need your creative minds to represent a quote in a tattoo!
November 30, 2023 7:44 AM Subscribe
I love the old philosopher quote, "You never cross the same river twice. It's not the same river, and it's not the same you." But how to visually represent it in a tattoo?
I'm not a very big "rivers" person (much more of an ocean, or water in general), and lots of river tattoos have mountains and such, which I'm also not much into. So, there's of course the literal interpretation of this quote using a river, but I'd love to hear any and all ideas -- no matter how out there or oddball -- that could represent this quote.
In a tattoo, I'm thinking on the back or side of my arm, with finer-line detail. I do enjoy the polaroid outline framing, or having a box, but also don't need to have that, either! I am a words person for sure, so thinking of including words in it is fine, but the quote itself seems a little long to just write out. Plus, I like the idea of having to explain a tattoo if anyone asks about it.
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
I'm not a very big "rivers" person (much more of an ocean, or water in general), and lots of river tattoos have mountains and such, which I'm also not much into. So, there's of course the literal interpretation of this quote using a river, but I'd love to hear any and all ideas -- no matter how out there or oddball -- that could represent this quote.
In a tattoo, I'm thinking on the back or side of my arm, with finer-line detail. I do enjoy the polaroid outline framing, or having a box, but also don't need to have that, either! I am a words person for sure, so thinking of including words in it is fine, but the quote itself seems a little long to just write out. Plus, I like the idea of having to explain a tattoo if anyone asks about it.
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
One way to approach this is abbreviating the full quote to just a key phrase that will remind you of the full one. "Never the same," for example, maybe even represented as the waves in the river.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:53 AM on November 30, 2023
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:53 AM on November 30, 2023
In my mind, I am imagine a river winding around a tight curve, as old rivers do, with 3 small human figures approaching the edge from various sides / places. The figures should be slightly different and the overall implication is that you never meet the river at the same place and time.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:58 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:58 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
alluvial flood plain map Here's a famous map of a river flood plain to show how much the path of the river changes its path with colors. I hope it provides some inspiration.
posted by effluvia at 8:06 AM on November 30, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by effluvia at 8:06 AM on November 30, 2023 [27 favorites]
I thought of the same flood plain map effluvia linked. And my sense of geologic time is that if the river has changed that much over time, it follows that I have changed too.
posted by craven_morhead at 8:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by craven_morhead at 8:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
It might be easier to represent the idea that Heraclitus was trying to explain/refute when he first made the comment about the river never being the same twice. He was responding to the Ship of Theseus paradox.
Seems easier to portray a ship on your body.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:37 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Seems easier to portray a ship on your body.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:37 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m picturing a hand (maybe dragging their fingers through a stream) but with delayed echo images in different colors, like past present future.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:57 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:57 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
The quotation from Heraclitus is really interesting for loads of reasons! I'm not sure about images to accompany or represent it, that's not my forte and I'm sure other people are making neat suggestions. I thought I'd share some stuff from what people say about this line in classics and philosophy, in case it brought up any resonances or further ideas or stimulation.
A standard textbook translation is as follows fragment. (This is from Kirk and Raven The Presocratics, where it appears as fragment §217, corresponding to fragments 12 and 91 of their primary source material, Arius Didymus):
"Upon those that step into the same rivers different and different waters flow. ... It scatters and ... gathers ... it comes together and flows away ... approaches and departs."
As I understand it (from some academic talks on the topic), one thing that's so nice about this passage when spoken in the greek language is that it has a certain amount of sibilance to it, so that it in some sense resembles the sounds of lapping water. Kinda poetic huh!
Kirk and Raven note that the normal interpretation of this passage (the one we find in both Plato and Aristotle, who discuss Heraclitus' views only to reject them) amounts to attributing to Heraclitus the idea that 'all things are in flux' – the continuity of change in every single thing (all the time). But K&R go on to note that this interpretation seems inconsistent with many of the other fragments that we have of the things that Heraclitus said. Taken together with those fragments, K&R think that the emphasis in this passage should be on the idea "that the unity of the river is dependent upon the regularity of the flux (change) in its constituent waters. The river provides an image of the balance of constituents in the world." (p198).
They point out an affinity with another fragment of Heraclitus:
§220 this world-order did none of the gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everliving fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.
So while it seems like rivers are always changing, and that mountains are staying the same and unchanging, it's not because everything is in flux all the time but that some of that change – in the case of the mountain – is hidden from view. Rather, it's that there's a 'world-order', a cosmic balance between the changing-parts and the stable parts. And when eventually the mountain does change, it'll be identifiable in part because something else will be correspondingly stable – the masses of the oceans, or the wholeness of the sky.
It's through these kinds of images – he was known for speaking in riddles – that Heraclitus is understood to try to make sense of the problems of change and sameness: how can something both change and yet still be the same thing? His answer: dynamic unity. It is in their change and change-iness that their identity (the unity of things) is found. It's a delightful response, it has a sort of internal irony built into it, and its expressed in appropriately poetic terms. Similarly, and relatedly, he was known for denying that we can be certain about absolute opposites (e.g. 'different' vs. 'same'), because he seems to think that unity can be found to underly apparent opposition, or that apparent opposition can be easily dissolved or shown to not be so hard-and-fast (the 'unity of the opposites'):
§202 Sea is the most pure and the most polluted water; for fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deleterious.
§203 The path up and down is one and the same.
§204 Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest.
A final reflection: there's another version of the river line which was attributed to Heraclitus by some early philosophers when they talked about his views, but probably isn't his. It's a saying which no-doubt grew out of the thing that he said above, but which scholarly work suggests is a mistake to attribute to Heraclitus. No matter its provenance, it's an interesting development on the line above. It's a bit shorter and punchier, somewhat less looping, and has a bit of a heavier emphasis on existence:
"We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not."
(It appears as frag. §49 in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels).
posted by Joeruckus at 10:23 AM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
A standard textbook translation is as follows fragment. (This is from Kirk and Raven The Presocratics, where it appears as fragment §217, corresponding to fragments 12 and 91 of their primary source material, Arius Didymus):
"Upon those that step into the same rivers different and different waters flow. ... It scatters and ... gathers ... it comes together and flows away ... approaches and departs."
As I understand it (from some academic talks on the topic), one thing that's so nice about this passage when spoken in the greek language is that it has a certain amount of sibilance to it, so that it in some sense resembles the sounds of lapping water. Kinda poetic huh!
Kirk and Raven note that the normal interpretation of this passage (the one we find in both Plato and Aristotle, who discuss Heraclitus' views only to reject them) amounts to attributing to Heraclitus the idea that 'all things are in flux' – the continuity of change in every single thing (all the time). But K&R go on to note that this interpretation seems inconsistent with many of the other fragments that we have of the things that Heraclitus said. Taken together with those fragments, K&R think that the emphasis in this passage should be on the idea "that the unity of the river is dependent upon the regularity of the flux (change) in its constituent waters. The river provides an image of the balance of constituents in the world." (p198).
They point out an affinity with another fragment of Heraclitus:
§220 this world-order did none of the gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everliving fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.
So while it seems like rivers are always changing, and that mountains are staying the same and unchanging, it's not because everything is in flux all the time but that some of that change – in the case of the mountain – is hidden from view. Rather, it's that there's a 'world-order', a cosmic balance between the changing-parts and the stable parts. And when eventually the mountain does change, it'll be identifiable in part because something else will be correspondingly stable – the masses of the oceans, or the wholeness of the sky.
It's through these kinds of images – he was known for speaking in riddles – that Heraclitus is understood to try to make sense of the problems of change and sameness: how can something both change and yet still be the same thing? His answer: dynamic unity. It is in their change and change-iness that their identity (the unity of things) is found. It's a delightful response, it has a sort of internal irony built into it, and its expressed in appropriately poetic terms. Similarly, and relatedly, he was known for denying that we can be certain about absolute opposites (e.g. 'different' vs. 'same'), because he seems to think that unity can be found to underly apparent opposition, or that apparent opposition can be easily dissolved or shown to not be so hard-and-fast (the 'unity of the opposites'):
§202 Sea is the most pure and the most polluted water; for fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deleterious.
§203 The path up and down is one and the same.
§204 Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest.
A final reflection: there's another version of the river line which was attributed to Heraclitus by some early philosophers when they talked about his views, but probably isn't his. It's a saying which no-doubt grew out of the thing that he said above, but which scholarly work suggests is a mistake to attribute to Heraclitus. No matter its provenance, it's an interesting development on the line above. It's a bit shorter and punchier, somewhat less looping, and has a bit of a heavier emphasis on existence:
"We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not."
(It appears as frag. §49 in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels).
posted by Joeruckus at 10:23 AM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm imagining a river that has waves of changing color along its length, to show that it's not the same.
posted by limeonaire at 10:38 AM on November 30, 2023
posted by limeonaire at 10:38 AM on November 30, 2023
The Theseus paradox above is the western version of Buddhist concept of emptiness; does an object possess inherent characteristics or is it all merely labels imputed by a conscious mind.
Emptiness is symbolized by that zen circle enso which as a tattoo may be cliche at this point, but in Tibetan style it is symbolized as the circle behind the Buddhas head in this picture (scroll down). Might give some ideas.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:54 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Emptiness is symbolized by that zen circle enso which as a tattoo may be cliche at this point, but in Tibetan style it is symbolized as the circle behind the Buddhas head in this picture (scroll down). Might give some ideas.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:54 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not very knowledgeable about tattoos. So, please ignore me if this suggestion is impractical.
While others are focusing on the river, I think the idea could be poetically represented by the image of two people approaching a river from opposite sides. However, the two persons are actually the same person at different times of their lives (a child and an adult, for example).
If you can think of a way to visually depict the river as "different to each of them" (like that meme where one person sees a 6 and the other a 9) you'd also get the different river element.
Perhaps on the child's side the river is slow and calm while on the adult side the river is fast and choppy?
That sort of thing.
(Also, side note, by St. Peepsburg, I don't see the paradox like that. I usually think of it as a discourse between Platonic dualism and reductive materialism. I can see how it could be used to illustrate the different between something like Cartesian/Spinozistic substance and nominalism, but I don't think that's typical (granted I haven't sat in on every Phil class ever).
Ok, metaphysics derail over.)
posted by oddman at 11:18 AM on November 30, 2023
While others are focusing on the river, I think the idea could be poetically represented by the image of two people approaching a river from opposite sides. However, the two persons are actually the same person at different times of their lives (a child and an adult, for example).
If you can think of a way to visually depict the river as "different to each of them" (like that meme where one person sees a 6 and the other a 9) you'd also get the different river element.
Perhaps on the child's side the river is slow and calm while on the adult side the river is fast and choppy?
That sort of thing.
(Also, side note, by St. Peepsburg, I don't see the paradox like that. I usually think of it as a discourse between Platonic dualism and reductive materialism. I can see how it could be used to illustrate the different between something like Cartesian/Spinozistic substance and nominalism, but I don't think that's typical (granted I haven't sat in on every Phil class ever).
Ok, metaphysics derail over.)
posted by oddman at 11:18 AM on November 30, 2023
For me, the visual that comes to mind is a bare foot, ankle deep in clear river/stream, with a small standing wave pattern forming on the surface of the water around the ankle, and the resulting turbulance the other side of the ankle down stream.
This all shows both the movement of the water, the temporary impact of the ankle within the stream, and also the illustration that the foot just taking a step and thus movement through the water to cross to the other side.
So just starting with the opening part of the quote, thus leading on to the rest of the quote verbally. But it's also about just taking that first step to personal change, within a constantly changing environment, and both are influencing each other.
posted by many-things at 11:29 AM on November 30, 2023
This all shows both the movement of the water, the temporary impact of the ankle within the stream, and also the illustration that the foot just taking a step and thus movement through the water to cross to the other side.
So just starting with the opening part of the quote, thus leading on to the rest of the quote verbally. But it's also about just taking that first step to personal change, within a constantly changing environment, and both are influencing each other.
posted by many-things at 11:29 AM on November 30, 2023
It would be helpful to know a little bit more about your relationship with the quote.
Is it the inevitability of change? Is it that life is always a new adventure? That we take familiarity too lightly? All three and more?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:30 AM on November 30, 2023
Is it the inevitability of change? Is it that life is always a new adventure? That we take familiarity too lightly? All three and more?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:30 AM on November 30, 2023
Write the first four words of the quote on yourself with a Sharpie. Every week, reapply the last three words and add another one at the end. That way, you're never looking at the same tattoo twice.
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: It would be helpful to know a little bit more about your relationship with the quote.
Great Q! It's actually borne out of a conversation I had with a friend about rewatching a beloved television series, and how we notice approach certain parts of the same exact show differently now that we're adults, or parents, or have different life experiences.
I extrapolate it because I do believe nearly everything in life is or can be seen as gray area (much like those incredible 'riddles' that Joeruckus outlined above). I also love the idea of embracing change and that everything in life is a new adventure, always -- not in a negative way, but in the way that you can't really experience true highs without having lows, too. Hope that helps!
All INCREDIBLE suggestions and context thus far -- keep them coming!
posted by knownassociate at 12:52 PM on November 30, 2023
Great Q! It's actually borne out of a conversation I had with a friend about rewatching a beloved television series, and how we notice approach certain parts of the same exact show differently now that we're adults, or parents, or have different life experiences.
I extrapolate it because I do believe nearly everything in life is or can be seen as gray area (much like those incredible 'riddles' that Joeruckus outlined above). I also love the idea of embracing change and that everything in life is a new adventure, always -- not in a negative way, but in the way that you can't really experience true highs without having lows, too. Hope that helps!
All INCREDIBLE suggestions and context thus far -- keep them coming!
posted by knownassociate at 12:52 PM on November 30, 2023
Spitballing: An object or event in your life seen from different perspectives in your lifetime.
As an example (not a suggestion) the way that in Western cultures Santa Claus is first a source of joy and wonder, then a cheap trick played by adults on naive children, and then an avatar we use as adults to bring magic to the world.
Or, not to hit the nail on the head too directly, perhaps some symbols/imagery from the television show in question? Not a corporate logo, but some aspect that has changed radically for you each time you've done a rewatch.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:10 PM on November 30, 2023
As an example (not a suggestion) the way that in Western cultures Santa Claus is first a source of joy and wonder, then a cheap trick played by adults on naive children, and then an avatar we use as adults to bring magic to the world.
Or, not to hit the nail on the head too directly, perhaps some symbols/imagery from the television show in question? Not a corporate logo, but some aspect that has changed radically for you each time you've done a rewatch.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:10 PM on November 30, 2023
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At least to you?
posted by calgirl at 7:52 AM on November 30, 2023