A Pastiche for Friedrich Nietz

Once upon a beach, Tick-tock time took a turn up the wrong street and found himself a black beetle trekking up and down the little shadows of microscopically multiplying dunes.

He was a curious beetle and his was a curious time.

Tick-tock: "These sands are mine."

Yet peering more closely he asked, "Who am I?" And as no reply was forthcoming from those black whole shadows of those microscopically multiplying dunes, he slid around the next corner, hid in the next shade, while moving on to logically consider his alternatives.

"Hmmm?" Tick-tock thought. "Ah!" And popping into the sunlight, he drew himself up to his full black beetle stature and declared to the duny expanse, "I am who I am."

And fell flat on his face.

Once upon a beach, Tick-tock time took a turn up the wrong street and found himself a black beetle trekking across the black hole shadows of microscopically multiplying dunes.

He was a curious beetle and his was a curious time.

Tick-tock: "These sands are mine."

But as it turned out, this simple declarative raised more problems than it was worth. Peering closely at the crystal prism just next to his flat-faced, beetled eye, he asked, "Who am I?" And as no reply was forthcoming from the black whole shadows of the microsportively multiplying dunes, he slid around the next corner, hid in the next shade, all the while moving on to logically consider his alternatives.

"Hmmm?" Tick-tock thought. "Ah!" And popping into the sunlight, he drew himself up to his full black beetle stature and declared to the duny expanse, "I am who I am."

And fell.

Tick-tock time had taken a wrong turn indeed -- Wouldn't you say? -- in finding himself a curious little black beetle adrift in the sand of a bright sunny day. As it turns out, every simple declarative raises more problems than it's worth.