It is the whole life of the other that affects us when we come into contact, a life of which we know even less than of our own, and what we are aware of, the mirrorings, the cannibalisations, the thefts, the simulacra, all so drastically effective, are yet hardly real but occur as variations in our, and their, ever resumed, ever collapsing process of self creation, each inside our separate monads. This is literal contingency, to touch and be touched, a contingency that is essential to us as much to maintain what we have as to gain new ground, although it is always misunderstood when regarded as our own project, as if we ever possessed the dignity to own anything. If the living is made to seem, as it so often is, like the particular task within our gift then we ought to consider that we ourselves are one of life's scattershot responses to its own stubborn brief. We are a venture thrown out into the void by a blind desire to stake everything, even when we ourselves would stake next to nothing. And so the peculiarly excessive gravity, or planet, waves that affect us when we are drawn into close proximity with another.