Unos fragmentos de unos fragmentos de Roland Barthes...

The Absent One

absence
Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object -whatever its cause and its duration- and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment.

Now, absence can only exist as a consequence of the other: it is the other who leaves, it is I who remain. The other is in a condition of perpetual departure, of journeying; the other is, by vocation, migrant, fugitive; I -I who love, by converse vocation, am sedentary, motionless, at hand, in expectation, nailed to the spot, in suspense. [...] It is to say: "I am loved less than I love".

Waiting

attente
Tumult of anxiety provoked by waiting for the loved being, subject to trivial delays.

I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. Everything is solemn: I have no sense of proportions. Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move. [...] The being I am waiting for is not real. I create and re-create it over and over, starting from my capacity to love, starting from my need for it.

A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. "I shall be yours, " she told him, "when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window." But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away.