The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are / quote 49 of 101
A human body is like a whirlpool
our bodily cells, and their smallest components, appear and disappear much as light-waves vibrate and as people go from birth to death. A human body is like a whirlpool; there seems to be a constant form, called the whirlpool, but it functions for the very reason (that no water stays in it. The very molecules and atoms of the water are also “whirlpools”—patterns of motion containing no constant and irreducible “stuff.” Every person is the form taken by a stream—a marvelous torrent of milk, water, bread, beefsteak, fruit, vegetables, air, light, radiation—all of which are streams in their own turn. So with our institutions. There is a “constant” called the University of California in which nothing stays put: students, faculty, administrators, and even buildings come and go, leaving the university itself only as a continuing process, a pattern of behavior.