Rhythm

Hesitant gesture of billiard player, dialectic of more and less, oscillation between tension and relaxation, swift succession of conflicting feelings, intelligent use of strength…

Perfect pitch of the vibrating time (Bachelard): once again, leaving the existential, one can go back to collectivity and even (and above all) to the species.

Ancient Greeks… : the rhythm of yearly life structured according to a succession of paroxystic and opposite states (pathe) … modern societies tend toward the disappearance of rhythm and the standardization of “states”…

At the level of species: hibernating, winter sleeps with mad awakenings at springtime.

Roland Barthes, The Neutral, 134.