In trying to live in a way that feels both playful and productive, I’ve come to see life as a constant act of symbol-making — images emerging from gestures, phrases, dynamics, forms.

Sartre described our gaze as a force that objectifies the other, even as we feel ourselves objectified in return.

But freedom begins when we choose how we assign meaning to what or who is in front of us.

Every image — a pause in a conversation, a body in space, a social rhythm, a detail on someone’s face —can become an Arrow pointing toward The Signified.

Imaginary and Symbolic, interrelated, are the only two areas where we ought to operate at our best to confront the Real — even if that means moving through a special and unerasable tension.

( Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1956

Lacan, The Language of the Self, 65

Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, 31-32 )