"Appetite"

Okay, this wasn't written by me, but I think it's really insightful and just a good way to look at life.  Enjoy :)

"Appetite"

One of the major pleasures in life is appetite and one of our major duties should be to preserve it.  Appetite is the keenness of living; it is one of the sense that tells you that you are still curious to exist, that you still have an edge on your longings and want to bite into the world and taste its multitudinous flavors and juices.

            By appetite, of course, I don’t mean just the lust for food, but any condition of unsatisfied desire, any burning in the blood that proves you want more than you’ve got, and that you haven’t yet used up your life. Wilde said he felt sorry for those who never got their heart’s desire, but sorrier still for those who did.  I got mine once only, and it nearly killed me, and I’ve always preferred wanting to having since.

            For appetite, to me, is that state of wanting, which keeps one’s expectations alive.  I remember learning this lesson long ago as a child, when treats were few, and when I discovered that the greatest pitch of happiness was not in actually eating a toffee but in gazing at it beforehand.  True, the bite was delicious, but once the toffee was gone one was left with nothing, neither toffee nor lust.  Besides, the whole toffeeness of toffees was imperceptibly diminished by the gross act of having eaten it.  No, the best was in wanting it, in sitting and looking at it, when one tasted an inexhaustible treasure-house of flavors. 

            So, for me, one of the keenest pleasures of appetite remains in the wanting, not the satisfaction.  In wanting a peach, or a whiskey, or a particular texture, or sound or to be with a particular friend.  For in this condition, of course, I know that the object of desire is always at its most flawlessly perfect.  Which is why I would carry the preservation of appetite to the extent of deliberate fasting, simply because I think that appetite is too good to lose, too precious to be bludgeoned into insensibility by satiation and overdoing it.

            For that matter, I don’t really want three square meals a day-I want one huge, delicious, table-groaning blow-out, say every four days, and then not be sure where the next one is coming from.  A day of fasting is not for me just a puritanical device for denying oneself a pleasure, but rather a way of anticipating a rarer moment of supreme indulgence.

            Fast is an act of homage to the majesty of appetite.  So I think we should arrange to give up our pleasures regularly-our food, our friends, our lovers-in order to preserve their intensity, and the moment of coming back to them.  For this is the moment that renews and refreshes both oneself and the thing one loves.  Sailors and travelers enjoyed this once, and so did hunters, I suppose.  Part of the weariness of modern life may be that we live too much on top of each other, and are entertained and fed too regularly.  Once we were separated by both hunger from our food and families, and then we learned to value both.  The men went off hunting, and the dogs went with them; the women and children waved goodbye. The cave was empty of men for days on end; nobody ate, or knew what to do.  The women crouched by the fire, the wet smoke in their eyes; the children wailed; everybody was hungry.  Then one night there were shouts, and roe barking of dogs from the hills, and the men came back loaded with meat.  This was the great reunion and everybody gorged themselves silly, and appetite came into its own; the long-awaited meal became a feast to remember and an almost sacred celebration of life. Now we go off to the office and come home in the evenings to cheap chicken and frozen peas.  Very nice, but too much of it, too easy and regular, served up without effort or wanting.  We eat, we are lucky, our faces are shining with fat, but we don’t know the pleasure of being hungry any more.

            Too much of anything-too much music, entertainment, happy snacks, or time spent with one’s friends, creates a kind of impotence of living by which one can no longer hear, or taste or see or love or remember.  Life is short and precious and appetite is one of its guardians, and loss of appetite is a sort of death.  So if we are to enjoy this short life we should respect the divinity of appetite, and keep it eager and not too much blunted.

            It is a long time now since I knew that acute moment of bliss that comes from putting parched lips to a cup of cold water.  The springs are still there to be enjoyed-all one needs is the original thirst.

a couple of my poems I've written this summer

I haven't titled either of these poems, but if there's any confusion on where one ends and one begins, the first one ends right above the stars and the second one begins under them :) Enjoy

"I've reached into the clouds and gathered rain.

It's only normal, it's been days.

The weather is changing, I put on my coat of arms for protection against the bitter wind.

The pieces are coming out of place.

Tv dinners and indie films occupy the space and time.

Pictures gather dust as they hide in drawers left unopened,

And the coffee mug stains the dresser where it stays to be remembered.

The weather is changing, I put on my coat of arms for comfort against the bitter wind.

The pieces are coming out of place.

Petals are discarded 'round the table from that night.

I loved those flowers, but I wish they weren't given to me upon that hour,

And the songs we sang in front of the crowd are bittersweet now because...

The weather is changing now." 

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

"I should've seen it coming

despite what was written there.

The words all jumbled together

to form a pretense.

I read them all

as if that was what was supposed to be.

Perhaps it was for the time being.

Now they mock me as I decipher between the lines.

Back and forth I scan for a sign

but all I see is truth

and the way they left me all behind." 

back in the day

Back when I was in middle school at Christmas, one of my grandfathers bought my sister and me a chest.  Mine has been hiding in my closet from that day on.  Through the years, I would put special mementos in it, but not until today have I opened it in about a year or two.  There inside I found nestled my journal I wrote in during some of my last years at home in high school.  It made me smile when I saw it, for it brought back a rush of good memories and it felt like a piece of me from long ago found again.  I will share a poem or two from it with you.

-On Watching the Sunset on a Hilltop   

"Atop a mountain, the sun sets alone.  

Vivid clouds dance round it  as darkness over takes the world.

Wisps of blue float out of nowhere into a world unknown to mankind.

The aura sweeps on a desert sky and earthly beings stand in awe

As hues of color disappear into the night sky,

Hiding their wings of beauty onto another day.

And a bird chases the sky until it vanishes on thin air." 

 

"You inquire and I answer

I weep and you wonder.

My thoughts are none for what you believe.

They are for a space in time

Captured in the frozen expression of

Opinion."