Intimacy with the other, with contexts is what characterizes relationships regarding presence and the present.

Perceiving the other and what happens through mediating referrals does metamorphose situations.

In the succinct, total moment, to be with the other, with what happens, is to have no mediating referrals. Direct contact is communication that allows for intimacy and familiarity. This encounter is to stand before, to perceive (know), which leads to categorizations, that is, recognitions that are significant and determinant.

Perceiving the autistic, for example, knowing that there is a requested attitude, creates, when this experience is accepted, a structuring distance. It is frequent in relationships of isolation, as is the case of autism, the absence of the mother as a dialoguing being. She is like an impediment, non-signaling of participation. This configuration – non-signaling of participation – can enable experiences of acceptance of impediments, of acceptance of solitude and isolation, and further create intimacy with the limit.

By accepting what is evident - possibilities and impossibilities - we dispense the support and protection that distance us from what happens. Perceiving and accepting this evidence means beginning to understand what has already been metamorphosed by Nietzsche, when he said: “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman – a rope over an abyss”.

To be a way, for me, is to be extended between contradictions, it is the constant coming-to-be, becoming able to transcend limits by perceiving and accepting them.

In extreme situations, with reduced referrals (such as the relationship with autistic people), being together, becoming intimate of the impossibilities of the other, is what provides a relationship, is what leads to transformation. Absorbing and integrating the limit amplifies, creates intimacy by neutralizing distantiating referrals. Perceptual, relational organizations that enable discernment result from these experiences.

To be intimate is to seize the data, to grasp the insinuated, to predict the implicit (closures), to seize the understandings that contextualize the relationships, the communication with the evidenced data, the existing data which, consequently, are substitutes of what is desired. Desire and expectations create illusions, anticipate the non-existent, as much as they bury, ruin what happens.

To stand before the other, facing what happens, is enough so that the magic of intimacy becomes evident, opening, thus, infinite possibilities. When what happens is perceived as what happens, regardless of interpretations constructed in contexts other than what is happening, the meanings experienced are presentified. Being and looking like are identical, rather than references that cross to create points of elucidation. The relational ceases to be the puzzle to be deciphered or something to be completed. The sphinxes disappear (“decipher me or I'll devour you”) and man appears, the being, the facts with their structuring units; explanations arise that can be globalized, apprehended in a non-harming approach; this process is quite different from the creation of hybrids resulting from prefabricated molds.

Having intimacy implies being available, completely there for the other, for what happens. It is an uncommon process, since one is constantly engaged in gluing, repairing and copying, always trying to achieve goals, always trying to achieve something, always trying to improve.