Take the living instant with the closest and the most delicate words. Without words as witnesses the instant (will not have been) is not. I do not write to keep. I write to feel. I write to touch the body of the instant with the tips of words.

One suspects that Cixous and Derrida do not pen their essays for the neutral, or accidental reader. There is a certain expected level of prior reading facility which is expected or required. Unfortunately, when said essays are collected, the prior reading for such preparedness is cumulatively beyond the pale of most layman. Consider me one of the inept. Wait, Jon, are you talking about core requirements for anyone approaching these essays? Yes, yes I am. When I was child my younger sister couldn't pronounce the J sound and instead called me Non. I've been preoccupied ever since with the Void.

Most of the early essays in the book were generally opaque, given that I wasn't well versed in the examined texts. The collection then pivoted to a more autobiographical bend. I do not write to keep. I write to feel. These works sift through childhood and family genealogy, fingering the filaments of ethnicity and ritual. Cixous shines in such artful movements: the gravity of the themes explored is warped (refracted) by the adroit play of language and homonym. Identity is forever splintered.

What I kept away from, in keeping my name and my nose, was the temptation of disavowal. ( )