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~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

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Tag Archives: prose poem

Desiderata 2013

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

brave new business leader, desiderata, desired, Elaine Stirling, metaphor, prose poem, The Corporate Storyteller

image from www.percyandbloom.com

image of pearl buttons from http://www.percyandbloom.com

Be to the world as an arm to a sleeve, well-fitted yet loose, independent of and grateful to the warmth, colour and texture of a temporary pairing.

Extend beyond the limits of a cuff, offer shape to shoulders, flexibility midway. An arm can pull out of a sleeve at any time—there will be other jackets, but the sleeve without a wearer is collapsed and hollow. There is nothing in that emptiness worth emulating.

Be present. Stay with the joy of another for at least the count of three before diving back into your own agonies like a soldier to his trench. Acknowledging the pain of others is compassion, but this too limit to the count of three before seeing them as well and whole. Anything longer, you’ll be tempted to start a club.

Sleeves make poor democracies.

As to the business of happiness, it’s best to mind your own. Untended joy bolts, and the cycle from seed gone wild to domesticated flax you can beat into linen takes way too long. You won’t recognize the sleeve as your own, and there’ll be those little itchy bits you’ll blame on the weaver.

If there’s one set of pearl buttons you can take from this fabricated world, it is this:

Style knows its own.
Style is you.
You are eternal.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

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How to Bait a Writer

31 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Writer's craft

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, essay, imagery, inspiration, metaphor, prose poem

school-of-glass-minnows-florida-keys

For those dry, cold winter mornings; dripping, foggy afternoons; evenings that provoke and taunt you with another wasted day, “Hah, you call yourself a writer—give it up, just go to bed and toss and turn a big ole useless hole into your mattress!”, I offer these small tips.

First off, forget the words! They aren’t coming, snotty little boogers, never will, and sit up straight and tall. Sneakily, grab hold of pen or e-device and shout—out loud, for real, is best—”I’m telling. Do you hear me? I’M TELLING!!!”

Remember how good telling used to feel?

“Bobby McEvoy farted in gym today.”

“Did you see Philly-Mae’s slip was showing—in church? It looked kind of yellow, had a rip in the lace . . .”

While words ungrateful may pack up and run away, we never lose the knack for telling, though some of us, we had our tongues-of-telling shamed and stapled to the front pew, damned to Sundays near perpetual of puritanic sermons from an adenoidal preacher who would never die ‘cause neither God nor Satan wanted him.

I used to dream of Mystic on those awful—really, they were aweless—Sundays in Connecticut, consoled by pastel images in Victorian parlours with bowls of butterscotch hard candy congealed to amber lump, that whalers harpooned blue backs gently and floated them to shore like Afghans, golden placid on a leash. It made for better fantasy than sulphur being hurled in flaming chunks at those of us who managed—God knows why!—to find a way, through all the wrath, to be born anyway.

So here’s the tip that hides the iceberg of an endless creativity:

Ignore the words when they refuse to lead, and pay attention to the images, the smells, the sounds, and capture them in nets. How tight or loose the weave is up to you. Are they of hemp these nets that make you want to smoke them, or of prickly cactus fibers, or of woven plastic packaging, recycled?

Of your ocean, what’s the temperature? South Pacific calm or crashing, north Atlantic blustering? Do you dive deep and naked, or would you rather surf through endless roaring corridors?

The mainsail is, the main thing, that you write your choices down—to tell, record, the biggest, fattest lies of truth sweet-soaring through your blood and bones until you’re fairly shouting with the effervescence that is telling you. The bubbles stirring up attract an audience, they do, they always will—

Oh, look, what’s this?

Who’s tiptoeing, all curious, forgetting to be coy—haha, I tricked you, koi!—to netted edge and bringing with them buckets of emotion, sleek and silvery like minnows, courting, pregnant, spilling out with eggs? Those tiny fish, they are your prodigals, lost words come home in infinite and succulent supply to feed the hungry images you care enough to write…

You care enough to write. You always have, you always will.

So there you go, dear mystic friend, enjoy the feast! I’ll see you in the ocean blue when next we sail, distressed and wailing, on a dripping, foggy afternoon.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

The Freedom That Comes

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Metaphysics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, letting go, prose poem, relationships, survival

Image by Alison Jones

Final entries from the log of bush pilot James Armitage, 34. Wreckage from his float plane was found September 14, 20__ in a wooded area near Copre Lake in northern Ontario, Canada. He had been missing for eleven days; the notes were written with the stub of an HB-2 pencil. Cause of death: hypothermia.

~~~

The freedom that comes from not having to hold an uncomfortable vibration calibrates instantly higher.

All of what happens and is happening involves infinite adjustments of detail by What We Really Are at non-physical levels. What manifests in daily life is the furthest extremity of these events with the twin channels of thought and feeling as our downstream propulsion—like the left and right pontoons (looking pretty banged up, sadly) of this Cessna 172.

I’ve reached the far end of a chessboard, and now I’m trading up. Even before this happened, I was free in every moment to launch a new game if I didn’t like the old one. Next time, I’ll choose opponents according to their ability to bring enjoyment. No more assholes!

Anyone who feels compelled to correct my interpretations is welcome to launch their own new game.

It takes two sides to maintain a tug-of-war, and letting go the rope, while it ends the match, is not illegal. The collapsing heap at the opposite end is temporary and will sort itself out. Every collapse does.

The lead in this pencil is almost gone.

Emily, I love you, and I’ll miss our arguments. No one could piss me off like you, or lighten my heart, or drop me to my knees in gratitude. You were my greatest adventure.

Tell Brianne and Matthew their daddy will come back to them in a new way when they’re older, and when they see me again, they’ll laugh. Ask them if they know how much I love them, and listen to their answers.

Tell them there is no death.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

A Common Tragedy

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Inspiration

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, inspiration, nagual, prose poem, transcendence

Pull the world tight against your bones.

Image from Deep Blue Home, blog by Julia Whitty

Wear it like a second skin, and watch it move when you move, love when you love.

Trip over the smiles of others. Stop trying to measure the space between yourself and what you feel sometimes, but not always, for me, and her, and him, and them.

Can you slide a credit card between bird and sky, between anemone and high tide? We are all elements in debit to each other. We could start learning to live with it.

A man on the bus in a gray flannel suit swore at his wife on his cell phone because she’d called him twenty times that day. At the end, shoulders crimped, he said softly, “See you soon.”

All pain is joy held at arm’s length. Pressing against your open palms, the love gets through anyway.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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