Ma'na is not the same as “meaning” at all; it is its own story. 

The fact of graspable limits to our comprehension has plenty of meaning, without our needing to map our own ethical or epistemological presumptions onto that beyond. 

Historical forces have replaced older modes of meaning-making that rely on representation and critique with new modes of meaning-making that rely on connection, adjacency, being, transmission, and presence. It’s not surprising, then, that today’s authors and readers have changing notions of what it means to mean.

I love words. And I love books. And I have been known to fall in love with a couple databases (specifically those I don’t have to compile myself).

There is no double meaning, second degree and third interpretative level to be found in this post. Nothing metapoetic, cutting-edge, smart, hype, or poetic. No trope, no refined aesthetics, no beauty. But meaning yes, humanity yes, community yes. And a call to Arcade as a social network to spread a simple idea.

« Pourquoi donc y a-t-il des fleurs ? » Pourquoi ? Pour rien. Parce que. La beauté des fleurs est là, c’est tout. Pour rien. Et sûrement pas pour nous. Mais voilà : nous y sommes sensibles, et cela, ce n’est pas rien.

One of the pleasures of teaching is the ability to linger at length with students on questions such as this: « Pourquoi donc y a-t-il des fleurs ? » [Why on earth are there flowers? Philippe Jaccottet. Cahier de verdure, 1990 : 106].

Are we all so “bovarisés” that we cannot understand our lives without reconstructing the smallest “episode” into a short story?