wood sorrel out this week, photo by me.
The primroses are heavy yellow just now, and the first of the wood sorrels are opening out to Spring’s luminosity. I can see them ~ the colours, the freshness ~ yet all feels rather grey.
It’s been a dark Winter for me and I am glad it’s all over. I expect to repay a personal and professional debt deep into the year, none-the-less, for over-zealous expectations and bitter disappointments.
Reason and passion can provide us with a strong sense of purpose. And having that meaning in life, and in love, is grist against a flood of uncertainty. At all scales, I perceive great uncertainty.
The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote:
‘Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas’.
Keeping ship-shape isn’t easy for me. My limbic system is both a burden and a blessing, and for reasons I’ve explained before. It’s definitely something I have to monitor, the riotous pain and raw sensibility.
Too much reason is deadening. It takes away all the colour in life and love. And I need colour. Yet too much passion can burn me up in flames.
This last few months, I have purposefully allowed my passion-sails to fill with imagination and creativity. It’s been a very productive time in terms of my work. But I’ll take heed of Gibran now, resting in reason and moving in passion, because I’m just so tired of feeling adrift.
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Having weathered similar winds, having encountered similar readings along the ways I let them take me, I offer a line from Rumi.
“Nothing can guide you except a power that preserves the spirit of the devout from the keepers of the shooting stars.”
Trust it is in order for me to also say, the comments I made on your Floloca words were meant in a complimentary way. The feeling was one where I could see those who claim to have an understanding of landscape but do not look to the art led interpretations as being the ones who are the challengers. To those of us who encountered it by a raw experiential method in our younger days (and in my case still do) which was play led and with unmodified curiosity there may not be a ready acceptance of their views. Your proposal seemed to me to contain an elemental truth I could relate to much more readily.
Thank you Ginny.
I hesitated to quote Gibran as I am not a believer in God. But I feel these lines extend beyond religion, more obviously. And I appreciate your contribution to the landscape piece. Thank you, Dennis.