The Want List

To Want or Not to Want?

The Goldfish Window. Childe Hassam, 1916

So lately what I’m doing is making a list––an actual list––of the things I want to experience more of. As in, what I want more of for myself, but also for the world. For example: I would like to have more roses in my life. I grow some roses in pots (we rent our place in Santa Cruz), and there are lots of other roses in the garden. I look at roses at the garden center, put cut roses in vases around the house. Roses, roses, roses. The Lady of Shalott, The Lady Gardener, The Poet’s Wife. A minor antidote to the general madness and cruelty we are seeing so much of. But still. I want more roses for all of us, and more time to think about what brings us joy.

I walk down to the ocean and think: more ocean, more beach. It’s so good to see the world doing what it does, as in making beauty. The seagulls duck and float on the wind. The sand forms in mounds and whorls around the tide line. Seaweed makes a kind of abstract, sinewy art, a purple, chartreuse muddle that attracts the dog to go and sniff its wonders.

I spend time with writers and think: more of this. More spending time talking about poems. About the music writing is. About the oddities of the mind. About line breaks and syntax and surprise.

And then I want time on my own to read and think about the long history of cultivating flowers. About the way fungi communicate underground across a great distance. About the mountain lions hunting in the dark hills.

I want things. I want to experience things. I remember, years ago, when I had a baby who was in the hospital a lot, it was hard to want anything. Anything other than my baby healthy and out of the hospital. Once, I remember thinking I wanted a pair of cowboy boots and that felt good, but bad at the same time. How dare I want anything else. And now that the world is showing us its underbelly––the violence, the greed. All the things. I can feel the same way about wanting.

Except too many years have passed and too few are left, in any given life. I have realized wanting is powerful. And I want time. Time to write, to walk through the woods, to eat a slow brunch, my dog in my lap, my husband across the table. I want to sip a cool hibiscus iced tea made with lemon and honey. I want to savor everything I can.

And I want to savor it with others who are savoring alongside me. I want to write more and to learn about the natural world. So many of us want the same things: to reconnect to life through simplicity and awe. To make something meaningful and beautiful. To stay in a place of curiosity and wonder.

And I have a new venture in which I am creating more of all of the above. I want to tell you about my new venture––but this is a post about wanting and I want you to think about making a list of your wants, too. Yes. You can think about beauty and joy and making. Even now. In fact, tending what we want to experience more of is a good way to keep our souls alert and awake. And, while we’re at it, the soul of the world, too.

For more about the new venture, go to: www.Litfieldwriters.com

And for more of your own joy, go to a window or just look up at the sky from wherever you are for a moment. Really look. And take it in.