As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from
day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist
weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where
it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff
time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of
the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination,
when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that
which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the
future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but
by reflection from that which then I shall be.
-- James Joyce, Ulysses.