The lakes on the kitchen floor were the children of rogue ice cubes who fell from the fridge in great succession more and more now, defecting from the box. To every creature that encountered them, however, they were different bodies of water entirely. For on a hot summer’s day the cool water was a welcome surprise for the child. For the parent an inconvenience, for the grandparent a hazard, for the ant death and for the plants just above on the low kitchen island, life. It is remarkable that the same small lake could be, without contradiction, a cradle and a grave, a blessing and a burden, delight and alarm. It had not changed. Only the eyes upon it had. And perhaps all things are like this—less fixed than we imagine, existing not as one reality but as countless worlds, each born anew in the meeting between a thing and the life that encounters it.