying to remove himself from the city. His dominant desire was to have another brush with one specific soul and no other.
Quick short strides compensated for the softness of the ground between the desert and the lake. The pull of the lake became stronger the farther he moved away from the heart of the city. He willed himself to change direction but was pulled a great distance further before being able to step even slightly off the trail. He was becoming afraid that he wouldn’t be able to change his direction before he reached the water’s edge. Slowing down seemed to give way to the force of the lake, and pulled him back onto the trail against his will. He recalled back to the young man that attacked him when he first entered this place. “He changed direction just before he hit me,” he remembered. “Maybe the direction had nothing to do with it. If slowing down gives more power to the object of the desire, then speeding up will take it away.” He accelerated with no time to lose. He past one soul and then another while he continued to accelerate faster and faster. A collision at this speed would be disastrous for others as well. He yelled out a warning terrorizing those ahead into snapping themselves from their stagnant routine. His chest pounded. He gasped for air and fought the cramp in the inner flesh of his ribs, setting his hope toward a single encounter based on the fragment of a memory of a girl he glorified, which enabled another stride and breath and sustained him through the pain.
He leaned toward the mountain and began to turn. The erg to quit and its reward of relief grew quickly and battled to overpower his objective. An unconscious tug insisted that continuing through a trial to fulfill a dream warranted no guarantee of success. Uncertainty diminished his faith. The closer he came to the water the more apparent it became that he would need to turn further, but he couldn’t run any faster. Doubt added itself to fatigue. The moment he leaned farther his feet began to slip adding fear to doubt and forced him to resume the previous course. Life or death hung in the scale equally balanced. He far exceeded what he thought himself capable of accomplishing, yet his course would send him at least fifty feet into the lake. He debated what he would do when his feet hit the water. Would he be able to sustain himself or would the unique nature of this place suck him downward once the water reduced his speed? There was no energy left for another physical trial.
He continued to run in spite of the impending failure, possibly because of his stalwart level of hope, perhaps because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He reached the shoreline with a vicious assault. With clenched determination his feet slapped the water in life’s final charge. He continued well over the water’s surface waiting for the inevitable; expecting the consequence he was certainly due. To his amazement, the water was an illusion designed to entice discontented souls with an empty promise. What sustained him appeared to be water but consisted of the same physical properties as the land. He couldn’t find the breath to shout for joy or even muster the will to alter the expression of his face to reflect his relief. He continued to press forward over the water and then back to the land where he allowed himself to relax. All the while encouraging himself, despite his pounding head, legs and chest, that he chose life, thankful for the hope imbedded in a special memory brought to life by the touch of a young girl who couldn’t possibly have known how deeply she impacted his character and destiny.
There were several groups above him attempting to scale the mountain. Some groups traversed upward at various degrees. There was an assembly that attempted to ascend directly toward the peak. Many of the members left their respective companies deciding either to scale independently at an alternative incline or turn back to the desert altogether. This laborious task took its toll on many souls who weren’t strong enough for the trial. There were groups that pushed their leaders, and leaders that pulled their followers, but all in vein, for even the peak, though it held the highest perspective, was not a permanent destination.
He recognized her from a good distance away. It was very clear their paths would intentionally intersect. They each had time to study each other’s gait and attitude and countenance. Neither altered their course. There was nothing hidden. They each slowed down as much as possible giving themselves time to anticipate the inevitable. Tension, excitement and longing grew wildly in their hearts as they took each focused step toward one another. Nothing else seemed to exist. Every precious image suspended time, while each physical step forward required it to resume. They fed off each other’s hope filled expression and their own fevered anticipation. Raw unbridled growing passion thrilled and enthralled the two souls. They were steps away from reaching the pinnacle, one from his direction and the other from hers. They both knew they had only a moment to be together. From a slight distance away the young man spoke.
“I was hoping there would be somewhere we could go to together.” He said timidly.
“This is the only place I want to be.” She replied honestly.
Their bodies met. She laid her hands on his chest and let her fingers lead her arms around his torso. Pulling herself closer, she placed her head in the gape of his neck. His arms found their home covering her as the gravity of their mutual desire pulled them closer and gave the illusion that they were one body. He noticed everything at once: her softness, shape and warmth; her strength and her fear; her excitement and her joy, and his own peace while he trembled, to the scent of vanilla in her hair.
She had stopped a moment sooner than he did, so the ground softened beneath her first. She began to slip through his arms. He held on tightly as the ground began to soften beneath him. He pulled his feet out of the muck as her arms slipped farther down to his waist. He lowered a knee to the ground and put his arm under hers and around her back, but he had no leverage.
“It’s all right.” She said calmly.
“I shouldn’t have let go.” He said over and over again.
He held one of her hands while her other grasped his forearm. His other hand was deep in the mud pushing downward to steal another instant. Their eyes locked, tears streaming.
“Why aren’t you fighting? Don’t you…”
“More than anything.” She said softly with a smile. “I’m afraid,” she admitted finally, then disappeared.
He scrambled in the mud and strained to stay connected to her. Maintaining hold of her wrist deep under the ground, he felt her put something in his hand. He lost his grip and fell backward. Panic and adrenaline brought him to his feet. Completely covered in mud from his neck down, he slid backward and forward as his passion gave way to increased desperation and fury. Never taking his eyes off the spot where she disappeared, he stepped quickly downward, then stopped and began back again. His hands and feet slid, but relentlessly continued to claw their way back. He found strength where there was none and dove headfirst into the very ground where she had been mercilessly swallowed.
In the blackness deep under the earth, the force of two strong large hands took hold of his arms and pulled him through the smooth cold wet clay. In the moments that followed, he second guessed every choice he had made that had led him to end up empty-handed and alone. He wished only to exit the door of desire and to never enter it again. Then the hands released his arms. The clay dried and hardened around him. He turned his head and the brittle earth cracked and fell off his body leaving him with his wish granted as he beheld the exit. He opened the door deliberately, controlling and protecting himself from his own bare emotion.
Back in the hallway he looked at the key the girl had placed in his hand. It was the key to the door of faith. He grasped the key of desire and pulled it from his neck and threw it inside its own door. He slammed the door shut and stood as the echo resonated, pulsating up and down the hallway. He closed his eyes tightly and stood motionless. Then his mouth began to twitch, and his head slowly rocked back and forth. Finally, he pressed the palms of his hands into his cheeks and fell to his knees. He sat at the feet of Nina and Braden and began to sob uncontrollably. He was unwilling to open his eyes. Perhaps he didn’t want to look at his own reflection to see how much he had aged. Perhaps he didn’t want another image to distract him from the memory that was already fading.
The paradox of desire is that it can not be truly quenched without ceasing to be, and, like so many things that live in the spiritual realm, they are extremely hesitant to answer to the authority of even the being that awakened it. More than a parasite which feeds for its own survival, destructive desires wish to reign and to feed in exchange for temporary pleasure, power and status that they are willing to share with their host. Unquenchable as the sun, they will continue to consume even at the host’s expense and destruction. In any healthy relationship between man and desire there must be an outside influence and monitoring system for man’s protection. “The Lord is my Shepard. I shall not want.” If that doesn’t justify the need for God and his boundaries, nothing does.
© John Lindsay 2011
