Saturday, March 14, 2009

Of Patience

The following might be the most erroneous writing of all, but then again writing is always such an arduous task always susceptible to mistakes, hypothesis, errors, lack of knowledge and miscommunication. It is in constant need of revision and change. Whoever said one must write in order to organize and calm the restless emotions that trouble the heart, when in fact writing often leads to dissatisfaction when one realizes that what one writes is always to be incomplete or perhaps even incorrect. However I write this in the spur of a moment, painfully ignorant of all the hardships that are entailed in the process of writing. But in my very doing so, I believe that I have already contradicted myself in what I have to say:

If there is anything so immutable and solid to fill that hollow, which we all otherwise so carelessly call 'virtue', then the only quality or concept to fit into it would be patience. All other 'virtues' are secondary or are branches of this main stem. It is patience that gives birth to compassion, honesty, love, philanthropy. They are all fruits of this eternal tree. And although this tree is ever breathing, unchanging, living, its fruits grow from its blossoms and ripen from sour to sweetness and then fall from their mother and decay. But the tree stands firm against summer, spring, winter, fall, storms, gales and pleasant weather. The other lesser virtues quiver, grow, ripen, fall and then decay; their places are filled by others. But the unchanging patience stands rooted, unaffected, strewing man's unending garland of the ways of things, selecting this from that and that from this, according to the needs of time.

Patience does not merely exist and observe; it understands. It reasons and questions and then sieves the crude gravel of chaos to attain that fine, flowing answer.
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Saturday, March 7, 2009

white lily

what if the white lily grew between the blades
and the damsel sings and breaks its gentle neck
to crown her brow with its meek beauty -
a white star in that immense blackness?
will the flower with her slit throat
feel loved in that black heaven?
or will she wilt in its shadows
her juices gushing out
to flow into her earthy half
rooted amongst the grass?