Nearly all the water has gone under the bridge. The river looks more like a creek now. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants legs, and waded in. For too long, I’d been above it all. I needed to delve in, to get wet. If not now, when?
Time was clearly running short. My personal “end of times” was probably less than a decade away, and possibly much closer. I looked into the clear water. Tadpoles brushed against my ankles, young life in the middle of transformation. We were all transforming of course, all the time. Continuity itself is a devious illusion.
Hadn’t most of my cells replaced themselves, many more then once, in my peculiar life? Hadn’t I essentially died and found myself reborn—nominally as the same person?
I cupped my hands, gathering up a tadpole in a tiny pool of water. The creature moved differently, as if it knew something had changed. It didn’t know what. The experience was beyond its comprehension. I placed the creature back into the river and it disappeared downstream. Soon I shall do the same, with the same level of ignorance and confusion.