One of the more interesting quotes I've read recently was from Heraclitus: "You could not discover the limits of soul, even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning."

What is the soul? I fell in love with reading poems and stories and novels because I wanted to explore this infinity of soul, this mystery. All those characters traveling their paths. We each only get this one path, so it's essential to read in order to meet more of the mystery.

Do you know your soul? I don't think hardly anyone does. That's what this game of life seems to be, partly: finding out. Keats called this world a vale of soul-making. But does everyone make their soul here? Or do you come in with it? What about souls of people who murder children, massacre women, entire classrooms, countries? What kind of soul-making is that? Is evil in the soul or the heart? Or only in the mind? Poet Louise Gluck wrote: "a wound to the heart is a wound to the mind." Soul-heart-mind. Is it one thing?

I have many questions for Heraclitus but he died in 475 BC. He was called the Weeping Philosopher. And finally, Diogenes wrote, "...he became a hater of his kind and wandered the mountains, making his diet of grass and herbs." He died of edema after trying to cure himself with liniment of cow manure.

Heraclitus said you cannot step into the same river twice as fresh waters are forever flowing in upon you. He said it was all strife and flow.

Strife and flow: sounds like fiction writing.

My soul is water, O Heraclitus, a broken gate banging in the wind, a traffic jam, tinsel. Tyger, Tyger, burning bright in the forest of the night.

Living is the only answer.