Night’s Desire– At the Principle Gallery
I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.
― Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being
Desire is often associated with the tangible– the desire for money, sex, power, or simply more of anything. Nothing good usually comes from such desire.
After all, Buddha did state that desire is the root of evil.
But what if you have, as Virginia Woolf wrote, an inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life?
I can’t say with any degree of certainty what Woolf would recognize as her desire. I can only imagine that she desired a world that gave her peace of mind, one that was filled with gentleness of spirit and love.
One with revealed moments of grace.
Is that sort of desire in the same category as the lust and greed associated with other desires?
Unfortunately, it probably does. Especially in a world such as ours, one covered in deep layers of obvious evils such as greed, hatred, and injustice, to name but a few.
This inarticulate desire for something more in such a place can only lead to despair.
And that certainly is disheartening for those of us who have felt that desire.
Perhaps you can reconcile it in your mind and soul that this desire is most likely unattainable in this world.
So, you live your life as best you can, doing those things you can do and trying to not be crushed by those things you cannot do or control.
But even then, the desire remains within you and you often find yourself on the lookout for mere glimpses of anything that might give you hope that this desire could one day be fulfilled.
That’s what I see in this small painting above.
Dark wandering and an inarticulate moment of grace and light– enough to make you continue the journey.
Sometimes that’s all we get. And need…
Redtree Times 