~~ signs.

[reenka]

i wish i could figure out how desire works. i mean, it seems obvious, but it's not.

can you want something even if it goes against every other instinct you possess? can you want something and yet be unable to ever go after it? can you constantly only go after things you don't really want, and torture yourself with craving the one thing you think you -truly- want, and yet you're afraid that if you ever pursued it, you'd realize that it's cheap like everything else?

or does this all depend on who you are, defining how your desire works? is everything possible, or are certain things only possible for certain sorts of people? are there people who'd realize that they'd wanted something for the longest time, and think about it, consider, and then do nothing about it, repressing the memory into the deepest corner of their conscious mind?

"Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."

every time i came across that quote from blake's poem, i used to smile, because it expressed my own beliefs so succinctly. and yet-- i see people denying themselves all the time, and is it because they're all weak? i -want- desire to be so impossibly powerful that no one could resist its force. i think this the sort of thing where one wants to believe love is stronger than fear, but first one has to really believe that kind of love exists in the first place.

you could see love everywhere-- it could be in a glance, in the turn of a shoulder, in a beat between words. desire could be anger and need could be jealousy and fear could be aggression. when you're growing up, it's especially volatile, and emotions kind of swing and tumble from extreme to extreme without pausing-- and yet, even now, it's hard to really believe it.
    i want to write about the subliminal nature of desire-- all subtext and inferences and double meanings. i want to always have that knowledge that this is something else, safe because it never quite surfaces fully enough to be contradicted. i'm frustrated with the way people tend to look for the most obvious solution, the most blatant result from the loudest of sensory cues. "what he said must be what he meant."

i meant to write something about why i'm befuddled by people's disappointment in a pairing like ron/hermione because nothing blatant occurred. what is it that they were expecting? an announcement? kissing in the halls? why is it that the simplest answer has to be true all the time?
    we all know there are signs, but sometimes i think i don't know what they are at all.

Comments

[franzeska]

"Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."

Or, perhaps, they do so because they are stronger than people who are at the mercy of their feelings and whims. There can be many impediments to romance besides fear. What about romantic triangles? I could easily see an honorable person like Harry bowing out if he thought that the object of his affections would be better off with someone else.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

i guess my idea of romantic desire is such that i imagine no one could resist it, as it is a sort of madness, a madness from which there is no escape. sounds ominous, as well as unlikely, but it pleases my sense of melodrama ~:)
and definitely, there could be reasons to resist other than fear-- nobility, sensibility, charity and so on. but no one's control is perfect, and a desire that's strong enough can fell the geratest man. well, theoretically. or make him waste away in longing, just like the story of lancelot and... well, whatever her name was, that wasted away by the window.

this whole thing makes me think of arthurian legends. poor merlin, i always thought he could've resisted nimue if he'd wanted to, but maybe i gave him too much credit, i don't know...

[franzeska]

Hmm... If I were going to describe desire as a mental illness, I might liken it to obsessive compulsive disorder, something that can be resisted and avoided, but only with great difficulty.

Elain of Astolat was a ninny.

As for Merlin, hmm... The Evil Woman parts of the Arthurian legends change so much depending on what time period you look at. In Tennyson, he basically knows what she's up to, but has a midlife crisis and goes for her anyway because she's hot... Or that's how I interpreted it anyway. I don't know what she's like in the other versions, but in Tennyson, it's a battle of wills motivated by bitterness and lust. There's no love there.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

i like that... obsessive compulsive, yes. though most people can't master it, still, as far as i know, without therapy. hee. it'd be funny to see desire therapy, since this is one madness which feels too good to pass up, usually. ahhh, everyone's a junkie.

i thought so too, of elaine. though the paintings predisposed me to her-- for no good reason, really, but she looks rather pretty on that boat, and by the window. i remember her best by the window, all in deep blue and looking like this is the life for her, wistfully gazing out onto the dying trees. or something. but the dying bit was a bit much, admittedly.

and, the only merlin that has stuck with me all this time was mary stewarts, which admittedly sounds less authoritative than tennyson, but then, i'm not much with the reading of huge epic poems. i mean, the only story-poems i've read for the -story- and not the poem are the odyssey and poe, but they don't really count. but yes-- i mean, there are lots of ways to interpret that. it's definitely a battle of wills motivated by bitterness and lust in mary stewart, too-- i think that makes the most sense, anyway. i was only ever talking about desire, not love.

it's just-- there's a certain element of merlin knowing he had to protect arthur, still, and knowing he -shouldn't- and he had better things to do, but she was too much for him, too young and full of spark and he was an old man who'd never gotten laid properly. poor dear. but yes, gotten off track. it's just that in mary stewart's version, there was all that business with him being enchanted-- partway with nimue's nubileness and partway with an old harp-magic, and something to do with honeysuckle.

and now that i've mentioned the honeysuckle, i've really gotten off-track ^^;

[franzeska]

it's definitely a battle of wills motivated by bitterness and lust in mary stewart, too-- i think that makes the most sense, anyway. i was only ever talking about desire, not love.

Now I'm confused. You seem to be talking about something less prosaic than lust, but you say you aren't talking about love either. What is desire if it's neither of these?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hmmm. yah. it -is- rather a problem of definitions, as prillalar said. lust is a bodily impulse-- one's body's need to fuck another body, i guess. desire can be a whole range of emotional responses, which can (and almost always) do involve the need to fuck, but encompass the need for possession in general-- spiritual, mental, material, even. one could express one's desire in a number of ways-- sometimes it can be satisfied by imprisoning or hurting or spurning the object of one's desire, but this wouldn't hold true with simple lust, you know? lust may be -connected- to power-plays, for instance, but the power-play is often a -function- of desire, albeit desire of something other than another body.

often enough, the desire is amorphous and even for some state of being that one cannot attain. the desire can be almost spiritual, intense and visceral-- and yet not really involve a simple need for copulation. the human mind is a weird thing, anyway.

i think gambling, for instance, can be a form of desire. even writing can be a form of desire-- that's why the obsessive compulsive disorder analogy seemed to really fit.

lust is just a body thing, pheromones and not much else, basically, whereas desire is a mind thing and can be felt without any pheromones at all, though it's not, usually. that's sort of the sorts of any sexual feelings towards fictional characters, i think-- since desire, more than lust, has its birth in the imagination. whereas, you know, lust has its birth in the groin area >:D

[ursula]

I've seen several versions in which Merlin is simply old and tired and lets her send him to sleep.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

heh. i'm sure there are a thousand merlins, and each of them with a different spin on it.
but i'm forever obsessed with mary stewart's merlin, which is why i call her nimue whereas everyone else is always with the "vivienne" or some such abomination~:)

[ursula]

Both names are pretty common. Vivian is older than you'd think, though-- 13th century at least:

a history of early Merlin tales.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*grins* wow, that's a cool link~:)
if i wasn't so sleepy, i'd actually read it more thoroughly, too. i think i've always had an unreasoning dislike of the other version of her name, but then, i never liked much of anything about nimue, even though i used that as my handle for a long time, and am actually acutely fascinated by the "lady of the lake" legend, which is probably completely separate-- or at least, it must've existed for something other than a cute story to have behind arthur's sword. or maybe the sword was a folk legend in itself. even though i've never heard of it, it would certainly be cooler that way, and it's common enough that these things come from disparate sources.

for all my heavy interest in the merlin & arthur legends, i probably haven't paid enough attention to all the variants since i'd had my "canon" of mary stewart's trilogy and was hesitant to mess with it. well, other than the disney movie, anyway~:)

[franzeska]

Vivienne, Mary Sue of legend! Or something.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*snorts*
that is so wrong, and yet...... >