Is life without desire truly unthinkable...? I think it is.

Elusive though it may be at times, satisfied though I may be most times, my desire for more, more, more; more love, pleasure, sweet pain--dare I say...motivates me, helps keeps me alive/revived each day.

There are days when I desire to be free, free from the masks I wear when I dutifully fulfill the roles of mother, daughter, sister, coworker, friend, student, Carla...I desire just only to be ME.

Sometimes I achieve that desire, but then a new one spawns and the neverending circle begins again, luring me, teasing me, seducing me, taunting me...desiring being that I am, just like yOu.

These days, the lure of the island in my dreams taunt me. I long to get away and I do in my dream, but the awakening is truth. I awake to New York, to work, to my family--feet planted firmly in reality.

"Human beings are part of the whole called by us 'Universe,' each a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." --Albert Einstein

I am who I am...the offspring of an intriguing union between two souls. I am a living portrait, a visual representation of the human family--I am You.

I am who I am...a fully formatted, functioning, breathing being with ideas, views, opinions, wants, needs...still trying to discover and capture within myself the ethereal human qualities of love, passion, happiness, lust.

I am who I am...but there are so many layers of me which, should you try to interpret them, would be an enterprise doomed to failure.

I am who I am...a contrary being filled with ironies; a battlefield within and without myself; ever evolving on my travels upon life's curious route. Taught at an early age to carve a life out for myself I've found rather, that life has carved me out...a human portrait, a representation ofyou.

I am one part of a whole among our exotic human tribe. I am who I am...a living, human portrait, a visual representation of you.