i sit at my desk, nearly naked, hair slicked back from a cool summer shower. i make it a promise to press my face up against the screen of the small window before and after i leave- one of the few times my sense of smell works at the level it used to, comparing the air and picking up the undertones of east coast summer. i ask myself the question i've been asking myself every day. "what do i want?"

it should be easy. well, in some ways it is. i could give any number of answers that are right: sex, companionship, requited-ness, zoro's earrings, a silicone cock. but those are superficial. i know i want them, but something else burns under my skin. it comes and goes in ugly waves, clouding my clear sight and filling my head. i know that what i really want is aengineering, and art, and so on. so what is this other thing stopping me?

i am no longer held back by embarassment, i find. i nuture my greed as i can, but there's still resistance. and the resistance is to this thing, the one thing that i can't place.

i want... to not be alone. to be seen, to be watched, to be chosen, to be thought of, to be acknowledged. i find myself recursively monologing about the conversation between the artist and the viewer. an artist does not exist without someone who sees their work, sees them. and i am, largely, devoid of that pleasure.

i don't ask for money, or fame, really. i do wonder of the line between that. at what point would i be satisfied? with one student of aengineering? two? ten? a class? a school? would it be enough for it to happen once, or does it need to continually roll out? i read these questions as if i was not myself, and i feel a twinge of sadness at the immensity of the loneliness held within them. to have not even a single experience where you have connected with someone over your work... the ultimate pain.

and yet, even as i write this, i feel the resistance. i know, logically, there is no ulterior motive in my statements. i don't wish to control people, nor do i wish to be worshipped, or any of the like. i simply want for a community, i suppose.

it claws deeply within me, to feel so desperately like there's no one who sees the world like you do. hope is long dead, so there's nothing i can do anymore but claw at it. maybe i should make a newsletter.