Poetry

(A journal excerpt)

This voraciousness is about the insatiable quest for knowledge, the need to know more to learn more to experience more.

Though not to experience – experience chews up time. Learn and move on to the next thing, learn more, read more, more, more.

This voraciousness is a stumbling block, a thing that keeps me moving forward in a circle, spiral, up, down, merry go round.

This voraciousness is a pattern that holds me back, gobbling up this and that. Not stopping, not focusing, not attaining.

This voraciousness is not progression, it is hunger, it is obsession, it is distraction. This voraciousness is fun and entertaining, too.

Hunger for whatever it happens to be. This week a couple of books, next week a new online class. Or learn to prepare a food I’ve never made, wear a piece of clothing in a new way. This voraciousness is never satisfied.

But wait.

Satisfaction is here if fleeting, a little more than the blink of an eye. This voraciousness keeps moving, fangs bared, eyes keen to find the next prey.

This voraciousness wants something new shortly after something old. This voraciousness forgets about what was just accomplished, dismisses achievement.

This voraciousness says there is always something more out there waiting to be learned, so rush headlong with no hesitation. This voraciousness fires the starting gun and off I go.

This voraciousness does not like quiet and yet, I am voracious about solitude and silence. At work I clamor for the end of the day, seek brief respite wherever and whenever I can. Work is a war zone of mines yet to be exploded and such disparate energies that this voraciousness screams silently unable to satisfy hunger.

In the calm of a slow Sunday morning, this voraciousness wants busy-ness. Voracious fidgets, drinks too much tea, commences internet scrolling, video watching, anything to keep distracted from the ever present now.

This voraciousness has big plans and no idea how to keep going once started. Voraciousness only wants the next thing and the next and the next.

Voraciousness knows these words fall where they should. She stands aside for a moment or two, talks with Ambition and Conscientiousness, then leaps into action.

Voraciousness loves a good sleep, craves a lover, husband, family, mighty home, but doesn’t know what that really means. Voraciousness doesn’t compromise or take turns.

This voraciousness extends to all things “spiritual” too, though at this point, everything is spiritual, fodder for dissection. Voraciousness and Analyze are compadres and seek to solve a mystery where there is none.

Definition

• having a huge appetite: ravenous.
• excessively eager: insatiable.

Etymology

• 1630s, formed as an adjectival form of voracity.
• 1520s, from Middle French voracité (14c.) or directly from Latin voracitatem (nominative voracitas) “greediness, ravenousness,” from vorax (genitive voracis) “greedy, ravenous, consuming,” from vorare “to devour,” from PIE *gwor-a-, from root *gwora– “food, devouring.”