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Penumbra said to Shadow, "A little while ago you were walking, and now you're standing still; a little while ago you were sitting, and now you're standing up. Why this lack of independent action?"

Shadow said, "Do I have to wait for something before I can be like this? Does what I wait for also have to wait for something before it can be like this? Am I waiting for the scales of a snake or the wings of a cicada? How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn't so?"

There is a slight infelicity here in Burton Watson's otherwise admirable translation.
The phrase translated as "penumbra", Wang-Liang, a rhyming-binome, was originally the name of a water spirit, a deceptive nixie, whom one would, to their peril, occasionally glimpse in the dim images in water.
Here, the notion uppermost is that of a vague image, the shadow of a shadow !
If Shadow cannot guess what causes him to move, how much less can the shadow of a shadow know these causes !!