I’ve read a few paragraphs of the next story in Borges’ anthology and yet come back around to this story.
Patterns, looking for patterns. I come up with circles: birth and death and rebirth, sleep and wakefulness in an endless repetition. Then there is reality and the dreaming of it, the question of the statue whether it is tiger or horse. Back to circles: the ruins themselves encircled in stone, the dreamer himself being dreamed. Why the first attempt failed; starting with a circle of candidates to select only one and the finding that the man must start from the beginning with a heart encircled by nerves, bone and skin.
Is there a question of life’s circles in time, or is it a question of life at all?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology