El pez en el aqua

A fish in the water -- was anything ever better fashioned to become a metaphor for the mind? What are thougths? Once we are aware of an idea, it hangs there caught like a fish on a reel. But before that, what was the thought when it swam unseen in the invisible fluid of self. Who among us knows himself? We cannot even remember our coming into being (a different thing from one's birth), and we cannot quite understand what might be meant by dying. We find ourselves instead in the "present," which is an ever moving something called time. Calling it present is like stopping its flow. But we really cannot find the present anymore than you can remove the fish from the water and expect him to live.