Story. ) The Well of Eternal Youth... Part Two... A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear...

from new manuscript of short stories: A Circle of Swift Songs: A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories



      A Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear

                                               That men may not be grieved by it

                                               They leave the truth aside

                                               And move to other things

                                               More obtuse . . .

  

 I HAD BEEN STANDING looking at it. Just looking at it. The beautiful antique map on my wall. And it had struck me, that out of my surface ‘anything’ I could make a lively ‘something’ beneath it, which could show me what it is, I really wanted to know: the things that would change me, to bring me more and more into the light; which things, though, are naturally uncomfortable; change challenges my own status quo to alter my orbit. But I am not afraid.

   I had remembered this: It is not those things we want to know that help us the most and reveal what we’re after, but those we don’t want to know and turn from; the real treasure it was where we hadn’t looked for it before.

   This old map on my wall was made of inert paper; thick paper. ‘Thick,’ like me! But out of that, I could make a living-thing of inner joy which could teach me and change me. Out of all the ordinary things I saw around me, I could make something extraordinary; because I was silly enough to see inside me, and crazy enough, not to be too fearful to go there. I realized with delight that I had discovered the opposite of that old saying: ‘…You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

   (I had looked this proverb up in a concordance of the Bible; but I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. Apparently, it was a phrase coined by Stephen Gosson in the sixteenth century. In 1579, to be exact. And it is in the book, Ephemerides of Phialo: Deuided Into Three Bookes; p62v.)

   I had a feeling that I had so crossed a divide that now everything I looked at from inside of me had its mirror image of my inner life. It had in it, a helpful picture of the truth that went seemingly ‘against’ me, which unlovely insight could aid me in the journey of my life, and become my true and lasting treasure. Though, this reflection, of course, I could only receive, if I was happy enough with my being ‘crossed out.’

   But I could take a tough thing and make of it a delicate currency with which to ‘buy’ life . . . ‘gold tried in the fire.’ And then, an earful of un-connecting chatter from the muddied world could become a purse full of connecting gentility closeted securely beneath the usual conversation of the world.

    You see, I had become so terribly free . . . that I was glad, glad, glad that I was thick, and dumb, and stupid; and that all my treasures were only those the world discarded; those of a prodigal swineherd and a foolish son; for so was there ever accorded me an entrance into the kingdom of God; and a fatted calf. 

      

                                                                           *

  

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The quotes above are from my book, IN THE PATHS OF MYRDDIN WYLLT: Yn y Llwybrau Myrddin Wyllt; A Welsh Legend of Merlin.