Table, language, tabula xvii

I use that word ‘table’ in two superimposed senses: the nickel-plated, rubbery table swathed in white, glinmng beneath a glass sun devouring all shadow – the table where, for an instant, perhaps forever, the umbrella encounters the sewing-machine; and also a table, a tabula, that enables-thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order. to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences – the table upon which, since the beginning of time, language has intersected space.