1. He needs me, I know that. He cannot die his own death, I know that. But who is he, who is never the same as himself, or who knows the same only as the fire of self-transformation. I am dying, he says. But I cannot find him, he who dies where I cannot see.
Shadow, why do you ask me to die for you? Patient one, do you intend to wait the entire span of my life? But you know I will always be unequal to what I am; that my life appears in place of itself. Sometimes I think you would disappear, if ever I could coincide with you; if ever we could inhabit the same instant in time.
2. 'A shadow is a region of darkness where light is blocked. A shadow occupies all the space behind an opaque object with light in front of it.'
'A shadow cast by the earth on the moon is a lunar eclipse. Conversely, a shadow cast on the earth by the moon is solar eclipse.'
But now consider the shadow temporally. Imagine it is the present, as it falls into the future, that bears the shadow behind it, as a comet does its tail. It is the light of the future that sets the past into darkness. Only the future matters. This is a version of the solar eclipse, where the sun is the future.
More difficult: what if the past is the sun, and the future is the shadow that is sent ahead of the opacity of the present? The lunar eclipse. But now imagine, thinking of Kafka, who said he case a shadow on the sun, that you are the one who throws the shadow ahead. Everywhere there is light - everyone living from the past to the future, but for you, who cast a shadow.