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It is very strange; want itself is a treasure. The cat still wants: water, food, a wobbly walk on the lanai. I don't want so much as I lack. “I can't eat for you,” I said, before he began again to eat. Lack precedes want, but want contains little except lack. Bryant caregives, taking reduction for a new essence, abiding with it. My mother on her deathbed was past want or lack; all she did was breathe until she did not. The cat on his blanket has more volition than that. It's his volition that hurts, the quiet bend of his front leg and the slow collapse of his back. The man who'd had a stroke walked beautifully. It was not his walk, but his want of walking that made it so, the odd circular motion of his one leg as it moved toward the floor, set itself down, began. Attention obliges us to love. I want his next step taken.

--22 February 2015