In children and some animals desire is easy to read, and to distinguish from intention and appetite. In these cases it is not just an internal state that is being communicated, the act of communication is part of the event. When a flock of seagulls gathers in front of you as you sit on a bench and toss out the last few crumbs of your lunch their normal voracity turns into the social celebration of desire. The birds focus closely on your hands, they jostle for position, they await an uncertain outcome, which way will the next portion of your bread-roll fly? The waiting, the acknowledging of a capricious and intentional source, the keen awareness of others competing with them, are all social elements that transform appetite into what reads as desire. If you look closely at the birds you pick out various strategies of desire which depend on the squabbly dominance relations among them. Each bird seems to have its own way of expressing this. Some loudly and aggressively assert their entitlement, others seem defeatist, as if they are only there to be part of the crowd without any real hope of success, they veil their desire. You pick and choose where to direct your next crumb according to your rapid judgments of their individual characters. Again, a dog sniffing at the base of a tree is merely behaving according to appetite, but a dog straining at the leash in order to reach a tree is expressing desire in a sort of poem of intent. Or the dog might be straining to get at another passing dog and if you then release your hold on it it doesn't follow through but grows suddenly shy and cautious in the face of its fellow. The whole thing is a dance with various actors, desire is what is communicated to the one with the power to dispense the desired object, and also what is communicated to rivals or even to the object of the desire. In the fully self-conscious individual many of these roles are internalised, as well as the strategies including the veiling of the wish for the sake of the wish. Just because desire is so easy to read does not mean that it is transparent to the one who desires, or that the desiring self is the author of the desire. In an infant of twelve months or so desire can appear to be a kind of game in which they are exploring their position in their immediate social world. They venture desires in a tentative way without fully identifying with them. Identification seems to crystallise after a certain amount of frustration, after an escalation of signaling behaviour. Fully internalised it seems to transform into something metaphysical, into proof of your being, but surely here the metaphysical element is a mystification of a lost sociality.