This Is All I Want

This is all I want. I want to move my limbs. Maybe run a mile or two and not fall over. Just to go outside and appreciate being outside. I’d like to sit on green grass under some shade and listen to the wind move through the leaves. Have you felt how peaceful that can be?

What else, I want a job so I can eat. And when I’m done for the day I want to go home at night and spend an hour or two writing. To have those hours, I hold then at least a shred of belief that someday I’ll be recognized for what I believe I do best. Even if I am always terrible, I want the chance.

Beyond that, if I could, I want to read. To always enjoy the novels of Richard Yates and Brian Moore, the journals of Sylvia Path, the short stories of Raymond Carver. I want to read so I can remember other people have been lonely, yearning too.

To complete that desire, I want to see for as long as I can. It is a simple yet covetous pleasure to experience colors and shapes. And backsides of women – both small and large – and black-and-white films, even the hands in front of my face.

As well, to eat food. It is too extravagant to specify I want this food and I want that food. There are those who have the same thing to eat every day, because there is nothing else. So just to eat food is good. To have meat lover’s pizza and pho, that is even better. I will cherish each time I am able. Though to drink clean water as well. It is simple to do, it seems, but one should be reminded it is a blessing.

I want to hear music. It transports the heart to memories, both good and bad. And I want that, hopefully until I hear nothing at all.

Talking, I want that as well. Though I am glad I’ve been able to already. There are many things I have wanted to say and I have always had the opportunity to say them. Sometimes, it’s true, I haven’t been brave enough, but the words have always been on my tongue, waiting to be let out. I want to always have that chance. I hope I squander it less and less.

Listening as well, I want to always listen. Even if sometimes I may disagree, I want to hear voices other than my own. Often they are reminiscent of something better than myself.

I don’t mean to be facetious, but if I could live somewhere that has very few college students. The city needs young people; they are the heartbeat of the city. But if I could just always live miles away, I would like that. I am growing old, and I covet peace.

Friendships, perhaps a few. But I don’t believe it simple to juggle personalities. As a younger man, perhaps, though as one grows older the need for friends wanes and the desire for one partner grows. So I do not wish to be given a multitude of friends. But I do wish, in the times I encounter others, for a natural back and forth, without excessive drama or unnecessary tension. There is too much of that the way it is, too much petty fighting within immaterial groups. Perhaps it is the biggest wasted of mental energy I know. I will never meet every person who could be a good friend, I know that. All I want is to meet as many as I can, and let the rest scratch and claw.

And what about the thing we’re all here for? How much should I be given? What is my lot? Do I deserve a wife? Or a house perhaps, and a good-sized dog who hardly ever barks. I don’t know what it is people do and do not deserve when it comes to having someone to share their time with, to nestle beside in the winter, to fan off in the summer, to whisper in their ear at a party about something only the two of them know, to sit at home at night and order food and watch movies, then to go to bed after a clean glass of whiskey, how much of that portion each soul deserves, I just do not know. But I know I want it. Is it too much to say I want?