Well, it’s not his own poetry - it’s some Persian classic he’s quoting so you could probably look into it and find a whole well-spring of deep knowledge explain

Well, it’s not his own poetry - it’s some Persian classic he’s quoting so you could probably look into it and find a whole well-spring of deep knowledge explaining exactly what he meant by it. In the letter he talks about his own soul, and the experience of deep work being like that of a river. So it’s pretty clear he’s talking about what’s on his interior spiritually. From a designer “I am barren and in a creative rut” pretty much means “I can’t come up with good stuff and I’m of no use to all of you here”. However, regardless of what he actually said, he was on his way out from a tight-knit and emotionally connected team in which expressing your feelings and being sensitive is sort of expected, only the guys running that team were so paranoid that they decided to burn him and smear shit all over his beautiful farewell letter. That’s a dark thing to do to someone’s career/reputation etc. Getting that glimpse, I do wonder to what extent Ive and his buddies have other ugly deeds on their accounts. Perhaps Ive running that separate company of his is really only a way of gracefully pushing this kind of toxicity away from the house just in case.