760043

by William Bowden

Drabble No 760043 I have lived my life as a memory, or a dream — perhaps both. When people call me ‘William’ I respond, I think of myself as he. And yet what is that but convention? An invocation of days passed. If we thought about the William who was born those 34 years ago, the individual who was named by his parents, loved, coddled, cherished — well what have I in common with him? The ‘William’ of today is that infant no longer, different in every way. Thinks differently, looks different, is different.

Each single cell in me has lived and died since my birth. Brain, bones, blood, skin — nothing is authentic ... original. I am a chimera, a veil. Held abstractly in place, pieced together by genetics and convention, organised for the world like an illusion.

And what is it that keeps all this going day after altering day?

Well therein lies the rub. The absurd inexplicable cosmic rub-a-dub-dub. We are a race of pretenders, changing ourselves hourly, daily, yearly and yet clinging to ideas of permanence, place, location, identity. Perhaps rather than ask: “Who are you?” we should say: “Who are you today?”