Does she have a sense of her self, her body? —

(As a sidebar—here we must be careful. I suspect all metaphysics could be tied back to, almost as a sapling to a seed, the child. As though the child were a (here I have tongue-in-cheek) 'blank slate' upon which much of which we throw sticks. And so a responsive approach must heed this fact.)

Because she is more opening- than -while-holding-back, I doubt she has a strong sense of self. (Self just is this opening-while-holding-back.) I do think she is bodied, if not terribly aware. In other words, she is not consciousness/awareness that only gradually becomes tied to body. While there may not be a strong self/other distinction, so that intensities write themselves through the world across her being, vividly, I do suspect there is some differentiation, as when her eyes are wide open onto her surroundings. These intensities come and traverse her. (This is likewise for us, though our modality is one with theoretical interpretation, including self/other—however this is severed or healed. For her, the distinction is not thematized. Thus, new relations are perhaps more overtly sticky—as are ours, without us often noticing.) Thus, she participates in the world, in her perception—or she is participated by, within, the world. Rather, there is a participation within which she is put in play.

As example, when she sees a brightness, it runs across her own body, and is thus 'paired' with bodily 'sensations,' in a kind of connected-yet-distinctness, a dance. It is in becoming attuned to distinctness-in-connection that her world will become clearer—i.e., difference and repetition. As she detects arrayed patterns. (Which are never sameness, but similarities. For intensities are always distinct.) And she has always already begun this work.

- December 5 cont'd.