December 24
Nothing comes to nothing; death only loosens what it has joined, and hands the matter on to the new. What you are made of already was and will be again — so do not fear perishing.
On the Nature of Things (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Nothing comes to nothing; death only loosens what it has joined, and hands the matter on to the new. What you are made of already was and will be again — so do not fear perishing.
A sentence you once said in passing can come back to you years later. Someone uses it, slightly altered, and takes it for his own. Perhaps he got it from you, perhaps from someone who had it from you. You don't know for sure, and setting the record straight would seem petty to you.
For a moment you are glad. Something of yours has travelled on without your having to carry it. Shortly afterwards a quiet objection makes itself heard: precisely what lets you recognise the sentence has not come along – the occasion, the tone, the person you said it to back then. Only what could be detached was passed on.
The fear of perishing is seldom directed at the matter. It concerns the context in which something was meant just so and not otherwise. That the parts are put to new use elsewhere is only half a comfort. And yet the sentence could never have come back to you had it stayed with you.
The other man goes on talking. He says it somewhat better than you said it back then.
