Fenêtres: I

[Quotes from Jean-Bertrand Pontalis' Windows, part 1]

"Geography: The sunken part of the earth's surface, situated below sea level and generally filled in with water.
— These depressions have always been of unequal depth, which allows the following distinctions: a neritic zone or all marine waters that lie at depths of less than 3,000 meters, a pelagic zone that extends from 3,000 to 5,000 meters deep and an abyssal zone that includes large marine craters beyond 5,000 meters deep. [...]
— The abyssal mother at the very bottom of depression?" (26 - 27)

"I can only trust signs and no sign is reliable. [...]
— Hypochondria: my organs persecute me. My organs: so many objects inside of me became my present and potential adversaries, merciless attackers. I am now their prey.
— Jealous passion: she is hiding something from me, she lies, she has a life of her own and that's it -- I have nothing left in me except this "object," I am conflated with it. I am possessed [...]
— When the woman he thought he loved left him -- she was his, he was hers -- this man became a hypochondriac." (38 - 39)

"Meaning is not the opposite of nonsense. If you work at it, if you "rack your brains," you can always find some meaning in nonsense. Meaning is opposed to the formless, to the meaningless." (55)

"[The sensitive] quickly transform their perceptions, or rather their impressions, into signs, or rather into clues. They extend the empire of uncertain signs well beyond its definite borders [...]
— The jealous type is sensitive, always on the lookout for clues proving that he has been duped -- he isn't always mistaken; the lover also, about signs that would assure him that he is loved -- he is often mistaken." (56 - 57)

"[A]ll our efforts to master what we aren't assured of grasping or retaining, [...] the whole game of representations, which suffer from the lack of presence and that however tireless those representations are as well, they look for it, demand it, this presence.
— All this thread, as fragile as it is, is what connects us to the other, to life. Should it break -- existence is held only by a thread -- then it's death." (60)