From the poetics and sociology of the pure relationship and the noetic community let's move on to another terrain of purity. I speak of the much misunderstood innocence of the child. Childhood has a long history as a marginalized and displaced zone lodged in self-absorbed societies that have paid very little heed to the inner culture and sensibility of the community of children. For all intents and purposes, this is a silent, unrecorded history. And to try to delve into its existential reality is to indulge not only in speculation but in presumption as well. How can we really know what the community of children exactly consists of? We might draw on our own memories, but even they are not reliable, as childhood quickly dissolves into adult consciousness as the purest of arbitrary fictions. In fact, for an adult, childhood is the surest domain of fictive invention and aesthetic effects. Often the quality of an adult's imagination is best measured by listening to his or her recollections of childhood. Childhood, unfortunately, is always locked away as the children's unconscious secret forever. And this is true even for children we may think we know well. Only the psychic affinities of animals are more thoroughly hidden from us.

First of all, childhood participates in the adult flows as a resistant element. It cannot be grasped by adult consciousness in its interiority. Adult consciousness can only document its visible episodes and events, what children say and do.