The lemon tree and the lotus. Notebooks. 8-5-2022

"Goethe’s favorite tree was the lemon tree. Not for the fruit, not for the color or its prodigious yield. He saw himself in the tree, an artist in the whirl of creation with new and old work present, young buds concurrent with fully grown fruit, tiny green lemons promising new creations, white fragrant blooms. He had mastered his gifts, all his powers now at his fingertips.

And so it is with the lotus plant. It is all there, all at once, all present for the artist at the summit: the billowing leaves and rigid seedpod stalks, the skintight buds, the quivering petals of the final bloom, heart-wrenching in the breeze. This is the artist close to the center, at the white in white where sound is still, the mind trembling and breathless at the source. The ultimate upwelling."