How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.
We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.
Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing. There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world.
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials. Someone is enjoying shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.