Imagine a mountain of sand, a million miles
high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness: imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird comes to that mountain and carries away in its beak one tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before the bird has carried away even a square foot of that mountain? How many eons upon eons of ages before it has carried all away?
You are the bird.
In your beak, a single sand grain.
You are flying above the endless ocean, and you are so, so thirsty.
Do not lose the grain—the grain is, and always will be, you.
an deireadh
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