the battle of boredom

"the life of the creative man is lead,
directed and controlled
by boredom. avoiding boredom
is one of our most important purposes" 

saul steinberg

most times i just sit with my boredom,

side by side, palm in palm, cross-legged,
meditative in all weathers, and feel at peace.
but then there's moments when i'm off-guard
and caught short, you know those times?
times when your hectic schedule
sheds even you and leaves you behind to resort
to wishing that life was just a little bit
more fraught with conflict, because variety
is the spice of it, right?
and since it's widely known to fly
i find we frantically fill time
with the debris of life.
i've clung to slipstream antics,
i've swum like a chinook salmon
with the vast majority of the population
amongst the hurry of my current affairs,
whilst my creative lifeblood
bobbed fin-less and endangered.

yet in subsequent explorations and extractions
from the boredom compound, i discovered
that a timeless awareness can be found.
it only happens if you can open yourself up,
and adventure with a heart and eyes that can see
the manifold diversity, the options and beauty of possiblity.
can you wake up wonder-ful with the world
every day and go with a happy heart to wherever you need to be?
earn your daily crust doing what you love?
i'm talking the daily practice of protest dancing
in my case, reading books in my dad's, perchance.
it could be professional walking in my stepdad's
and ironically i think it's writing poems in my mum's. 

in this state people are different - focused,
immune to the room surrounding them,
keeping eyes steady on pieces or feet,
realising the importance of  
every move they make, and somehow intent:
as we all should be more often in life.
there we're unblinking, on a different level:
not escaping in drinking, drugs or addiction to
fallible notions of love.

it was then that i realised
that even doing what you love
gives rise to daily deaths,
the pain/pleasure opposition
and it's adrenaline.
any extreme sports enthusiast,
back-street-smackhead, domestic extremist or
religious fanatic can tell you that.

the human desire for escape
wears a vast array of well-worn capes,
and yet everything that glitters
isn't always gold, so we're told.
still, i love to live with my incessant inward
request for festivals, dimethyltriptamine,
revolutionary times, witches, wizards, hobgoblins
and other tomfoolery, cause somewhere over the rainbow
i've heard velvet-satin-rose-lovers swear
that pastel-coloured light beings make daisy chains
out of dark chocolate!

no-one wants the everyday,
so we sniff blank haze into breathing spaces,
fill voids with white light to feel heady delight
for a moment please. and a moment becomes a minute
and a minute a lifetime but what is time anyway?
the mysteries of the universe engage me
and cosmic pondering keeps me occupied with that one.

but some days i take an alternate tack,
eat banana after banana,
overdose on the dalai lama,
preach the daily practice of pranayama
and goodwill to all men, women and children!
on those days i'm walking, not on earth or air or feet
but replete with love!
and some days i still search, relentless,
for the astral plane.
my dance with boredom has many names. 
i say i want to live in natural time,
spend days in silence to clear my mind,
i even contemplate fasting, but unfortunately
never last much past midday!

some battle boredom with valiant charity
and work for the community;
another line of enquiry i
have tried from time to time.
because i'll have a go at each space,
every race, every pastime, hobby
or passion that's a passing fashion.
i've had interests coming out of my arse
for so long i identified with these words in shantaram,
"interested in everything but committed to nothing".

perhaps it's my age, flittering and fluttering like a
twenty-something butterfly. or maybe it's rage,
old rage turned into bored days, never surprised
by the money-grubby, tv-dumbing age i find myself in.
talk of finding ourselves is grim but makes me grin,
have we lost legs? toes? souls or a long lost twin?
it suggests a search for identity, meaning,
or more often, freedom. like the bluebells,
it floats away and we find ourselves amongst
waifs and strays, values kicked to the kerb,
nerves frayed by years
of searching for something -
but what was the question?

sometimes i request if i will please permit
myself to reject the big questions outright.
computer says no, like, philosophical thoughts spout
from my oesophagus unrequested
and sometimes i need a break.
so i'll take a break, but no kit kat thanks
(in fact, i'll have a yellow plum that smells of mud,
but you feel free, you see if you can feel free
whilst you nestle chocolate fingers
up your corporate bum, if you do so wish...)

no i'll never sit around, get fat on apathy
and boredom, but won't starve myself
for kicks and the media's mirror either.
i won't intoxicate my sacred self
but i will sometimes, because to deny
myself pleasure only delays it!
i'll let it come bubble up in cauldrons
commemorating the long-dead witches
of the women-hunt.

there are some thoughts i've dropped
and blocked for good, thank god.
my battle is now a dilly dally,
a pally little prancy dance with laughs most days,
'cause as my mum always said,
'only boring people say they're bored'.

i'll have fun. i'll have bucketloads of what i love 
'cos a bit of what you fancy does you good,
but i'll always try to balance it with acts of kindness.
i'll stare down the abyss and dive in with my arms open.
i'll do whatever i need to feel free in my lifelong
battle: peace versus boredom.