Sun: the world slowly emerges from darkness and displays itself in its manifold diversity. The body wakes up, vivified by the light, and every other living thing responds as well. Temperature rises and the body reaches out, expands, ready to spend its reserve of energy. It is time to go out, make things happen, partake in the life of the entities. Everywhere light strikes, it reveals forms and shapes and provides assurance that everything is as should be. Shadows appear too: they stretch ever so far at first, get reduced to almost nothing at noon, then expand again at the end of the day. Shadows: doubles made of nothing that nevertheless confirm that something is there. Yet, sadly, as the eyes tire of the extraordinary performance that is taking place, light and shadows are quickly taken for granted. It is rather the objects at hand that mesmerize our gaze. In a world of light indeed, Emmanuel Levinas observes, "all is given but everything is at a distance." 1 Our response to light thus conditions our apprehension of space. We do not just see objects as distinct entities, we simultaneously locate them in space. This leads Maurice Merleau-Ponty to muse that "the idea we have of the world would be overturned if we could succeed in seeing the intervals between things (for example, the space between the trees on the boulevard) as objects and, inversely, if we saw the things themselves the trees as the ground."2 In the light of day, however, our eyes remain glued to the entities: they constitute the world of everyday life.
