Allein

I am traveling here on a rock around a main sequence star in the prime of its burn on the arm of a galaxy in a sea of stars. There are other beings traveling with me on this rock; some want to eat me, some what to enslave me, some just want to chat at the bar. And yet we stand apart. I am not the mosquito that bites me. And am not the bacteria for which I am a host, a vessel on their journey through the sea of stars. I am not talking to myself.

Or am I? When I share my thoughts orally with another they become intertwined in the brain of the person with who I am speaking. A little part of me is transferred to them. Likewise by listening I find my brain transformed as well. The mostquito who bites me and ingests my blood along with anything that might be living in it incorporates a little of me before becoming a smacked bit of black and red on my leg or flying off. They bite me more than other people - is my adaptive immune system unable to fight them off or do I just smell nicer? The arugula I eat for dinner becomes food for the bacteria that enslave me, but they help me digest it and draw nutrients from it as well. Together we are more than the sum of the parts.

Perhaps these separations are all an illusion, maya, as the buddhist would say - so much wool pulled over our collective eye to hide the true nature and unity of the self. But if we are all aspects of a single life form and "I" takes on a new and greater meaning, then I am still alone. A pleasant fiction this, because it allows me to cheat death as long as you live. Or is it a great truth tha lies hidden from most, who only catch glimpses of it when they make connections with other beings, erasing the otherness that is the true fiction.