Immortality

"A book is the only immortality." --Rufus Choate

"I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books." --Isaac Asimov

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." --Woody Allen 

It occurs to me that somewhere, far away perhaps, a thought flutters through a mind, one scrap of paper in a confetti-like shower, a memory, a vision of me, something I did, the way I looked one time.  Across the world, another singular downpour, like a handful of rice, one grain the combination of words from a book that once struck a raw and tender chord.  Down the street, during a heated conversation in a warm house, a hand raises in the exact manner of a lost great-grandfather.  On another continent, in a café, in a church, on the crowded sidewalk where people jostle, elbow to elbow, musical notes rain over one head, an adagio that always makes the load lighter.  These scraps, rising and falling in random minds at random times, in random places:  immortality.