{"id":50762,"date":"2025-05-31T18:27:24","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T23:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=50762"},"modified":"2025-05-31T19:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T00:12:09","slug":"the-way-of-the-root-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=50762","title":{"rendered":"Lilacs out of the Dead Land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
[...]

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock...

- from The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the unsettling moment when the roots, slumbering and dormant in the soil, are stirred awake.  They are compelled. Dragged back into longing, into change, into the ache of becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Winter offers numbness, stillness, the peace of not reaching, not trying….<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Winter, in Eliot\u2019s imagery, is a time of suspension, a kind of deathless sleep – no hope, but also no pain. The roots are dull<\/em>, the earth dead<\/em>. But April comes, and with it the demand<\/em> to wake up, to stretch toward the light, to remember what was and to desire what could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n