The Puzzle Factory of Impermanence

The Puzzle Factory of Impermanence

Different pictures on the surface, the same pieces underneath

A striking feeling came this morning—not so much a thought at first, but an intuitive, almost bodily sense of impermanence.

The realization was simple:

Everything becomes everything else… in time.

That’s easy to say with words.

But this morning it wasn’t just an idea.

It was felt.

As if everything I call “things” were only momentary arrangements—temporary gatherings of pieces that appear one way for a while, then rearrange into something else.

And what I call me…

is no different.

A temporary arrangement.

A pattern.

A shape.

A momentary “this”…

already becoming “that.”

Then another image came.

Imagine a factory that makes thousand-piece picture puzzles.

A flat 2-by-3-foot sheet of cardboard moves down the line. A picture is printed on it—maybe a mountain, a city, a garden, a child, a sunset.

Then the cutting press comes down.

One thousand pieces.

Next sheet.

Same size.

Same cardboard.

Same machine.

Another thousand pieces.

Only now it’s a completely different picture.

And again.

And again.

Different images.

Same pieces.

Then the realization:

What if everything I look at is like that?

A tree.

A railing.

A body.

A rose.

A thought.

A memory.

Different pictures…

same pieces.

The surface appears different.

But underneath, everything is made from the same earth…

the same water…

the same sunlight…

the same atoms…

the same mysterious “stuff” rearranging itself into endlessly changing forms.

Everything becoming everything else.

And then the image shifted again.

What if the puzzles didn’t even have pictures?

What if every piece were exactly the same color?

Same cardboard.

Same shape.

Same thousand pieces.

No mountain.

No rose.

No face.

No story.

Just one color.

How long would it take to put that puzzle together?

Could I even tell one piece from another?

And suddenly that felt strangely close to non-duality.

The surface gives us the picture.

The differences.

The names.

The stories.

But underneath…

the pieces may not be so different at all.

And while trying to hold onto these images before they disappeared, I did what sketching has been teaching me to do.

Instead of chasing the thought…

I sketched it.

On the right side of the page, something was dropping into a vast opening.

A giant hole.

Falling.

Dissolving.

Breaking apart.

Decomposing.

Deconstructing.

You could call it death.

You could call it impermanence.

You could call it non-duality.

Form returning to what came before form.

And because I’ve been preparing a sketching workshop I’ll be presenting soon, another possibility opened.

What if, in the middle of speaking—right in the middle of describing a feeling, an idea, an emotion—I simply stopped and said:

“Quick—sketch what’s in your mind right now.”

No planning.

No artistic skill.

No explanation.

Just catch it before it changes.

Because awareness becomes image…
image becomes form…
form becomes story…
and story becomes something else.

Just like the puzzle pieces.

Just like everything.

Just like me.