Words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space.

Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels.

There were also the razor marks on her wrists and forearms, half a dozen per arm, not very deep, not very convincing really, just a lame, hapless attempt at hurting herself. There hadn't even been that much blood and nobody at the hospital had been at all surprised. These scars, for some reason, he didn't mind. Maybe they even appealed to him. They showed that she was weak and in need of him.

A lot of people measure a man by what he's got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up.

Words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space.

Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another.

Few things look as unstable as the rock-solid certainties of previous ages.