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spine (detail, inv)
Selected Writings of Paul Valéry (1950; NDP184, 1964)

From this I conclude that, in general, we see that we ourselves are only fragments of existence, and that our lived life does not fill the whole of our capacity to feel and to conceive. And consequently, when we impute tastes, opinions, beliefs or negations to a person, are we not emphasizing only some aspect of himself, only the one that has so far been revealed by circumstances and which, in spite of everything, is and must even necessarily be, subject to modification for the sole reason that it has been? This ‘good and sufficient’ reason is essential: the mind, in that which is most strictly mind, cannot possibly repeat itself. What repeats itself in the mind is no longer mind: it is, as it were, flesh...

ex “Fragment of ‘The Memories of a Poem’”

as if a scaffolding in progress, mantling and dismantling;
parts (skin, surface) fall off, some remain;
still more areas haven’t been — and might never be — “filled in” so to speak.
or
a surface, subject to “subfluences” and fallings-away,
itself subducting, halftone grid order drawn below, into flow.
 

11 March 2021