It means that we unpick the fibre of a culture (ours), its weft and warp

in the no-man’s-land between its territory and the next, the blank stretches of the map, those interstitial zones where light, bending and kinking round impossible topographies, produces mirages

the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype.

There were still unfinished bits, though: gaping lacunae where the carapace gave way to reveal guttery of half-laid floors

a whole new Order of anthropological experience seemed to burst open and fulgurate before me, its pieces glittering and dancing madly

Not the Report per se, but rather its schema, prologomena, what-have-you.

the desk. One day, I’d told myself, I’ll need to clean it properly and thoroughly, transform it into a tabula rasa upon which I might compose a great, momentous work. I’d been right: that day was now.

an ongoing event whose discrete parts and moments, whatever their particular shapes and vicissitudes (vicissitudes! I'd susurrate the word time and again) have run together

these mourners finally filed out, their cortege still in loose formation

Petr had found succour in his faith during the months of his illness