sweet willows

When there's no sign of hope in the desert,

So much hope still lives inside despair.

Heart, don't kill that hope: Even willows bear

Sweet fruit in the garden of the soul.

#1932: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search word: hope

I have been going through a prolonged doldrum, uninspired, uncertain, bored, directionless. I've been through this many times before. I know I come out again from the darkness but the turning point doesn't happen until despair fully sets in. I've had to abandon some dreams, let go of some things I no longer need. This is a time of culling, of sorting and sifting and reassessing. Some things must be thrown out.

The Power of Positive Thinking, the philosophy of affirmation, would say: Never give up hope, always trust in yourself or in your god. It forgets that gods die. It forgets that the new is born when the old dies. Despair is like a woman dying in childbirth. To keep denying her imminent death is to place her newborn child in greater danger. Accepting, even loving, despair is to accept that she will die and honouring the cause of her death and suffering by focussing on the new, helping to deliver the new child, even in the mother's death throes. It's always what she wants most of all.

The willows of our soul, our times of inactivity, of drooping sadness, are important times. Eternal cheerfulness makes for a cardboard soul. So many people kill their souls by keeping up appearances of energetic capability. That is the real killer of hope for the very best hope is the one that is born of despair.

The masculine version of the willow is the limp penis. There is no more potent moment than that of the limp penis. To cover it up or kill it off with viagra, is to lose the pregnant moment. It is especially bad for the lover. I would rather know that my lover is not feeling up to it than never to know whether his desire is not really just an artifact. I would rather one honest erection than a million phoney ones.