"Gods become men; men become gods, the one living the death of the other, the other dying the life of the one." Herakleitos 56

According to various traditions he created different beings as a way to distract himself and while away the hours. Peoples as far-flung as the Chinese, the Mayans and Africans agree: there were mud men, wood men, straw men — all dismal failures, even though some of them are still with us.

Eventually, G-d realized that even he in his infiniteness was going about things far too conservatively: to create a race of beings, ones that could entertain him, boldness was required, a stroke of genius, a little madness.

He went swimming from time to time, and once while he was in the water, he came upon a small reef. He got in the habit of swimming out to the reef and lying in the sun while he watched the fish going in and out of the madrepore. He took a liking to this unassuming and protective collector that accepted everything the ocean brought its way and thought he might make something out of it. One day he lay flat out on the reef quite unconscious, his legs dangling over the side while he was lost in dreams of grandeur and an end to his exile, when a devilfish who lived on the underside of the reef came up and gave him a bite that left him howling through centuries of pain. Thereafter he decided that coral gave shelter to too many different species of animals without regard to their dispositions, and that furthermore it perhaps grew too senselessly in too many unpredictable directions....

He rarely went swimming after that.

Being alone on the island and so large he rarely had sufficient strength to move, he never really took notice of his shadow. Early one morning, though, while standing before the ocean and pissing contentedly into the oncoming waves, he chanced to look to his right: there was a giant stretched out on the sand. G-d nearly leapt out of his skin when he saw this new being.

He immediately lifted up a stone from the rocks at his feet and aimed it at the shadow.

He advanced on the shadow: it came closer to him; his lifted his arm to strike at it, and the shadow did the same (could there have been a third being present, who only the shadow could see? This gave G-d pause); he ducked down to avoid being hit, and the shadow followed him there too. Things seemed to be getting out of God’s hand, as it were.

Now what sort of insolent person treats me like that, he thought, playing a sort of pantomime with G-d? He dropped the stone and began to play close attention to this one.

Eventually he fashioned many beings from the material of his own shadow, a new race whose shape imitated that which it was closest to, and which, being eternal and not possessing a body with physical weight, took great delight in constantly assuming new shapes and intrigues. They had no need to attach themselves to a body and so they traveled as they liked, in a congerie of figures, painting the rocks with their shapes and their laughter. In the evening, they would perform mystery plays to entertain G-d as he lay about the fire hole. They could not cure his solitude but they made him forget it for a while.

Around the campfire at night, G-d arranged it so that the plays the shadows performed re-enacted his creation of the world. In these plays, he was the prime mover, the first thought, the original germ and seed from which all else proceeds. It really is a great thing to lie about at night naked and watch plays about how grand you are. As for his omnipotence, the shadows took it on faith, and in any case there was no one around who could contest it. It was something G-d could neither prove nor disprove, but it made for good theatre so everyone was happy. Except for the fact that he was eternally dissatisfied with the shadow playing his part.

Excessively drunk one evening — even by his standards — he passed out while watching the shadows putting on the play. He snored heavily and no matter how many of the shadows piled on top of him, he did not wake up. Perhaps he imagined that the shadows existed for him alone; but they did not, and consequently, they saw their chance and they took it. They had multiplied quite deliriously and suddenly they were free, homeless -- but on their own; they took to the world like a bee to making honey. They dispersed far and wide, all of them swimming away from the island save one; the first shadow, the one connected to G-d at his feet; the one closest to him, who knew all his secrets and who never said a word or spread gossip; G-d was consequently left alone, with only one shadow and precious little entertainment. So he went back to the drawing board and made more shadows. But these shadows were a little more complaisant, a little less likely to escape, and overall, a hell of a lot less fun.

Some say that this was the beginning of the era known as His Bad Mood.

(Where G-d Goes When He Gets Hungry)

But G-d, when he was angry and smiting, realized that there wasn’t (in fact) any means at his disposal to keep the shadows on the island with him. He wanted them for company, or so he told himself. And yes, occasionally for someone to crush between two stones.

He concluded that the surest way to keep the shadows on the island was to place chains on them in the one place they could never lose them (because they would never know they were there): inside their heads.

So he told them that the ocean was the only way to leave the island, and he invited them to try.

G-d had deceived them, simply because he was lonely. "The filed down desert of the sea" was the only escape.

Did G-d know that the island was full of caves and underground passageways? Even if G-d is infinite, perhaps his curiosity is not. He hung out by the shore, the great sandy regions where water and land embrace. This is his natural habitat. Further in and he must do battle with Forest Demons and Mountain Spirits. Smiting does not come so easily in those parts.

The shadows threw themselves on the water with abandon, some sinking and some coasting on wave tips or reclining in the trough.

They swam all around the island, and came into shore to sleep. They had the hardest time leaving but at dawn, when they saw that G-d was about to wake up, they began swimming in earnest and tried to get as far from the island as they could, without knowing where they were headed. Most of them were never seen again.

None of the shadows who remained on the island know what happened to them save for stray reports of shadows stranded on rocks and jagged atolls, who stand in the water up to their necks and ward off anyone foolish enough to go further.

"I too was once like you, happy on my stretch of beach and sporting under the eyes of G-d, until the fever took hold and I began roaming. See that you do not end up like me, stranded in this rock, my only work to warn strangers and provide blood for flies." And the guardian went back to scanning the horizon.

Nonetheless a myth sprung up about the cave. It is said that those beings who got as far as the very pit of the cave see things as they are, without filters or preconceptions. Others assert that since all that can be seen on the walls of the cave are shadows cast by the shadow people, the cave is an even further step from reality, an assertion which hit the shadow people hard, as they were used to thinking of themselves as real. But since they did not know if shadows could in fact cast shadows, and they did not wish to find out, they (speaking of them as if they were a great mass) avoided caves religiously.

Were there other creatures, beings who exist between G-d and the shadows? From the vantage of the island, G-d admitted nothing. But in his weaker moments, and remembering his terrific inebriation the night when he had invented being after being, he conceded that perhaps some of the straw men and a few mud men had managed to escape his wrath and his eventual boredom, and that perhaps they had gone to live in the interior of the island, where they had, in fact, become quite populous. They are so strong and so oblivious that they do not mind their photos being taken.

In the meantime some of the shadows are now free of G-d and they "disport as they please" and multiply as affection proceed.

There are many gods. There are, in any case, many islands in our archipelago and it is thought that each one is inhabited by a particular god who holds it as his fief. Or so the sailors and shipwrecks tell us when they come to the capital, if their stories are to be believed. Countless islands and atolls, and even anti-islands, floating congeries of dense black water. These islands are perhaps the source of the endless streams of refugees entering our cities.

The qualities of the gods on the other islands are unknown. Some even dispute these islands’ existence, stating definitely that they are the fabula rasa of tortured, too-busy minds. But who knows? Not setting out for them, mere reports.

Cervantes, Conrad, Melville, Rimbaud — all took the tiller on the night watch. (Contemporary Voyagers?)

Herakleitos 63

But enough about G-d.