Whither, vane?

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ego, Elaine Stirling, habit, indecision, poetry, predictability, projection, reactiveness, rubielo de la Cérida, self-importance, self-reflection, spinning one's wheels, superficiality, vanity, wordplay

Weathervane, you spin and crow
directions of the winds that blow
across my scapes of heart and lust,
but nothing do you know of trust
or what goes on beneath this roof
to set alight the breeze of truth.
And when the weather calms, what
use a cock of iron sitting mute, not
registering sun or dew? Your tail
though carved most fancifully, no sail
can fill if from your inmost will
you cannot grasp a finer skill
or rise beyond incessant vanity,
perfidious and pretty weathervane.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of weathervane from http://www.blackforgeart.co.uk

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imho

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19th century English form poetry, A.C. Swinburne, creativity, discipline, ego, Elaine Stirling, false humility, poetry, rondeau, roundel, variation of medieval French verse

A Roundel

The poet made not born, at any stage
may ripen, burst a shell of competence
and gold dust pour across the barren page,
the poet made.

The poet born with gilded confidence
thinks highly of the praise, is quick to rage
at plodding steps that sow through diligence.

Grow or die, to both! The truest mage
of poesy to art not artful circumstance
must kindly, with humility, engage,
the poet made.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of John Keats (1795-1821)

Little Fiendy Whozit

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acting out, children's skipping verse, don't sweat the small stuff, ego, Elaine Stirling, humour, passive aggression, poetry, resistance, response to bullying, rhyming couplets, tantrums

Little Fiendy Whozit has a weeny voice;
he rips away his little gifts and claims he had no choice.

Little Fiendy Whozit thinks he knows what’s right from wrong,
and he likes to teach you lessons with a big bang-bong.

Now Fiendy might be good with wood or teasing little girls,
but push him past his talent zone, you’re in for quite a whirl.

The things you ask he will not do, except to impress others;
to corner him or force his hand, it isn’t worth the bother.

He’ll drag his feet and raise a stink and sooner whack than kiss ya,
then polish up his nasty sticks, insist he doesn’t miss ya.

We’ve all a Fiendy Whozit in our little bag of tricks;
he feeds on disappointment that he fashions into bricks.

The thing you must remember about Fiendy Whozit’s wall
is there’s nothing there worth nothing, so don’t make him crawl.

The time may come when Fiendy finds his R and L,
but until he shows up friendly, let him stay in…well,

for now, let’s keep on skipping rope and holding hands for joy;
there’s plenty good and plenty more for every girl and boy,

And should you meet sweet Whozit on your ever-loving way,
please tell him that I’m sending only happy thoughts today.

And if my little horns and tail occasional appear,
they’re nothing much to fuss about or fear, my dear.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
–Photo of children skipping by Diamond Mitch
from besteducationpossible.blogspot.ca, 2011

You’re not depressed, you are distracted: Part III

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ego, Elaine Stirling, Facundo Cabral, innocence, living in the now, philosophy, prose poetry, wisdom

You’re not depressed, you are distracted by your ego that distorts, in contradiction to the innocence that clarifies. The ego confuses things with its judgment, believes that things are as it thinks they are. Even more, the ego believes that words are things; the ego doesn’t live, it interprets. It is a constant performance that never touches reality.

Meanwhile, innocence treats everything as equal and in doing so, lives closest to happiness, to wealth and tranquility. Innocence, seeing everything in a state of wonder, takes us from fiesta to fiesta. Innocence believes that life is a grand adventure; it’s excited because it’s seeing everything, always, for the first time, so the world is filled with novelty. For innocence, all things are a mirror because when we are innocent we’re conscious of being a part of God; and like God, innocence sees itself in all things.

Fun comes easily to the innocent because everything captures its attention: a grazing cow, the trunk of an old tree, black butterflies above a golden wheat field, a hummingbird paused in midair, a baker taking bread from the oven, the starry night, winter rain, logs burning in the fireplace, the sketches of Matisse, caravans of ants and of Bedouins, a Sunday sermon in the morning and football in the afternoon.

The ego assigns names to things, but innocence sees them; ego judges, innocence lives. Ego divides, innocence harmonizes differences; ego relies on the head, innocence the heart.

The ego is old because it relies on memory, while innocence is birthing anew in every moment. The ego exhausts us because it is always battling; innocence floats with grace because it is constantly giving way.

The ego is boring because it can’t give up searching; the innocent moves from wonder to wonder because it’s always finding and can carry on eternally enjoying the same horse, the same flower or the same star; innocence delivers itself fully to life and is therefore in a state of perpetual change.

In this way, the same is never the same, and innocence remains forever fresh.

Now that you are alone and tranquil, forget what you are because that’s how the rest of them create, and you’re listening to your heart:

What do you want to be? What do you want to do now, because life is always now.

Forget what you believe yourself to be and begin to be here now, and enjoy conviviality with all things. It is so gratifying to live without divisions, good, bad, rich, poor, black, white, friend, enemy, compatriot, foreigner.

The lightness of being when there are no enemies is such that we can soar at a moment’s notice because happiness works in sympathy with magic.

You didn’t lose your innocence, you just hide it away, fearing the ridicule of those who can only catalogue because they’ve lost theirs.

Set it free, and you’ll begin again the play of your early years enriched by intelligence. Free yourself from the preconceptions of memory and see everything for the first time; then you’ll be liberated from the boredom that overshadows people who think they know everything.

Don’t confuse activity with living. There is the sun, exactly there for you to see it; there’s the old tree that’s been around forever, so that you can appreciate anew the marvel it is.

Free yourself from the images that helped you forge the idea of other, and return to the innocence that is your natural state. Then you’ll be content with the wrinkles that confirm all you’ve seen, and what’s more, only in the state of innocence will you feel a part of all that surrounds you—that is to say, only with innocence can you see God.

You’re not depressed, you are distracted by good information, information that’s unavoidable if you want a good life. Try Solomon or Borges instead of the newspaper, Mahler or Bach instead of TV; intelligent and positive friendships instead of ignorant and lazy losers, unhappy with their choices. This is how you’ll receive the best, the essential energy because growth is natural to life. Constant movement is its cause, and to be ready for change we must be free and attentive, our tools ever ready for use when change moves through us; otherwise, it will vanish like smoke from a chimney.

It’s best to stay close to good receptors, the awakened ones, the curious like Bertrand Russell, Schopenhauer, Asbury, Bradbury, Eco, Paz, Krishnamurti, Osho, to name just a few.

Einstein’s secret was to follow minds more elevated than his own; Campbell’s secret was to immerse himself in all the secrets of history. Only the intelligent can detect how all the important things of life are intertwined. Only intelligence can connect us to the universe, to the point of comprehending that we are a part of it and contain the same energy.

Nothing repeats itself. This is why you have to live now; full life resides in every act just as everything is born from a single atom. And intelligence is what you see before seeing, that which knows where it’s going, is speaking and doing—the greatest consequences from the least attitude.

to be continued…

© Facundo Cabral, 2008
Translated from the Spanish by Elaine Stirling, 2012
Image: cover of Facundo Cabral’s 2008 album, This is a New Day
 

The Dream of the Dull Prince

Tags

dreams, ego, Elaine Stirling, humour, kundalini, life force, short fiction, vampires

image by Michelle Schaffer

I dreamed I was sitting on a multi-coloured, striped canvas lounge chair in the middle of a gravel parking lot, in sight of a cheap corndog stand. The circus, the fun place, is behind me to my right, but I’m not going there. I am merely lounging, feeling quite dutiful in this nowhere/neither place, feeling grateful—or trying to—for the pretty coloured stripes beneath me and at my back.

Two acquaintances come along, nice guys that I know from my neighbourhood, on their way to the circus. They look surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” one of them asks.

I look around at my gravelly surroundings. “Damned if I know,” I say, and wake up.

Now if the dream had continued, I would have replied, “I’m a lady-in-waiting.”

“To whom?” one of the guys would have asked.

“The dull prince,” I say with conviction.

“Why?”

“Because he fancies himself universally appealing.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“Well, it’s not true, you see—he isn’t, but someone has to help him keep up the pretense.”

“Why?”

In the dream that might have carried on, I become confused. I glance around again at my colourless, rocky surroundings and remind myself that at least my butt is parked on something pretty. My friends take pity and clarify their question.

“Why are you his lady-in-waiting?”

At this, I brighten. “Oh, because I have been trained to wait, and I am very, very good at it.”

“Yes, we can see that.”

I notice somehow that my friends have taken on the names Frank and Earnest, which they do not have in real life. An Oscar Wilde-type joke, haha!

“Waiting on the Lord, that sort of thing?” Frank suggests earnestly.

“Yes, yes, waiting on the lord! He might need me.” I conjure twinkly eyes and two bright red spots appear on my cheeks. I feel like those people in the audience at The Hunger Games.

Earnest looks around. “So where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your dull prince.”

I don’t know, I think. That’s not right. I know exactly where he is. He’s over at the corndog stand, which only pretends to sell corndogs—I can’t remember why, but I do know that if word gets out of the real activities of the dull prince . . .

Frank and Earnest wait while I work through my options of what might happen if word got out about the dull prince. When I reach the option that probably showed in my eyes, Frank says, “Would you like us to come with you?”

“Yes, please,” I reply, not because I’m afraid but because I want them to see what I’m about to see.

I get up off the stupid striped chair fit only for waiting ladies and accompany them to the corndog stand. No one is staffing the counter, but behind the flashing lights and digital LED displays of non-nutritious, highly processed wienies dipped in hornymeal . . . horny meal? Oh, that’s right, it’s a horndog stand! How could I have forgotten?

So, yeah, behind the glitter, sits the prince who fancies himself universally appealing, crosslegged and surrounded by . . . how shall I put this . . . coiled entities who’ve forgotten their identities. There are heaps of them—pulsing, writing, vaguely erotic in a $5.00 per trick streetwalker sort of way—and there he is in the midst of them, taking each coiled being, one at a time, tenderly onto his lap.

Using empty words and promises, he persuades their mouths open to reveal fangs that had once acted as conduits to their life force, to the belief in beauty, worth, intelligence. Frank, Earnest and I watch while the prince, whose life of excess and self-indulgence has dulled and emptied him of all except the belief in his universal appeal, squeezes the cheeks of the being on his lap.

Sweet venom milk pours out, which, of course, the prince laps and laps, and which would feel to the one being drained like affection—I should know—until the secretions deplete, at which point, he throws the creature aside and reaches for another.

“Bloody hell!” I exclaim, in both my waking and dream states.

Frank chuckles. Earnest offers his arm. “Not your prince?”

“Not in the least!” I take his arm and steer my two friends firmly toward the southeast, mere steps away. I can’t even see the stupid chair. “Our circus awaits, gentlemen.”

~~~

© Elaine Stirling