The poem about desire (titled “Desire”) begins, “I remember how it used to be.”
I rejected the author’s invitation. I stopped there at the first line. I opened my notebook and wrote, “Do you remember how it used to be?” My own small ode to how we lose desire – the couple that starts “hot and heavy” feverish hands in the dark. A closeness that tries to defy physics and biology… and eventually, how we, and our relationships, “grow up” or “settle in.” Excitement and urgency and full-throated presence replaced by anxiety and worry – bills, appointments, and “real life.”
When I returned to the poem, “Desire,” a poem I had read several times before, I saw that the author was talking about a slightly different type of desire – no less physical and lustful, but from the vantage point of being young and in a city (New York) teeming with the possibility of spring. I was never young and single like that. When I considered the two approaches, the two remembrances, his and mine, it was as if I was forced to follow my path, my understanding of what decays and fades. His time before, his remembrance of desire, his place of return, was markedly different than mine.
I began to think about default settings or foundational experiences or natural inclinations. How one person’s “how it used to be” could be so fundamentally different from another person’s “how it used to be.” I began to think about the long history of experience, a collection of phases and “how it used to be.” The pull of nostalgia is strong. While some people actively and unabashedly chase how it used to be, I think we all have moments in which we try to work our way back to something more authentic than the present moment. In this moment, I was reminded of my friend from State College whose past seemed split between being a rowdy teen/twenty-something and his reverence for the one that got away. He had a strong “how it used to be” vibe.
The poem and my own version of it made me question if decay is the unavoidable natural order of things. Of course it is. Are we destined to have “remember how it used to be” moments? And maybe I’m framing that wrong – decay could just as easily be called evolution. It’s all just change gussied up as shiny and new experiences or faded like a sepia-toned memory. Wistfulness is not time-bound and does not necessarily equal dissatisfaction with the current beauty of things. As I looked back at various stages of life and relationships, I felt forced to conceded that all of the great beginnings proved to be unsustainable in the long run – as though they had to mature, had to “grow up,” had to evolve or decay into whatever they became.
But why? I’m not convinced that, given what I “know” now, I wouldn’t be able to hold on to my child-like wonder and curiosity. And maybe that’s the honest conversation two people should or could have. A conversation that acknowledges and embraces change, but also identifies the handful of things that they refuse to let slide into memory’s “how it used to be.” While change is inevitable, it seems possible, maybe even beneficial, to move through it with intention. To say, “in this one respect (or several), let’s never grow up or lose our way for very long.” Which reminds me of advice I once read – advice that suggested we try to see other people (our partners) from our original and innocent views of them. That if we can remain in a place of curiosity, or positions and certainties soften and our heart remains open. After all, isn’t desire just another word for curiosity? Perhaps a befuddled attempt to make anew how it used to be?