In the beginning, there were Things.
No one remembered their beginning, because memory had not yet been invented.
The Things stood where they stood.
Some were large and some were small. Some were hard, some soft, some warm, some cold. Some moved, and some remained where they had first appeared. There were stones, trees, pools of water, creatures with wings, creatures with legs, and creatures that had not yet decided what they were.
Each Thing knew itself.
At least, each Thing knew that it was not another Thing.
The Stone was the Stone.
The Tree was the Tree.
The River was the River.
The Bird was the Bird.
This seemed sufficient.
The Things had names, though they did not always agree about them.
The Stone called itself Stone.
The Tree called itself Tree.
The River had no particular opinion.
This was considered by the others to be characteristic of rivers.
There were also things that happened.
The Sun rose.
The rain fell.
The wind moved through the trees.
The River moved from the mountains towards the sea.
The Things noticed these events, but regarded them as secondary.
First there were Things.
Then things happened to them.
This was obvious.
The Tree stood beside the River.
The River flowed past the Tree.
The Bird nested in the Tree.
The Wind moved through its leaves.
The Things therefore had relations with one another.
But the relations were understood to be rather like visitors.
They arrived.
They departed.
The Things remained.
Or so it seemed.
One day, the River met a Stone.
The Stone was lying in the River's path.
“You are in my way,” said the River.
“I am not in your way,” said the Stone. “You are flowing around me.”
The River considered this.
“I suppose that is another way of describing it.”
“I am a Stone,” said the Stone. “I remain where I am.”
“I am a River,” said the River. “I do not.”
This seemed to settle the matter.
But after a while the River noticed that the Stone was no longer quite the same shape.
Water had passed over it.
Water had passed around it.
Small pieces of the Stone had disappeared.
The Stone noticed this too.
“What are you doing to me?”
“I am flowing.”
“You are wearing me away.”
“I am still flowing.”
The Stone was silent.
It had never occurred to the Stone that something could happen to it without another Thing having deliberately done something to it.
The River continued.
Years passed.
The Stone became smooth.
The River changed its course.
Neither was what it had been.
And yet each remained recognisably itself.
This was the first mystery.
The Things began to notice other mysteries.
The Tree discovered that it could not remain a Tree without the ground.
The Bird discovered that it could not be a Bird without air.
The Flower discovered that its opening and closing depended upon the warmth of the day.
The creature that hunted discovered that its life depended upon the creature it hunted.
The creature that was hunted discovered the same thing from the opposite direction.
The Things found this disturbing.
They had thought that being a Thing meant being independent.
Yet everywhere they looked, independence seemed less certain.
The Tree could not simply be separated from the soil and remain the same Tree.
The River could not be separated from its banks without ceasing to be that River.
The Bird could not be separated from the air and remain a Bird.
Even the Stone had begun to suspect that its identity had something to do with the River that wore it smooth.
The Things therefore called a meeting.
They assembled in a clearing.
The Stone arrived late.
The River could not attend, but sent water.
The Tree stood at the edge of the gathering.
The Bird perched above them.
“We have a problem,” said the Tree.
“What problem?” asked the Stone.
“We seem to depend upon things that are not ourselves.”
The Stone looked offended.
“That is not dependence. That is merely contact.”
“What is the difference?” asked the Bird.
“Contact is something that happens between Things.”
“And dependence?”
The Stone hesitated.
“That is something else.”
“What?”
The Stone had no answer.
At that moment, something unusual happened.
Two Things began to move towards one another.
They were not the same.
They were not even similar.
Yet as they approached, something changed.
Neither became the other.
But each became different from what it had been before.
The Things watched.
“What happened?” asked the Bird.
“They met,” said the Tree.
“Yes,” said the Stone. “But what is met?”
Nobody knew.
The Things had a word for connection.
They did not yet have a word for transformation through connection.
This distinction would become important.
There was one Thing, older than most of the others, who had spent a very long time watching the River.
It had seen the River change its course.
It had seen the banks rise and fall.
It had seen tributaries join it.
It had seen floods and droughts.
It had seen water disappear into the ground and return somewhere else.
The Thing had therefore begun to wonder whether the River was really the same River.
One evening it asked:
“River, what makes you you?”
The River answered:
“I flow.”
“But the water changes.”
“Yes.”
“Your banks change.”
“Yes.”
“Your course changes.”
“Yes.”
“Then what remains?”
The River was quiet for a long time.
Then it said:
“Perhaps you are asking the wrong question.”
“What question should I ask?”
The River replied:
“Ask what continues.”
The Thing thought about this.
It looked at the water.
It looked at the banks.
It looked at the tributaries.
It looked downstream.
Then it understood something that frightened it.
The River was not the same because its contents remained.
The River was the same because a pattern continued through what changed.
The River was not merely something that possessed relations.
The relations were part of what made the River the River.
Word of this travelled quickly.
Some Things welcomed the discovery.
Others did not.
The Stone was particularly suspicious.
“If relations make Things what they are,” it said, “then perhaps Things are not really Things at all.”
This frightened everyone.
The Tree disagreed.
“I am still a Tree.”
“Yes,” said the Stone. “But what makes you one?”
The Tree thought.
Its roots.
Its trunk.
Its branches.
Its leaves.
The ground.
The water.
The light.
The seasons.
The creatures that lived among its branches.
The creatures that fed upon it.
The fungi beneath it.
The air around it.
The Tree became silent.
“Do not worry,” said the River.
“Why not?”
“Because being constituted through relations does not mean being nothing.”
The Tree considered this.
It realised that its relations did not erase its identity.
They gave its identity somewhere to live.
After this, the Things began to notice something stranger.
Difference itself seemed relational.
The Parent was a Parent only because there was a Child.
The Child was a Child only because there was a Parent.
The Hunter was a Hunter because there was something to hunt.
The Prey was Prey because something hunted it.
Even the Tree's height meant something only in relation to other Trees.
The Things had once thought that they possessed their identities first and entered relations afterwards.
Now it seemed possible that some of their identities emerged through the relations themselves.
This did not mean that everything was the same.
Quite the opposite.
Difference had become more important than ever.
But difference was no longer simply separation.
Difference could make a relation possible.
And relation could make a difference significant.
The Things began to understand that they did not need to become indistinguishable in order to belong to one another.
Then there appeared among them a new kind of Thing.
It had no fixed shape.
It was called Boundary.
At first the Things were suspicious of it.
“What are you?” they asked.
“I separate,” said Boundary.
The Things approved.
At last, something sensible.
But then Boundary continued:
“And I connect.”
The Things were less pleased.
“How can you do both?”
Boundary smiled.
“Because separation is not the same as isolation.”
Boundary showed them an organism.
The organism had an outer edge.
Inside was not outside.
Outside was not inside.
Yet the organism lived by exchanging things across the very boundary that distinguished the two.
“If I disappear,” said Boundary, “the organism may lose its identity.”
“So you are a wall.”
“No.”
“A barrier?”
“No.”
“What are you, then?”
Boundary answered:
“I am the relation through which an inside can remain an inside without ceasing to exchange with an outside.”
The Things found this unnecessarily complicated.
The organism found it perfectly ordinary.
Then came Constraint.
The Things disliked Constraint immediately.
Constraint prevented the River from flowing everywhere.
Constraint prevented the Tree from growing in every direction.
Constraint prevented the organism from becoming whatever it happened to want.
“Constraint limits us,” complained the Things.
“Yes,” said Constraint.
“We do not like limits.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you exist?”
Constraint looked at the River.
The River flowed between its banks.
It looked at the Tree.
The Tree grew within the conditions of soil, light and water.
It looked at the organism.
The organism maintained itself through limits.
“You mistake limitation for the absence of possibility,” said Constraint.
The Things stared at it.
Constraint continued:
“A river without banks may spread into water.
A tree without form may become wood.
An organism without a boundary may become its environment.
A Thing that can become absolutely anything cannot become anything in particular.”
The Things were silent.
They had never considered that possibility might require limits.
By then, the River had become very old.
It had watched generations of creatures come and go.
It had seen stones become sand.
It had seen forests rise and disappear.
It had seen creatures become dependent upon one another in ways no Thing could have predicted.
One evening the River asked:
“Do you still think relations are merely what happens between Things?”
The Stone, now much smoother than before, answered:
“No.”
“What do you think they are?”
The Stone looked towards the banks.
“I think they are part of what makes us what we are.”
The River flowed quietly.
“And do you think that means Things are unreal?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
The Stone considered this carefully.
“I think we are real in a different way from the way we first imagined.”
The River approved.
That was as close as a River came to applause.
There were still those who resisted.
One of them declared:
“If relations are so important, then let us simply say that relations are fundamental and Things are secondary.”
The River immediately objected.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have merely reversed the order.”
The Thing frowned.
“What is wrong with that?”
“You still imagine that there must be one kind of thing that is fundamentally first.”
The Thing had no answer.
The River continued:
“Perhaps the mistake was not putting Things first.
Perhaps the mistake was assuming that there had to be a first.”
This troubled everyone.
For if neither Things nor Relations were simply the ultimate foundation, what was left?
The answer did not arrive.
Instead, something else happened.
Something became possible.
No one noticed the moment when Possibility entered the world.
Possibility did not announce itself.
It did not have a shape.
It did not stand beside the other Things.
It appeared whenever a relation could have been different.
The River might have flowed another way.
The Tree might have grown another branch.
The creature might have taken another path.
Two Things might have met.
Two Things might not have met.
A boundary might have held.
A boundary might have changed.
A pattern might have persisted.
A pattern might have broken.
The Things began to realise that their relations did not merely describe what was already the case.
Their relations changed what could happen next.
A new relation could open a possibility that had not existed before.
And once that possibility became actual, the world changed.
The Things changed.
Their relations changed.
And therefore new possibilities appeared.
The world had begun to acquire a history.
The oldest Things eventually gathered again.
The Stone was there.
The Tree was there.
The River flowed nearby.
Boundary stood among them.
Constraint watched from the edge.
And Possibility, invisible as ever, was everywhere.
The Stone spoke first.
“We thought we existed independently.”
The Tree nodded.
“We thought relations came afterwards.”
The River continued flowing.
“We were wrong.”
The Bird asked:
“Then what are we?”
No one answered immediately.
At last the River said:
“You are what has become possible through the relations in which you participate.”
The Bird looked at its wings.
The Tree looked at its roots.
The Stone looked at the River.
Nobody seemed entirely satisfied.
But nobody thought the answer was false.
Then the Bird asked the question that had been waiting all this time.
“If we become what we are through relations, what happens next?”
The River flowed towards the horizon.
“I don't know.”
The Bird was surprised.
“You don't know?”
“No.”
“But you are the River.”
“Yes.”
“And you have seen more than any of us.”
“Yes.”
“Then surely you know what comes next.”
The River laughed.
“You still think becoming is something that happens to things.”
The Bird waited.
The River continued:
“What comes next is what becomes possible.”
And somewhere beyond the clearing, where no one had yet thought to look, the world began to change again.
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