fledgling

At the other end of silence
my pen perches, heavy with stories,
and eager to fly again.

For Poefusion’s Monday Mural

through a haze

The stories
The lost stories
crying out in the mist for someone
to tell them, to pour into them
the breath of ink
>
The characters
The lost characters
seeking a plot for their loves and hates
ache to speak – but their faces lack
the pulse of ink
>
The dreams
The lost dreams
Nightmare and dreamsteed they gallop
white as blank paper or clotted with
the blood of ink
>
The writer
The lost writer
staring at the page, willing her fingers
to move, and moving, find again
the voice of ink

 

This is a response to Rick Mobbs’ latest excellent artwork, above, which made me conscious of how little energy I have these days for writing. It’s not quite a writer’s block, just a redirection of the energies that I might have used for writing. I’m so buried in reality just now that stories don’t flow so easily. But it will be over soon – less than a week before I can be free to live, and dance, my dreams.

Everywoman – patchwork poem

Everywoman

At night she would wander,
creating a small road
herself among the stones,
a small black spot carefully engrafted

Graceful in her movement
sniffing fresh wild flowers and clods of clay
hair grazing her neck
in a burnt orange haze of golden waves

Now her eyes are silver
as if she were looking at me
from the other side of a mirror
listening quietly to old stories.

Random expressions of foolishness
fall apart; she goes back to old ways,
circling through time
earthed in tradition and roots.

This is a patchwork poem based on lines written by the following poets, who kindly gave me permission to play with their poems:

Our Muse, by Lissa at Just Writing Words.
About a man and a dog, by Christine at Mariacristina
Pit of your spit, by gautami tripathy at Rooted.
Sinking Ships by writerwoman at Shores of My Dreams
Beloved mother, by jillypoet

I’ve again used complete lines, though I made one tense change and changed a few pronouns to “her”.

To see what other poems have made with the same material, or to find out more about patchwork poems, visit the patchwork poetry blog.

Reliable signposts for personal growth

How do you find reliable signposts to guide a journey of personal development? How do you decide which ways of thinking, or which activities, are conducive to the goals you’re trying to reach?

If you believe in a particular religion, then there’s normally some sort of path set out, and priests/teachers to guide you along it. If you accept the basis of that guidance (the holy book or equivalent), it gives you some structure. And most religions do seem to teach (even if their followers don’t practice) good principles – like compassion and community. But so many organised religions stress obedience and conformity, not to mention faith rather than enquiry, which I don’t see as conducive to personal growth. Some people may find it beneficial, but it fundamentally wouldn’t work for me.

Frustration by the options offered by the formal religions leads lots of people to turn to new-age approaches. These tend to offer a much less conformist view, but they’re haphazard and tend to promote belief in all sorts of weird things. As I’ve said earlier, attractive as it would be to be able to believe some of these claims, I find the arguments made for them fundamentally lacking in real critical scrutiny and regard for truth. Some of the claims new-agers make may be valid, but the crazier claims make it really difficult to trust that there’s any reliable guidance to be found here.

Alternatively you have self-help books, which seem to have expanded to cover even more bookshelf space each time I visit my local bookshop! I’ve found some useful suggestions there, but a lot more that is anecdotal and often not based on any serious evidence. (I came across a great article on Self help – shattering the myths). On what authority do the authors give their advice? Who has followed this advice, and did it work out well for everyone? Why did they write this advice? Again, I’m very wary of trusting myself to these sources unless I have good answers to these questions.

Beyond self-help books, some people turn to personal development courses in search of greater peace of mind and personal growth. But these are subject to many of the failings of self help books, and can often be far worse because they are much more intense. I was very interested to come across Louise Samways’ fascinating and frightening text dangerous persuaders which suggests that some personal development courses share a worrying number of features with religious cults. And sadly my own experience and that of friends confirms the negative effect that personal development courses can have on people, and on their relationships with friends and partners. I plan to steer well clear of these.

What else is there? Psychological research is throwing up some fascinating findings which provide some very interesting food for thought. The research often very challenging to our conceptions of who we are and how we think. It’s dizzying to realise the extent to which the mind and senses that appear so infallible are playing all sorts of tricks on us. But while this makes the mind boggle, I often find myself looking for something that goes a bit further. A lot of psychology seems to focus on poor mental health and functioning normally within society. Of course this is important and valuable. But at the same time I’m sure there are ways of growing as a person – becoming more confident, more honest, more open.

As I said in an earlier post, I believe life itself can teach us a lot – particularly if we seek interesting people and situations, and try to be open to what we can learn from them. It’s a great way to live, and a great way to grow. It’s tempting to look for shortcuts – but many of the shortcuts on offer take us away from the world – onto courses or into convents, rather than just confronting the challenges of now.

Not just our own lives of course – I think there’s a huge amount to learn from the stories that allow us to tap into what other people have learnt and done with their lives. Some autobiographical, some fictional. Some realistic, some dealing with archetypes that seem to have a powerful resonance (like Women who run with the Wolves, which I’ve mentioned in a few posts).

I suppose that gives at least three useful sources of guidance – psychological research, personal experience, and stories of others. A lot of food for thought!

Perhaps too much? Of course having multiple sources means that you always have to do your own sifting. And there’s always a risk that you choose the advice that challenges you least. But at the end of the day I’m the one who has to choose how I live my life and what paths I follow in pursuit of personal growth. Not having a clear path laid out can be confusing, and sometimes (especially in difficult times) demoralising, but mostly I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Inner and outer predators

I’ve just started reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women who run with the wolves. Some passages speak to me very profoundly… like the following one:

“This fact is one of the central truths… that all women must acknowledge – that both within and without, there is a force which will act in opposition to the natural self, and that that malignant force is what it is. Though we might have mercy on it, our first actions must be to recognise it, to protect ourselves from its devastations, and ultimately to deprive it of its murderous energy.

“All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience or foolishness.

“The youngest sister represents a creative potential within the psyche. A something that is going toward exuberant and fissioning life. But there is a detour as she agrees to become the prize of a vicious man because her instincts to notice and do otherwise are not intact…. She is not only naive about her own mental processes , and totally ignorant about the murdering aspect of her own psyche, but is also able to be lured by pleasures of the ego…. It is to be hoped that she will finally open the door to the room where the destruction of her life lies. While it may be the woman’s actual mate who denigrates and dismantles her life, the innate predator within her own psyche concurs.

“In the tale, the sisters slam shut the door to the killing chamber. The young wife stares at the blood on the key…. now the naive self has knowledge about a killing force loose within the psyche. In this state the woman loses her energy to create, whether it be solutions to mundane matters in her life, or her concerns with compelling issues in the larger world, or with issues of spirit, her personal development, her art. This is not a mere procrastination, for it continues over weeks and months of time. She seems flattened out, filled with ideas perhaps, but deeply anaemic and more and more unable to act on them….

“We can say what we like, present the most smiling facade, but once we have seen the shocking truth of the killing room, we can no longer pretend it does not exist. And seeing the truth causes us to bleed energy even more…. A starved soul can become so filled with pain, a woman can no longer bear it. Because women have a soul-need to express themselves in their own soulful ways, they must develop and blossom in ways that are sensible to them and without molestation from others.

“Ironically, both aspects of the psyche, the predator and the young potential, reach their boiling point. When a woman understands that she has been prey, both in the outer and inner worlds, she can hardly bear it. It strikes at the root of who she is at centre, and she plans, as she must, to kill the predatory force. Meanwhile her predatory complex is enraged that she has opened the hidden door….

“When opposing elements of a woman’s psyche both reach their flashpoints, a woman may feel incredibly tired, for her libido is being drawn away in two different directions. But even if a woman is fatigued unto death with her miserable struggles, no matter what they might be, even though she be starved of soul, she must yet plan her escape; a woman must force herself forward anyway.

“This is the more profound initiation, a woman’s initiation into her proper instinctive senses wherein the predator is identified and banished. This is the moment in which the captured woman moves from victim status into shrewd-minded, wily-eyed, sharp-eared status instead.

“When women surface from their naivete, they draw with them and to themselves something unexplored… In the end several things occur. One is that the vast and disabling ability of the predator is disabled in a woman’s psyche. And second, the blueberry-eyed maiden is replaced by one with eyes awake, and third, a warrior to each side of her if she calls for them.”