Longing

Ache

Desire for an absent thing, person, or state. Longing knows exactly what it wants and cannot reach it. The object is real, it is named, and it is out of range.

The word

Old English langian meant both to grow long and to yearn, one word doing both jobs. The language treated distance and desire as a single phenomenon, and the emotion agrees: longing is wanting stretched across a gap. Early English even used it impersonally, me longeth, as if the ache arrived from outside.

The feeling

A pull with a name attached. Longing knows exactly what it wants, the person, the place, the state, and the knowing is most of the pain. The body leans; attention keeps drifting back to the object like a needle finding north. Time is measured in distance from the thing. It sharpens at night and in transit.

Against its neighbours

Craving wants without an object, need with the address torn off; longing has the address and cannot make the journey. Saudade holds absence with a fold of sweetness and asks for nothing back. Longing asks. That is the difference, and the pain.

In the work

Distance does the work. Two things that belong together are held apart by the frame and by nothing inside the scene.

4 works composed with Longing

  • Reached Through Ruin, and the Sky Remembered INFINITE, uncapped. Open the tier key.
    $75
    • Rn2
    • Lo
    • Sg
    • Aw
    • Nm

    Reached Through Ruin, and the Sky Remembered

  • I’m Left With Everything to Gain APEX, 1 edition. Open the tier key.
    $461SOLD
    • Lo2
    • Sl
    • Mx
    • Hs
    • Hr

    I’m Left With Everything to Gain

  • I'll Protect You in Every Life APEX, 1 edition. Open the tier key.
    $430SOLD
    • Lv2
    • Ct
    • Lo
    • Sg
    • Yb

    I'll Protect You in Every Life

  • Deep Dive SCARCE, 15 editions. Open the tier key.
    $123SOLD
    • En2
    • Lv
    • Lo
    • Sa

    Deep Dive

Composed with

The rest of the Temporal family

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