You can never visit the same river twice


Time sweeps me on inexorably and with abandon - or reluctance  - things happen which puctuate the passage of time with fixed points,
nodes if you like.
Static points which can be used to identify places, feelings, moments in time,
but these are not the river itself.
These things are like rocks in a river - they are useful to have as a way of describing the river, the shape and form it takes around things, how it moves. But the river is not the rock,
nor is the rock part of the river.

When I visit the past - I am looking at the things that surrounded me then, the things that make that point in time easier to describe.
The sparkle of light, the season, the reflection of sky,
but never what being the river was, still is.
I can never be the river at that moment again.

Yet it can haunt me, hurt me, resurect monsters long thought dead and hide their reflection in the dark places I have yet to visit. Still, I cannot live only in fear of that and barricade my life against the possibility. A life spent defending againts the possibility of the shadows of monsters is truely wasted.

I am the same river, but I am not hurting now. Not right now - in this moment. Now I am needful of being where I am. I cannot exist at all times along my path at once. My mind scattered in pieces.
When I  know the power of the past and know how it has shapes my movement should I fear it?
Or is it just a "was?"

These places I have been, strange meanders through dark places, dont define me, they have shown me ways I can deal with the future - if I choose to. but even this, I can reject.

I am chaotic, I do not know how I will decide my future, or even if the decisions make any difference, but I can change the nature of the way I choose. Fearfully, or playfully with interest and fascination.