 Our conceptions of the absence or presence of one thing to another are taken originally from and remain most at home in the realm of limited physical beings. Here presence to or absence from another involves the same sort of mutuality or reciprocity that the same corporeal realm of limited things must always manifest. If body A is present to or absent from body B, B is present to or absent from A and vice versa. The other sorts of important presence or absence we are familiar with—presence in thought, in memory and imagination and affection, for instance—are metaphorical to some degree and are extensions from and find their source in our experience of some prior physical presence, whether merely perceived and understood, or hoped for, or feared. So too with the kinds of metaphorical absence we recognize when some present person is, as we say, “just not there.” And absence, whether indifferent, bad or good, presupposes presence. Such metaphorical presences and absences of limited things to one another might thus be understood as absent presences or present absences.