Tapping desire

Today is another day, and I am waiting for a phone call from the transplant center - two days ago Laurie had her last tests.  Someone should know whether she passed or failed.  Aieee.

Appropriately, I began my day with a dharma reading about desire - how we can simply own our desire and not rush to fulfill it or to deny it.  Just being with it, you know.  Well, offhand that did not seem to help me, for I felt all my desire to have more energy, more lively creativity, and not have to go on dialysis.  (Don't believe the stories about someone living a wonderful life on dialysis for 35 years - that person is one in a million. Dialysis is dangerous and uncomfortable and time-consuming.)  My desire seemed much stronger; I had tapped it.

After breakfast and a pureeing Sheba's catfood, I called Tara and left a message.  Well, it is 12:41.  She hasn't gotten back to me.  We are supposed to go to the health club today, but I don't want to leave the house and miss a call.  Didn't leave my cellphone number.  Could call back and do that, but you have to go through this long menu and wait even to leave a "voicemail" (useless synonym for "message" designed to make the recipient sound businesslike and important.)

I set myself some time for lively creativity.  Read a short article in Writer's Chronicle about how poets should be willing to use the internet to get our poetry out there.  Went to Blogger to examine the possibility of adding a page to this blog for poetry.  Or putting it on the unused domain I own, zencat.com.  The directions were so confusing.  It bends my particular brain to think about new technology - I'm just not made for that.  I realized it was time for a music break.  Went to YouTube trying to find a Chopin etude played by someone older than 10 years old.  And somehow from there got onto Fail Blog which made me laugh, and that made my stomach feel better. (Yes, stomach reflecting anxiety.)  As for music, I found myself listening to a song by Morphine.  Didn't need Chopin after all.  Didn't need much Morphine, just a little.

I had strayed into scrolling around on a favorite blog, The Book of Joe, where Zappo's ran a tantalizing custom-made video-ad, showing every fall purse and fringed boot I had considered buying.  It brought up my previous desire, which had begun with a picture of a knee-high boot with three layers of fringe.  Very hippie seventies. I had modulated that to a slip-on mocassin type thing with one layer of fringe and what looks like some wooden beads.  But hadn't ordered anything.  Zappo's knows all about it.

So I was distracting myself as best I can.  This is another way, writing - a better way, uses more of my frontal cortex and puts the desire for a transplant to simmer on a back burner.  Seems to me part of that is the desire to know my immediate future, which will become busy if the answer is yes.  Well, back to not-knowing.  Even if you think you know the future, you never do.  It is always a surprise.  Haven't you found that to be true?

[unrelated image:  titled "Spring Advances," so what I was looking for was that tint of green on the trees reflected in the side mirror.  I am aware that most people would snort at this - the kind of picture you take accidentally.  But I know how contemporary art works - if I say it's art, it is.]