Endlessly I sustainthe discourse of thebeloved's absence; actually a preposterous situation; the other is absentas referent, present as allocutory. Thissingular distortion generatesa kindof insupportablepresent ; Iam wedged between two tenses,that of thereference and that of the allocution: you have gone (which I lament) ,  you arehere (since I am addressing you). Whereupon I know what thepresent, thatdifficult tense, is : apure portion of anxiety.

Absence persists--I must endure it.  Hence I willmanipulateit: transformthe distortion of time into oscillation, produce rhythm, make an entranceon to the stage of language

(language is bornof absence: the child hasmade himself a doll out of a spool, throws it away and picks it up again , miming the mother's departureand return:a paradigm is created).

Absence becomes anactive practice,abusiness(which keeps me from doing anything else); there is a creation of a fictionwhich has many roles (doubts,reproaches, desires, melancholies). Thisstaging of language postpones the other'sdeath: a very short interval,

we are told, separatesthe time during which the child still believes his mother to be absent and the time during which he believes her to be already dead.To manipulate absence is to extend this interval, to delay as long as possible the moment when the other might topple sharply from absence into death.