Obsession. Passion. Fixation.

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)

What are you obsessed with? Passionate about? Fixated on? A few days ago the editors at The Red Room gave their bloggers those questions. Here's my response:


I am obsessed with

getting it right. By this I mean I am obsessed with the unavoidable knowledge that I will only live this one life this one time, even if I allow for reincarnation and the possibility that I'll come back as a three-toed sloth. So I want to be as human as I can be this time around. I don't necessarily mean 'right' in the sense of 'right and wrong', I mean 'right' in the sense of being able to say, at the end of this life, that I knew and I appreciated and I loved being as human I possibly could, and no, I don't regret any of it.

I am passionate about

everything my five senses have given me: the taste of chocolate or peppermint or the ocean's salt on my tongue, the trill of a bird or the slow moan of a clarinet, the touch of sand or mud or the foot of a baby or the hand of a lover, the smell of rosemary crushed between my fingers, or freshly brewed coffee, or the wet fur of a familiar dog, the infinite textures and shapes of clouds in the sky, the diagonal rows of trees slicing past a train window, the glimmer of light in the eyes of some fellow human with whom I have shared, however briefly, an understanding.

I am fixated on

not being fixated on anything, but instead being able to let all of my obsessions and passions go, and surrender to the deep stillness which I know lives somewhere beneath them.