Self-as-an-End
SAE Love Theory · Paper 2

Longing
相思

Han Qin (秦汉) · Independent Researcher · 2026
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23627766 · Full PDF on Zenodo · CC BY 4.0
Abstract

This paper reads the second layer of Love Theory: the times when she is not before me. What this layer reads is remembering and anticipating, written 11DD+12DD in SAE's levels.

Longing is her still counting with me when she is not before me. The remembered her is not the original: each time I think of her, I take her up again; the anticipated her has a shape, and can fall through. When it falls through, what moves in return is the remembered her, in one of two ways: revising it, or not revising it and by it discerning that the her before me is "wrong." Rewriting is with me first, and carries no direction; only when, by way of words and deeds, it actually leaves space for her later understanding and action does it point in the direction of cultivation. Not revising, and saying aloud that she is "wrong," fixes for her who she is, and slides in the direction of colonization. Crystallization in itself carries no direction either; only when crystallization, or the first meeting, is used to measure the her who is later before me, fixing for her by way of words and deeds who she is, is the direction of colonization read. If what is loved is the person she resembles, anyone who resembles that person will do, and this love is not for her; changing her after the remembered one is how the direction of colonization shows itself clearly at this layer. Expectation is what I arrange on the strength of dealings and point at her later conduct; it does not turn into a duty of hers, and her response is material, not a settling of the account; attaching to an expectation the condition "If you loved me, you would ..." slides in the direction of colonization. Testing love is a demand arranged in advance; the response it obtains can become material, but cannot certify the love in her heart. When the one loved is gone, the remembered her is still there; death is not the same as the ending of love.

Love at this layer ends when the remembered her fades, or is rewritten until she no longer pulls at him; it can also end when what he anticipates falls through again and again and he stops waiting. This paper interfaces with Stendhal and Barthes. It does not prove that thinking of her much means loving her deeply, nor that love is true only if it remembers accurately.

Introduction

The man in Paper 1 wakes the next day in another city, and the voice is still there. He does not know who she is, and she is not before him, yet that jolt still counts. This paper takes up from there, with another pair of people.

Jiang Yuan and Ye Qing have known each other for three years. Last spring she went to a city in the south for a project that would keep her there more than a year. The project in the south is something she has taken on herself; Jiang Yuan did not want her to go, and he also understood why she had to; he too has things to do that keep him in this city, and she did not read his staying as not caring. The two of them agreed to talk on the phone every Sunday evening at nine.

Over the year, a few things happened. On Sunday evenings he began looking at his watch at half past eight; at five past nine, with no call yet, he was already wondering whether she had forgotten, whether something had happened. When he thought of her, what he thought of was often the first time he saw her, three years earlier, at a friend's house: she stood by the window peeling an orange, and the way she looked then was clearer than at any time since. For a while he thought that if she still cared, she would call an extra time of her own accord; one week he deliberately did not mention it, to see whether she would. At the end of the year she came back: her hair was cut short and she talked faster than before; when she laughed she no longer lowered her head. Watching her walk toward him at the station, his first thought was: she is no longer the one I remember.

For most of that year she was not before him. Then where, that year, was his love?

What this layer reads. Aesthetics Ray 9, The Beauty of Cognition, writes this layer (11DD+12DD) as the two halves of the beauty of cognition: remembering and anticipating. "A living thing still remembers what is no longer before it, and anticipates what has not yet come."1 Upstream also says that remembering is reconstructive retention, not faithful storage, and that anticipating is intuitive prediction, not reflective rational inference.2 Ray 9 asks about the point that those who look cannot not acknowledge together; this paper asks how, for one person, the remembered her and the anticipated her operate in a relation.

Where this layer begins and where it ends, Ray 9 gives tests for. Where it begins: "take away what has just sounded in the ear at this moment, take away the bars just played; is the right note still there? Whatever is still there and still at work belongs to this level."3 Applied to love: the sentence she has just finished saying, if one takes only the way her voice sounds while it is still in the ear, is the moment Paper 1 reads; if the pull already depends on the meaning of the words or on a memory, it is read separately, at the corresponding layer. She has gone, and that sentence is still at work in him; the face of it that is not before him and is still remembered and anticipated belongs to this paper; layers are not divided by whether a few seconds have passed or it is already the next day. Where it ends: "as soon as one asks who is remembering and who is anticipating, it is handed on to a later ray." Applied to love: once what is asked is "It is I who remember her, I who am waiting," it has reached Paper 3.4

The handover from Paper 1. The moment in Paper 1 concerns only that moment. This paper reads that moment's still counting when she is not before me, and every later recalling and every later waiting. It does not ask how this continuation becomes my own direction, where others would also make sense and still I cannot exchange her: that is Paper 4. Nor does it ask who it is that remembers and anticipates, that it is I who love her: that is Paper 3.

Method. As in Paper 1: the conclusions of upstream papers are said here in plain words; sources, the proposition numbers of other papers and the places where upstream words are carried beyond their original place all go in the notes, and where something is extended, this series takes it on as its own undertaking. What the relational layer has already said and already interfaced with is used directly and pointed back to in the notes. The examples use people and events this series makes up, and also literature; literature serves only as example. Jiang Yuan and Ye Qing's year runs through the whole paper.

§1 The Remembered Her

L10 Longing is her still counting with me when she is not before me; the remembered her is not the original, and each time I think of her, I take her up again

Ray 9 writes the point peculiar to this layer as: what is not before one, and not laid out before one either, still counts in a living thing.5 Longing falls at this point. Ye Qing is in the south and Jiang Yuan is here; she is not before him, nor is there a photograph of her laid out in front of him; she is at work in him all the same: he will stop for a moment outside a fruit shop because there are oranges on the stall.

The Book of Songs poem "Gathering Kudzu" writes of the same point: "There, gathering the kudzu: one day not seen is like three months";6 with him, a day without that one runs longer than a day. The Minor Preface of the Mao tradition reads the poem as "fear of slander"; here only the letter of it is borrowed, to read the side of not seeing and still being pulled.

The remembered her is not the original. Ray 9 says: "What it remembers is not the original: to recall is to take it up again".7 Each time Jiang Yuan thinks of Ye Qing peeling the orange, the way she looks is a little different: once it is afternoon outside the window, once it is evening; once the hand peeling the orange is her left. He cannot say which time was the original, and yet it is still her. Upstream also says that recalling is one more re-experiencing, possibly accompanied by developmental rewriting.8 Each time he thinks of her is one more taking up, and in being taken up it has already moved.

Li Shangyin writes: "This feeling might wait to become a recollection; only, at the time, one was already bewildered."9 Already bewildered at the time: what is recollected later is the time it was taken up again.

So longing is not a her stored and left untouched. It is a taking up, time after time, and every time it is with me.

L11 The anticipated her can fall through. When it does, what moves in return is the remembered her, in one of two ways: revising it, or not revising it and by it discerning that the her before me is "wrong." Rewriting is with me first; only when, by way of words and deeds, it actually leaves space for her later understanding and action does it point in the direction of cultivation. Not revising, and saying aloud that she is "wrong," fixes for her who she is and slides in the direction of colonization; whether that takes hold is seen in her later understanding and action

What is remembered reaches forward and becomes what is anticipated. At nine on Sunday he anticipates that her call will come; at the station at the end of the year, he anticipates that the one walking toward him is the one he remembers. What is anticipated has a shape, and when the time comes it can fall through.10

Ray 9 writes the two ways that follow falling through: "'moves in return' is of two kinds: revising what is remembered; or not revising it, and by it discerning that what is before one is wrong".11 Applied to love, these are the two.

One is revising it. Jiang Yuan looks at Ye Qing, who has cut her hair short and talks faster than before; after a few days the remembered her has changed: the one who peeled the orange with her head lowered is still there, only she has become "the earlier her"; the present her is this woman who talks fast. This revision is, to begin with, with him. It carries no direction toward her, because it has not yet entered her conditions of occurrence. Relation Theory reads direction once an effect has entered the other party's conditions of occurrence, and there are two directions: cultivation, which goes toward making space; colonization, which goes toward pouring in and occupying.12

Only when the rewriting reaches her by way of words and deeds is direction read. Suppose he says to her: "You've changed a lot this year; I'm still getting to know you." This tells her that he has seen the change, without fixing for her what the change amounts to; how she understands her own year is left with her. Only if this conversation actually gives her a place to explain herself and to revise what the two of them understand does it go toward making space, in the direction of cultivation; merely not fixing it for her is not yet enough to certify cultivation by itself.13 Whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward understands and how she acts.

The other is not revising it, and by it discerning that the her before him is wrong. He does not revise, and says to himself, "She shouldn't be like this"; this is still with him. Once it is said aloud, "You're not this kind of person," it fixes for her who she is: a remembered look of hers has become her ruler from then on. This heads toward pouring in and occupying, and slides in the direction of colonization. Whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward understands and how she acts; she may laugh it off, or she may, from then on, talk more slowly in front of him. From outside, only clues can be seen.

What is spoken of here is direction, not a label: nothing is said about what kind of person Jiang Yuan is; only where this one effect is headed is read.

What is anticipated is anticipated only if it can fall through. Ray 9 lists "anticipation that cannot fall through" as a counterfeit: a fortune slip says, "hold on, and the clouds will part and the moon appear"; whatever comes afterward fits it, "but at the time there was no shape in one's mind that would fall through if things did not fit".14 Longing has this kind too. She calls: she loves him. She does not call: she is afraid of disturbing him, and that is love too. She is cool toward him: she is testing him, and that is still love. Of anticipation like this, Ray 9's words hold: "if whatever comes fits, nothing arrived first":15 it is not waiting for her; it is waiting for a reading fixed long in advance. If this kind stays only in his mind, it is still with him; once it is said aloud and used to read each of her responses, it has reached the point Relation Theory speaks of: the qualifying condition has become a position, "such that no response of the other party can be registered as a refutation".16

L12 Rewriting the remembered her in longing is with me, and is not colonization; only when it lands on her by way of words and deeds is direction read

L11 has already said half of this proposition; it is set out on its own here because it is often read the wrong way round. In longing, a person will change the remembered her back and forth: adding a tenderness she did not have, deleting a coolness she did have, remembering a quarrel as a joke. This is rewriting.

Rewriting is with me; it is not colonization. When Relation Theory reads direction, it reads where an effect is headed once it has entered the other party's conditions of occurrence;17 how I remember her, here with myself, has not entered her conditions of occurrence, and so has no direction toward her. In reading unrequited love, Relation Theory has kept two things apart: "how the actual words and deeds of the one loved, or what that person has left, have entered this side; and a merely imagined image. In the second, one does not claim to have received that person's response."18 Whatever the remembered her has been rewritten into belongs to the second; one does not claim that it is her.

That the rewriting is with me does not mean that nothing has happened either. What it enters are my own later conditions of occurrence: how I wait for her from then on, how I see her, all start from the rewritten one. Matters on my own side Relation Theory has read where it reads a person's relation to himself; this paper does not develop them.19

Only when it lands on her by way of words and deeds is direction read. Once the rewritten one is said aloud and used to make demands of her, it has passed into the second of L11's two ways, or into L13 below.

§2 Crystallization and Resembling Someone

L13 Crystallization in itself carries no direction: the remembered reaches forward, and often reaches into ways she is not. Only when crystallization or the first meeting is used to measure the her who is later before me, fixing for her by way of words and deeds who she is, is the direction of colonization read

Stendhal gave this a name: crystallization (§6). A branch that has lost its leaves in winter is thrown into an abandoned salt mine; taken out two or three months later, it is covered in glittering crystals, and the original branch can no longer be recognized. In longing, the remembered her goes the same way: through the year, when Jiang Yuan thinks of her, he often thinks of her in ways she is not, more patient than she really is, quicker to laugh than she really is.

Crystallization in itself carries no direction. It is with me: the remembered reaching forward, into ways she is not; this reaching has not yet entered her conditions of occurrence. Proust writes of Swann: once, when Odette bent her head to look at an engraving, the way she looked put Swann in mind of Zipporah, Jethro's daughter, in a fresco in the Sistine Chapel; and after that "a fragment of the fresco appeared in her face and in her body, which from then on he always sought to find there again, whether he was with Odette or only thinking of her."20 When he thinks of her, a painting has been hung on her. This hanging is with Swann.

Whether crystallization misremembers is not judged at this layer. What is remembered is not the original to begin with (L10); remembering wrongly is also remembering.21 This layer does not judge whether one remembers accurately: remembering accurately is a matter of correctness.

Only when crystallization is used to measure the her who is later before me is direction read. When Ye Qing comes back at the end of the year, if Jiang Yuan says, "You used to be so patient," and that patience is something he hung on her during the year, this sentence measures her by crystallization, fixes for her by way of words and deeds who she is, and slides in the direction of colonization.

Measuring her by the first meeting has the same shape. Nalan Xingde writes: "If life were only as at the first meeting."22 The one of the first meeting is often clearer in remembering than at any later time, like the one peeling an orange whom Jiang Yuan remembers. Comparing the later her with the first meeting in his own mind is still with him; once it is said aloud, "If only you were still the way you were the first time I saw you," the first meeting has been made a ruler. Paper 1 said, in reading first sight, that measuring what follows by that moment falls to this paper.23

Zhang Ailing's Red Rose, White Rose has two faces of the same thing; only the gist is given here: the one he did not marry stays good in remembering; the one he married is before him every day and becomes ordinary. The one not before him crystallizes; the one before him falls through; both are with him, and neither is yet headed toward anyone.

L14 Resembling someone: if what is loved is the person she resembles, anyone who resembles that person will do; she is then replaceable, and this love is not for her. Changing her after the remembered one is how the direction of colonization shows itself clearly at this layer

Paper 1 divided the sense at first sight of having long known someone into three kinds: the quality of a familiar face stays in Paper 1; resembling someone, where there really is a remembered person or kind of person, depends on memory and belongs to this paper; a former life and destiny, readings given to that instant after the fact, belong to Paper 3.24

Resembling someone is another, remembered person reaching onto the her before me. The first time Jiang Yuan saw Ye Qing, the way she peeled the orange was like someone he had liked at university. A resemblance can be only a beginning; if what he later sees is Ye Qing, it passes. But if what he has loved all along is the one she resembles, then anyone who resembles that one will do: Ye Qing is replaceable, and this love is not for her. By the first proposition laid down in Paper 1, love is this one, irreplaceable;25 the share that is resemblance, if it stops at resemblance, is not yet a cannot-not toward this one.

Changing her after the remembered one is how the direction of colonization shows itself clearly at this layer. Hitchcock's Vertigo, given here only in gist and borrowed only for the structure of changing her: as Scottie understands it at the time, he has lost the woman he loved; later he meets someone who looks like her, and he changes her one thing at a time, her clothes, the color of her hair, the way she wears it and the way she walks, until she is like the other. What he changes is the outward look of the person before him; what he wants is the remembered one; her words and deeds, and what she herself wants, are all held by him to that look. This heads toward pouring in and occupying, and lands on her again and again; whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward understands herself and how she acts.26

The passage on Swann can also be read by this proposition: what he looks for in Odette is the fresco. The looking is with him; requiring her to match the fresco brings it under this proposition.

§3 Expectation and Testing

L15 Expectation is what I arrange on the strength of dealings and point at her later conduct, and it does not turn into a duty of hers; her response is material, not a settling of the account. "If you loved me, you would ..." attaches a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for her what something means to her, and slides in the direction of colonization

What is anticipated, when it bears on her conduct, is expectation. Relation Theory gives expectation this minimal definition: "Expectation is what one party, on the strength of dealings, arranges on his own side and points at the other party's later conduct; it is a construct left behind, does not turn into a duty, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything".27 Jiang Yuan's anticipating the nine o'clock call on Sunday comes by two avenues. One is that the two of them agreed on it, each placing an expectation with the other: this is a promise, entered separately below;28 the other is what he himself has arranged over a year of dealings. This share that he anticipates is with him, and does not turn into a duty of Ye Qing's.

Her response is material, not a settling of the account: the other party's response enters my conditions of occurrence and becomes material for the next expectation; the mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything.29 The call's coming at nine does not, by that alone, certify that she has avowed anything; when it has not come at five past nine, his expectation alone does not put her in his debt either. The share the two of them agreed on is a promise, and is entered separately: it binds her by where she herself stands and by the effects already left, not by her owing him something; whether this time is non-fulfillment, obstruction or a joint revision of the agreement, he, on his side, can only enter fallibly, together with traces; it cannot be erased by the entry of expectation, nor is it decided by that entry.30 The response still becomes material for his next waiting.

Expectation grows out of dealings. Relation Theory says that expectation grows out of repeated dealings: response and non-response, on time and not on time, all become material.31 The weekly call the two agreed on is one entry; the eagerness and the worry that sedimented later, and the hope that she would call an extra time of her own accord, are another. In the first month, when the call had not come by five past nine, he was still only waiting; by the tenth month he could no longer sit still. No one ever promised the second; it sedimented out of one Sunday after another.

Nor does it turn into a duty of hers because it has grown for a long time. Relation Theory has written the two exits by which expectation leaves that slot: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power.32 If Ye Qing, on her own side, takes on "If he wants one more call, I'll call more," that is something she has taken on, and it is hers; his expectation cannot take it on in her place.

An expectation can be said out loud. To say, "This week I'd really like you to call one more time," is a form of questioning. Attaching a qualifying condition to it is different: "If you loved me, you'd call every day." This sentence hangs whether she calls on whether she loves him, and fixes for her what something means to her. Relation Theory says that "to attach a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for the other party what something means to him, for instance by hanging it as a criterion on who he is or what he cares about, is to slide in the direction of colonization, and whether that takes hold depends on the other party's later understanding and action".33 Hanging it on love is a common form at this layer.

Whether there is a duty to reciprocate is a matter for the relational layer; Relation Theory has already interfaced with Mauss, the Book of Rites and Mozi on it, and it is pointed back to here.34

L16 Testing love is a demand arranged in advance; a response obtained this way can become material, but cannot certify the love in her heart

That week, Jiang Yuan deliberately did not mention that he wanted one more call, to see whether Ye Qing would call an extra time of her own accord. She did. He was relieved: she cares.

This is a test. It is not waiting; it is a setup arranged in advance for her response to fall into, to be used to prove something. At the moment of arranging it, the expectation already has a condition attached: if she calls more of her own accord, that is love; if she does not, it is not (L15). So a test is a demand arranged in advance.

The response so obtained can become material: her extra call enters his conditions of occurrence, and his waiting from then on will be different. But it cannot certify the love in her heart. The mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything;35 whether one loves is a matter for the one who loves, and from outside, only clues can be seen.36 She may make the extra call because she misses him, or because she is worried that something has happened to him, or only because she happens to be free that day; the response itself cannot tell these apart.

The words and deeds that arranged this setup are entered separately. If this week's not mentioning it has, in concrete dealings, already had an identifiable effect that lands on her, that entry is made as usual; knowing only that in his own mind he deliberately said nothing does not yet by itself certify this entry. That she does not know the criterion is not the same as these words and deeds having no effect. The criterion inside the setup, that an extra call means love and no extra call means no love, is only with him; so long as it has not been expressed in words and deeds, it has not yet entered her conditions of occurrence. If the criterion has already reached her by way of arrangement or pressure, the reading of direction need not wait, either, for him to spell it out. If he says the result out loud, "You didn't call an extra time, so obviously you don't care," the criterion has landed on her: it fixes for her what a phone call means to her, and slides in the direction of colonization; whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward understands and how she acts.37

What this proposition speaks of is testing love: the criterion lies with the one who arranges the test, and what is being tried is whether the other loves. Another question is verifying who the person before one is: a response obtained by way of a sign checks an identity and does not testify to a love; how this question is used is read separately, according to what it is used for. The two questions can fall within one and the same scene, and are to be read apart.38

§4 Gone

L17 When the one loved is gone, the remembered her is still there; death is not the same as the ending of love

Ye Qing is not before him because she is in the south. There is another way of not being before one: the person is gone.

Love is seen from the subject's side;39 so death is not the same as the ending of love. A man whose beloved died many years ago still remembers her and thinks of her, and each time he thinks of her he takes her up again (L10); that love is on his side, and does not end because her side is gone.

This has the same shape as Relation Theory's reading of the relation with the dead: "A relation with the dead, as in reading Plato, is a relation. The actual effect of the words, deeds and works the dead have left is read apart from today's imagination and reconstruction from memory; no response is required of the dead."40 In the remembered her there is the effect, still at work, of the words and deeds she left while she lived, and there is also the rewriting done each time he takes her up again afterward; the two are read apart. The rewriting does not claim to be her response (L12). Whether there is another side after death, and what it is like, Relation Theory does not judge, and this series does not judge either.

This proposition says only that the ending is not decided by death; it does not say that love necessarily continues. The remembered her may also slowly fade for him; that is the ending at this layer (§5), read from his side.

Boundary. Two cases are read at this layer. One is still remembering her after parting. The two have parted and the shared dealings have terminated; he still remembers her. Relation Theory says that what continues after parting can be the conditions and effects that still exist.41 Still remembering is an effect that still exists; it does not by itself prove that the shared dealings have not ended, and whether his love ends is still read from his side. The other is two people who have never met and are in touch only by letter. Her letters are constructs left by her words and deeds; they have entered his conditions of occurrence, and there is a relation.42 The anticipated her takes shape from the letters, and it too can fall through. The look of the handwriting belongs to Paper 1; the meaning in the letters, and the remembered her, are at this layer.

§5 How Love at This Layer Ends

This series divides ending into four kinds: an appearance passes; my love ends; the shared dealings terminate; commitments and effects remain unsettled. Ending at this layer takes two forms, and both fall under the second kind.

One is that the remembered her fades, or is rewritten until she no longer pulls at him: thinking of her is like thinking of a street he has not walked down in years. The other is that what he anticipates falls through again and again, and he stops waiting: at nine on Sunday he no longer looks at his watch. Both are read from his side and need not keep pace with the termination of the dealings: the dealings can still be going on when he has already stopped waiting; the dealings can be broken off while he is still waiting.

Still remembering after parting is an effect that still exists;43 it does not by itself prove that the dealings have not ended, nor does it by itself prove that his love has not ended.

At the ending, this layer too has its direction of colonization: holding, on the strength of the remembered her, that the present her is "wrong." "You changed a long time ago." If this sentence is used to require her to understand herself by the remembered look, and to fix for her what the outcome of this stretch amounts to, it slides in the direction of colonization; whether it took hold is seen in how she afterward understands this stretch of her own and how she acts. If it only puts forward a fallible observation and asks her to respond, no direction is judged on the strength of this sentence. How she understands her own change is hers; how he revises his own judgment is his. What she has actually changed can be discussed separately.

§6 Interfacing with Tradition

Several have asked about this layer, one after another. For each, this paper writes faithfully what he sees and why he looks, where he presses on this paper, where they meet and where they part.44

Crystallization. In Book One, Chapter 2 of On Love, Stendhal writes of how love comes into being in the mind. He takes as his figure a branch from the salt mines of Salzburg: a branch that has lost its leaves in winter is thrown deep into an abandoned shaft; taken out two or three months later, it is covered in glittering crystals, and "one can no longer recognize the original branch."45 He says: "What I call crystallization is the operation of the mind which, from everything that presents itself, draws the discovery that the beloved object has new perfections"; "one has only to think of a perfection to see it in the beloved."46 Once doubt has arisen there is a second crystallization: the lover goes back and forth through a night, "She loves me," "But does she love me?", and each time adds new crystals to it.47 He calls this "a book of the science of ideas," meant to describe minutely the feelings that together make up the passion of love:48 he looks in order to write down, step by step, how love proceeds in the mind. What he sees: in love, the one loved grows, with the one who thinks of her, perfections she does not have; this is done in the head of the one who thinks, and can be seen if one will "let a lover's head work for twenty-four hours."49 He presses on this paper: if love itself is crystallization, then what is loved was never her, but the branch covered in crystals; in saying that crystallization in itself carries no direction, does L13 play down the crux of love? They meet in: the remembered reaches forward, into ways she is not, and the reaching is done with the one who thinks (L13). They part at two points. First, he takes crystallization as a step in love's coming into being, even as the reason love can last; this paper does not use crystallization to account for where love comes from, and reads only whether, in a relation, it is headed toward her: with me, it carries no direction; only when it is used to measure her is direction read. Second, he means to set down the steps love generally goes through; this series reads by layers, not by stages, and a love need not pass through his steps in order.

Waiting. In A Lover's Discourse, Barthes sets down, one by one, certain "figures" that recur when the lover speaks; "Waiting" is one of them. Only the gist is given:50 he writes of the lover waiting for a phone call, waiting for a meeting, turning things over and over while he waits, every kind of conjecture rising at once; he places the lover's identity in waiting: when he asks himself whether he is in love, the answer is yes, because he is waiting; the lover is the one who waits, and the other never waits. He looks in order to write the lover's own speech, not to define love, and so he works in fragments, one after another. What he sees: in longing, waiting is not empty but full; what is anticipated reaches forward time after time, falls through time after time and comes back time after time. He presses on this paper: if the lover's identity is to be the one who waits, and the other never waits, then this layer is asymmetric by nature; the one who loves is occupied in waiting, and what occupies him is precisely his own love. They meet in: waiting is the anticipated her; it can fall through, and when it falls through, what moves in return is the remembered her (L11); Jiang Yuan looking at his watch from half past eight on Sunday is this very point. They part at: what he writes is the lover's language, and its site is a person speaking; what this paper reads is the direction of remembering and anticipating in a relation. That waiting occupies the one who waits is on his own side; this paper does not read it as an effect of hers on him, unless her words and deeds are actually headed there. Whether the other waits is not something this layer can judge either; that is the other's own matter.

§7 Drawing Together and Downstream

This paper has laid down eight propositions. Taken together, they say: longing is her still counting with me when she is not before me; the remembered her is not the original, and each time I think of her, I take her up again. The anticipated her can fall through; when it does, the remembered is revised, or by the remembered she is discerned to be "wrong"; rewriting is with me and carries no direction, and only when it reaches her by way of words and deeds is direction read. Crystallization in itself carries no direction; only when crystallization or the first meeting is used to measure her is the direction of colonization read. As for the share that is resemblance, if it stops at resemblance, this love is not for her; changing her after the remembered one is how the direction of colonization shows itself clearly at this layer. Expectation does not turn into a duty, and response is material, not a settling of the account; only when the condition attached to an expectation, or the criterion of a test, fixes for her by way of words and deeds what her response means is the direction of colonization toward her read; the response a test obtains cannot certify the love in her heart. When the one loved is gone, the remembered her is still there; death is not the same as the ending of love.

This paper does not prove that thinking of her much means loving her deeply, nor that love is true only if it remembers accurately.

The question left open. Jiang Yuan meets Ye Qing at the station, and his first thought is: she is no longer the one I remember. Who is saying this? The one who remembered her, waited for her and rewrote her through the year, and the one looking at her now at the station: are they the same? If he sees that it was he who misremembered, the error of that judgment can fold back onto himself; if he uses "She's the one who changed" to refuse to look at his own judgment again, and wants her as well to admit that it was she who made him see wrongly, he has pushed this judgment onto her. What she has actually changed is entered separately; from outside, a sentence does not certify whether he has folded back in his own mind. This layer cannot contain it. Ray 9 stops at the same point: who it is that remembers and anticipates.51 That is Paper 3, It Is I.

Downstream. What this paper has laid down, the papers that follow use in these ways. The remembered and the anticipated have an owner, and the seeing wrongly is mine: Paper 3. How the remembered her becomes a direction of mine that cannot be exchanged: Paper 4. Without waiting for her to do anything first: Paper 5; measuring what follows by the remembered occasion of mutuality falls back to this layer, and Paper 6 says it once more. The effects that still exist after parting, and how the four kinds of ending are spoken of together: Paper 0.

Acknowledgments

This paper is signed by Han Qin alone; the author decided every argument and choice and bears sole responsibility for the text. Models from Anthropic and OpenAI assisted with drafting and review; the author thanks them.

Notes

  1. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. 11DD+12DD is 8D. ↩︎
  2. Information Theory XII, Abstract: 11DD is "reconstructive retention, not faithful storage"; 12DD is "System 1 prediction, not reflective rational inference". ↩︎
  3. Aesthetics Ray 9 §2. ↩︎
  4. Where it ends: "as soon as one asks who is remembering and who is anticipating, it is handed on to a later ray" (Aesthetics Ray 9 §2). Carrying the two tests, where the layer begins and where it ends, over to love is this series' own transfer (own undertaking). ↩︎
  5. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. ↩︎
  6. Shijing [Book of Songs], "Wang feng · Cai ge" [Airs of Wang · Gathering Kudzu]: 彼采葛兮，一日不见，如三月兮 (English rendering this paper's own); text per the Kanseki Repository, KR1c0001, Mao shi. The Minor Preface's reading: 惧谗. ↩︎
  7. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. ↩︎
  8. Information Theory XII, Abstract: when 12DD reads 11DD, "each act of reading is a re-instantiation and re-stabilization at the SAE architectural level, possibly accompanied by developmental rewriting"; §3.7.2 also says of 12DD reading 11DD: "Read = reconstruction = re-experiencing = architectural re-stabilization." ↩︎
  9. Li Shangyin, "Jinse" [The Ornamented Zither]: 此情可待成追忆，只是当时已惘然 (English rendering this paper's own). ↩︎
  10. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. ↩︎
  11. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. ↩︎
  12. Relation Theory Paper 1, H5 and H8. "Conditions of occurrence" is Relation Theory's term: once an act of one party, or what it leaves behind, identifiably and actually enters the other party's conditions of occurrence, that is, the conditions on which whatever afterward occurs on that party's side depends (what can be seen, what can be thought, what can be done, what is run into), there is a relation (Relation Theory Paper 1, H1). The direction is read on this one effect, and whether it took hold is seen in the other party's later understanding and action; cultivation and colonization are not the two extremes of one scale, and the same act can carry both directions, and can also carry no direction at all. ↩︎
  13. Relation Theory Paper 1, H8. ↩︎
  14. Aesthetics Ray 9 §5. ↩︎
  15. Aesthetics Ray 9 §5. Carrying this test of Ray 9's over to longing is this series' own transfer (own undertaking). ↩︎
  16. Relation Theory Paper 4, H37, second half. ↩︎
  17. Relation Theory Paper 1, H5 and H8. ↩︎
  18. Relation Theory Paper 1, the section under H1. ↩︎
  19. Relation Theory Paper 2 reads the self-relation. ↩︎
  20. Proust, "Swann in Love" (Part Two of Swann's Way): « elle frappa Swann par sa ressemblance avec cette figure de Zéphora, la fille de Jéthro, qu'on voit dans une fresque de la chapelle Sixtine »; « un fragment de la fresque apparaissait dans son visage et dans son corps, que dès lors il chercha toujours à y retrouver soit qu'il fût auprès d'Odette, soit qu'il pensât seulement à elle ». In the original, Zipporah is "Zéphora." The English rendering is this paper's own. ↩︎
  21. Aesthetics Ray 9 §3. ↩︎
  22. Nalan Xingde, "Mulanhua ling · Nigu juejue ci" [To the Tune "Mulanhua ling": A Poem of Final Parting in the Old Style]: 人生若只如初见 (English rendering this paper's own). ↩︎
  23. Paper 1, L9. ↩︎
  24. Paper 1, L5. ↩︎
  25. Paper 1, L1. ↩︎
  26. Relation Theory Paper 1, H8. ↩︎
  27. Relation Theory Paper 1, H10. ↩︎
  28. Relation Theory Paper 3, H29: a commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party. ↩︎
  29. Relation Theory Paper 4, H33: "The other party's response is material, not a settling of the account: it enters my conditions of occurrence and becomes material for the next expectation; the mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything". ↩︎
  30. The agreed share is entered separately, per Relation Theory Paper 3, H24; that it binds a person by where one stands and by the effects already left, and does not turn into a duty to the other party, per Paper 3, H27; that non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are entered from outside only together with traces, per Paper 3, H28. ↩︎
  31. Relation Theory Paper 4, H34: "Expectation grows out of repeated dealings: response and non-response, on time and not on time, all become material". ↩︎
  32. Relation Theory Paper 4, H36. ↩︎
  33. Relation Theory Paper 4, H37. ↩︎
  34. Relation Theory Paper 0, §12. ↩︎
  35. Relation Theory Paper 4, H33. ↩︎
  36. Paper 1, L1. ↩︎
  37. Relation Theory Paper 4, H37. ↩︎
  38. Paper 7 reads Penelope's bed precisely in order to tell these two apart. ↩︎
  39. Paper 1, L1. ↩︎
  40. Relation Theory Paper 1, the section under H1. ↩︎
  41. Relation Theory Paper 6, H58: "What continues after parting can be the conditions and effects that still exist". ↩︎
  42. Relation Theory Paper 1, H1. ↩︎
  43. Relation Theory Paper 6, H58. ↩︎
  44. Those Aesthetics Ray 9 has already interfaced with (Aristotle on reversal, the Orchid Pavilion preface as given in the Jin shu, al-Ghazālī, Hume, Kant, Wordsworth, Bergson, Proust on the madeleine, Husserl, Huron and Schmidhuber) ask about the beauty of cognition; they are invoked here, not rewritten. The passage of Augustine singing a song he knows, already interfaced with in Ray 9 §4, is invoked too. The interfacing at the relational layer is in Relation Theory Paper 0, §§5 to 14, and is pointed back to where it is touched. ↩︎
  45. on ne peut plus reconnaître le rameau primitif (Stendhal, De l'amour, Book One, Chapter 2). ↩︎
  46. Ce que j'appelle cristallisation, c'est l'opération de l'esprit, qui tire de tout ce qui se présente la découverte que l'objet aimé a de nouvelles perfections; il suffit de penser à une perfection pour la voir dans ce qu'on aime (same chapter). ↩︎
  47. Oui, elle m'aime; Mais est-ce qu'elle m'aime? (same chapter, the entry on the "second crystallization"). ↩︎
  48. un livre d'idéologie (Book One, note to Chapter 3). ↩︎
  49. Laissez travailler la tête d'un amant pendant vingt-quatre heures (Book One, Chapter 2). ↩︎
  50. Barthes, A Lover's Discourse, the figure "Waiting" (L'attente); this paper follows what the research literature quotes and gives only the gist; the original book has not been checked. ↩︎
  51. Aesthetics Ray 9 §8. ↩︎

References

All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. Quotations are checked item by item in the accompanying audit table.

I · SAE works directly cited in this paper

Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Cognition (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22989143

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Information Theory XII: 11DD Memory and 12DD Prediction — The 8D Information Architecture [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20480742

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 0: The Place of Relation Theory [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545115

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 1: What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545047

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23541778

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 3: Commitment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545023

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 4: Dealings and Expectation [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545057

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 6: Asymmetry, Divergence and Ending [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545087

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 0: The Place of Love Theory [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627790

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 1: At First Sight [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627762

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 3: It Is I [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627774

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 4: No Substitute [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627776

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 5: Without Waiting for You [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627779

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 6: That Moment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627781

Qin, H. (2026). SAE Love Theory Paper 7: Stories [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23627784

II · External works

Classical texts are given in simplified characters.

Stendhal. De l'amour (1822). Livre premier, chapitres II–III. (Project Gutenberg #60882 text)

Barthes, Roland. Fragments d'un discours amoureux. Paris: Seuil, 1977. The figure "L'attente." (English translation A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, trans. R. Howard, 1978; this paper follows the study listed below, gives only the gist and has not checked the original book)

Proust, Marcel. Du côté de chez Swann (1913). Deuxième partie, « Un amour de Swann ». (Project Gutenberg #2650 text)

Shijing 诗经 [Book of Songs], "Wang feng · Cai ge" 王风·采葛 [Airs of Wang · Gathering Kudzu]. (Kanseki Repository KR1c0001, Mao shi 毛诗 text)

Li Shangyin 李商隐. "Jinse" 锦瑟 [The Ornamented Zither]. (text of Tangshi sanbai shou 唐诗三百首 [Three Hundred Tang Poems] in chinese-poetry)

Nalan Xingde 纳兰性德. "Mulanhua ling · Nigu juejue ci" 木兰花令·拟古决绝词 [To the Tune "Mulanhua ling": A Poem of Final Parting in the Old Style] (also titled "Mulan ci · Nigu juejue ci jian you" 木兰词·拟古决绝词柬友 [A Poem of Final Parting in the Old Style, Sent to a Friend]). (text of the collected poems of Nalan Xingde in chinese-poetry)

Zhang Ailing 张爱玲. Hong meigui yu bai meigui 红玫瑰与白玫瑰 [Red Rose, White Rose] (1944). (gist only)

Hitchcock, Alfred (dir.). Vertigo. Paramount, 1958. (gist only)

III · Secondary literature

Pham, L. (2014, June 4). To Be The One Who Doesn't Wait. Full Stop.

Interfaces

  • Main upstream: Aesthetics Ray 9, The Beauty of Cognition (§2, §3, §5, §8); Relation Theory Paper 1 (H10); Paper 4 (H33, H34, H36, H37).
  • Also used: Information Theory XII (Abstract; §3.7.2); Relation Theory Paper 1 (the section under H1, H5, H8), Paper 2 (self-relation, not developed), Paper 3 (H24, H27, H28, H29), Paper 6 (H58); Relation Theory Paper 0 (§12).
  • This series: Paper 1 (L1, L5, L9); Papers 3 to 6 each take up one point of this paper (§7, "Downstream"); Paper 7 (Penelope's bed); Paper 0 lists the propositions together, along with the shared words and the remainders.