Sometimes his story was of constraint followed by release, of constriction followed by space. This was a nice story, with arresting images, but no one to whom it happened could ever be found, much less a space that opened up. It was a persistent metaphor, but of what? Or maybe it was another modern verbal tick, this going on about space. What is meant by it? It concerns being present together, of states of affairs. Of elements. The character of a combination of elements when the elements themselves have been abstracted away, or the potentiality for parts or elements to combine after abstracting away the features by which they combine. Space itself must have parts, must provide the scheme of connection while remaining empty, must both frame and limit the mutual otherness of the things. It makes possible a face turned towards the other and another face turned away, and the relationship between the two.