To the skies he cried,

Nothing is but fire!

Observing thus that everything is change.

He knew that God-or-Nature had but one desire:

To stay in flux, to stay in flow, to re- and rearrange!

Nothing ever stands, for the cosmos eternally will dance:

Being’s moves are both random and necessary,

For the beat is chaotic yet perpetually voluntary.

One never steps into the same river twice,

Whispered our Greek identifying parallel streams:

The river flows and so do I,

Observing thus that “I” is something else than what it seems:

There is no meaningful, purposeful or essential “I,”

Or a “self” to be developed as a self-contained existence;

Rather life’s basic playfulness is unwise to deny!

If at every instant “I” returns as another

and as an other,

Self is a ceaseless repetition of different others to discover:

If this morphing game is a play of masks

Like an inwardly theatre with no future, with no past,

We should conclude that self’s a stream                                                                       or a perpetual come-and-go,

That there is no truthful state that will one day lead the show –

So?

Unfold all masks!

Release all fire!

Let us play!

Let us dance! – to the cosmic beat’s desire.

The post Heraclitus and “I” appeared first on Pandemic Magazine.