October 8
“Once Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting about carefree and knowing nothing of Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke and was himself again. Now he does not know: did the man dream he was a butterfly — or is a butterfly now dreaming it is a man?”
Zhuangzi, The Butterfly Dream (freely rendered)
Listening mode
“Once Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting about carefree and knowing nothing of Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke and was himself again. Now he does not know: did the man dream he was a butterfly — or is a butterfly now dreaming it is a man?”
After a few days in an unfamiliar place, you sometimes notice that certain things haven't come up at all. You haven't pushed them away; they simply haven't made themselves felt: the unpaid bill, the argument from the spring, the question of how you come across to others. And still you were someone. You ate, laughed and got lost.
At home the post is lying behind the door, and with the key in the lock a great deal comes back at once. It feels as though you were wholly yourself again. But what are you measuring that by? The person who lives here has more evidence: contracts, habits, people who have known them for years. The other had only a few days and needed no evidence.
If the one seems more real to you, that is perhaps mainly because it can remember the other, while it doesn't work the other way round. Whoever knows more about themselves easily takes themselves for the original.
The other didn't miss anything in those days. Not even the one who is now picking up the post.
