THE RIDDLE


                       "What is formed but not created?"
                     
                       "Man?"

                       "No, man is created through the function of nature between the positive and negative elements. One called man, the other called woman."

                       "Then it must be the mind..."

                       "That is closer to the truth.  Who said: "I think, therefore I am?"

                       "Descartes."

                       "Correct, but do you agree?"

                  There was nothing to describe the environment, for it had no description. Two figures were seated in wooden chairs, with a wooden table between them. One was the teacher and the other the student. The age of the teacher was twice that of the student and the student was seventy years old. They had no faces and were resolved to the world of thought.

                        "In a sense it could be a juxtaposition because one must be before he can think."

                         "Exactly!  So the riddle is not solved"

                         "Well, the millennial speak of civilization as mostly that which was represented by art, literature or the basic need of literacy, which was lacking even as recently as the Middle Ages in Europe. Still, things were carved in stone. They were formed."

                           "But were they created?" the teacher inquired.

                           "Yes, in the mind. The architect sees the buildings in the city before they are made. He sees it in his mind. The poet and writer witness the words in their inner existence before the letters are formed. As such they are both created and formed."

                       Distance, shaped by the undecipherable perception of time, did not end there. Nothing changed and the year was the same while being different for the Jew, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist and Hindu.  Neither the teacher nor the student acknowledged an answer to the riddle, which seemed to rest on a single thread. In fact, it was not created or formed.