Narcissus at the Edge of Eternity

Spring is letting loose its intoxicants and as John Paul Young would say love is in the air. Well not love … love as our source is always there … but love in its most messy manifesting, most all-consuming and lustful incarnation … romantic love is in the air. To the reluctant I say get ready to throw some salt over your shoulder to ward off cupids arrows. Birds are chirping and bees buzzy … tis the season for romantic love. 

What you say … romantic love is always in season … let's see about that.

An Eternity

excerpt

I could spend and eternity

looking at you

sitting over a pond

the envy of Narcissus

as blue as my eyes

as deep as your soul

drinking naught but love

but twenty-four hours later

we're both dead

Narcissus had it figured out. He knew that romantic love leads to suffering; he wasn't going to fall for any of that wine and roses nonsense. Even the beauty of a wood nymph was no match for his steadfast determination to remain his own man. Alas while he'd remain immune to the beauty of the female form … to his own strong jaw-line and broad shoulders he was no match. Catching a glimpse of himself in a pond he instantly fell in love, remaining transfixed until he eventually fell in and drowned. 

So what does romantic love and its seeming opposite Narcissism have in common? It's attachment to what exist on the outside … attachment to form. With romantic love we seek fulfilment from the form and actions of others, placing an inordinate amount of attention and pressure on another to love us in just the right way that will lead to our happily ever-after.  With Narcissism it's about attention to one's own form and comfort … and often when accompanied with a lack of empathy or even psycopathy … attention to one's own comfort at the expense of others. Actually both romantic love and narcissism are fixations are about one's own comfort. We just tend to wax poetically about one and condemn the other. 

Of course in real life the interplay between romantic love and narcissism is not polar and one can figure herself deeply in love and not care one wit about the others well-being or wishes. She just want what she wants … or in this case who … when and how she wants it. 

No matter how you cut it they're both about ego and adherence to ego leads to suffering. Romantic love is not there to make you happy or even to make the object of your amorous affections happy. Although it can create pleasure… just like with its ugly and oft-maligned stepsister, lust ... it is about making babies. It's about survival of the species, rock stars. It is also about learning and learning to truly love … that starts with loving yourself ... not for the way you look, or your accomplishments, or even for how others feel about you … but simply because you exist and because of what exists in every cell of your body… the eternal kind of love. When you find this it will colour everything do and feel, including your adventures in romantic love … giving your dealings with others an expansive acceptance … room to grow and evolve … room to feel.

Mountains to Disassemble

Excerpt 

Oceans of time

Prairies to pass

Mountains to disassemble

But still when you write me a poem

I smile and in that moment, we exist

The ocean becomes a puddle

The prairies a spring meadow

Mountains crumble, disintegrate

Time becomes a tear that falls in slow motion

* originally published online under the name Sarah Penn

Your form and the form of everyone you will ever meet will eventually crumble … its temporary. Everything in the physical world is temporary. Pinning your happiness to something that is temporary will only ever lead to its loss … but loving this world and everyone in it … that's eternal. When all else falls away … there is only love.

Blessing beautiful people. We'll see you next week.

An Eternity and Mountains to Disassemble are published in Strays, a Collection of Short Stories and Philosophical Love Poems and available at the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=pryde+foltz