Neil Carpathios

It is easy to imagine Heraclitus walking stone streets witnessing life in Athens with no permanence, stopping strangers to explain about the river, being laughed at as they moved from point A to point B fearing Apollo and Hades then at dusk drinking wine, waiting for the happy obliteration alcohol brings, not realizing how lucky they were to be stupid and so deep in their bodies even the sun and moon trading places over and over meant nothing.

By freezing passion at its blossoming perhaps Rodin knew he challenged Sophocles who said as lover you want ice to be ice yet not melt in your hands. How stone, implying permanence, might let us believe, a moment, the seated figures are beyond the leaf that cannot keep from letting go the branch, beyond even stupidly purpling grapes that do not understand the process by which they darken; darken nevertheless.