Heraclitus in San Francisco

The world is a child playing, Heraclitus is supposed to have written.

I like this way these words make me look at the world. Everytime I think of them, I see something I haven't seen no matter what I'm looking at.

In trying to apply this philosophy to people, I find myself more tolerant of others. I see  that people have infinite ways of being amusing and that though I too am as capable of delusion as another, delusion can be one of my more attractive qualities.

For years I kept a book titled Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus (translated by Brooks Haxton) beside my bed. I'd read a page or two every night before falling asleep.

Last evening, walking past a small garden in front of a big house in Laurel Heights, I stopped to admire the composition of stones and the way they worked with the abandoned utensil to make a picture. The images reminded me of Heraclitus and that I'd lost the book I used to keep by my bed when I moved to San Francisco.