A Curriculum of Longing‪.‬

It is my intention to bring the true meaning of erotic, the personification of love in all of its aspects, back to the heart of what it means to be alive; to locate us back in our bodies. What is at the center of love, but the notion of desire and longing? The desire for intimacy, the desire for knowledge, the desire to feel the wind, run in the sand, or teach a child to read. The root of the word "desire" comes from the word desidere, or "away from your star" or "awaiting what the stars will bring." Stephen Nachmanovitch (1990) notes that desire also means "elongation from the source, and the concomitant, powerful magnetic pull to get back to the source" (p. 165). Our star comes in many shapes and constellations; desire dances amidst our hearts in the texture of longing and aching. There is a sense of longing and desire before anything is birthed. The flame of transformation burns desire in our hearts, in the orifices of opening. Unfortunately, in modern and post-modern culture, the body, and particularly the erotic, has been relegated to either the gym or the bedroom. Desire and longing are put in the closet of sexuality, and a limited notion of sexuality at that, not one which includes the totality of sexuality in the larger sense of the word. I would like to take these notions, particularly desire, longing and passion, and return them to what it means to be fully human and their importance for the art of living, being, and teaching.