On Miscellanies

Miscellanies simulate a quick flight through the everyday, obeying a directive for novelty; composing the whole herbal for the vegetal novelty that grows around any wayfaring stranger.

The miscellany's first impulse is to class; second, to array; third, to move safely away. It shies from any full description, for fear of losing its indicial starting point. The miscellany clings by a point to the individual body, making fast an initial contact and forgoing any act of expansion. It draws lines as far as the body's arm will go; and meanwhile that body is running through space, gathering some hundred strands.

The miscellany assumes experience to be data, in the sense of a finite storehouse of datums; in the sense of being given gifts on the mere occasion of asking; in the sense of what can be freely given, and nothing beyond that.