“Thus, nothing that appears ever perishes entirely, since nature remakes one thing from another and dissolves nothing without the aid of transformation. For here something comes undone, elsewhere something condenses; the figure changes, but nothing dissipates into the void. Likewise heat and moisture, earth and breath, endure, vary, and return within the bodies of the world. What hides beneath the night does not remain inactive: nature acts under an invisible weight and preserves, over time, the traces of what has taken place.”

D’après Lucrèce, De la nature des choses (De rerum natura).

This tension alters the way the skin rests upon the bone. It inflects the posture of the features. Nothing is yet expressed, scarcely visible, yet everything is being prepared there. At certain moments, this inner labor reaches a threshold. A variation propagates and rises to the surface. The face responds. A smile is born—not as a decided gesture, but as the emergence of a pressure that has become visible. The lips shift under the effect of a slight mental warmth. The gaze changes orientation. Expression does not translate a content already formed. It is the very place where what was acting in the shadows takes shape.

Matter accumulates. At the very core, the temperature remains high. The surface slowly stratifies. Each layer records a phase of the world’s work. Night circulates. It passes through masses. It insinuates itself into hollows. It inhabits the depths. It does not erase light. It retains it. For light is there, caught within matter. It circulates in the form of energy. It transforms and accumulates.