The Snapped Willow
Something within the mind of Lao Tzu snapped. He ceased to talk much. For hours each day he sat before the door of his house. He wrote no poetry. He did nothing. It was then that rumors commenced to circulate about him. He was a philosopher. He communed with spirits. It was said that a white cloud followed him constantly about. Whether Lao Tzu heard the stories who can say? But they had no effect upon him. He was trying to piece together the jumbled puzzle that is life. He was seeking the divine reason for existence. What was it for? And to what end?
One day when the sun was golden warm as he sat before the door of his house, the web of melancholia in which he had been entangled seemed to lessen. The threads parted. His burden lifted. Life had a meaning. Life was beauty. It seemed to him as he listened that soft sweet voices were singing, as though they were singing love-songs to him. He turned slowly about and gazed at his garden. But it was a garden no longer. It was a great rug, a rug wherein countless gorgeous flowers had been woven, lotus and wistaria, magnolia and oleanders, peach-blossoms and chrysanthemums. At last his vision had cleared. He could see with celestial sight. The singing was coming from the flowers, from the flowers in the rug. It was like the voices of many lovely women, as though each flower was the love of beautiful women that had been woven into the rug. Softly he walked through the garden. Occasionally he caressed a carnation or lifted a bit of wis-
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