So, math and me, not so much. I can do it, you understand, but it's not my favorite thing. But okay, a graph of my desires. Graphs generally chart something over a set period of time, right? So I figured, a graph of my desires over the course of one weekday (in other words, a dayjob work day).

I did this at the day job (always happy to engage in la perruque--La perruque is a French idiomatic expression meaning work one does for oneself in the guise of work done for an employer, as when one photocopies personal material on the office account, or the like. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau construes the idea as a socio-cultural trope of sorts, in which the socially weak (e.g., those who must work for others) make use of the socially strong (e.g., the bosses) by carving out an independent domain within the circumstances imposed upon them from above.)

The tools, some markers I bought with state funds at my last job before our center was defunded and closed, and some paper from the recycle bin:



Drawing and me, not so much. I like it, you understand, just...er. Yeah. We'll call this the extended, inane doodling graph of my desires:



Here's some photographic supplementation to my Pictionary-esque doodles (these all come from this day, mostly at approx. the right graph time):


6:30 am 8:30 am


9-10:30-ish snacktime

2-3:30-ish


4-ish anywhere but here...


still 4-ish


5:20 pm 6pm

6:30 pm the sad, cold stove, telling me no one has made me a nice dinner, I am alone, desire goes unfulfilled...still--


it's good to be home. (And I made myself a nice asparagus and mushroom frittatta.)

Loosely interpreting various Buddhist texts, desire keeps us on the wheel of life, which keeps us embroiled in the suffering of this world, so it seems only right that this graph of a day in the life of my desires should have some amount of misery and the pathetique.

Of course, this graph only hits the strongest desires of the day, and has left out little ones, like desiring to use the rest room, have a cup of tea, dance crazy down the hall, etc.

Also, desire is really not very graphable, in the end, it's messy (see Buddhism, above), so we have the extra-graphicular overarching desires, those that haunt the run of days and the breath of moments with the threat and promise of a deep, dark thunder storm:



Finally, all desires, it seems to me, are really the various and unruly monkey offspring of one, main desire--that desire for love/happiness/home/meaning that goes by a 1001 names...the desire to be real, clear, true.

Cool task. I'm glad I did it.