"Modern life requires that we live by our wits rather than by rules. Things rarely turn out as we have planned them, and to live at any given moment means to change plans at the last moment, to hear one thing and see another, to try to make some kind of personal order out of the bewildering chaos pf sensory and mental experience."
-Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers

Why mark the margins while reading? Do I mark the familiar? Do I celebrate coming into contact with something I already know or someone else's articulation of some version of something I know? Do I cull the essence? Do I mark that which surprises me? That which deviates? That which shifts the book for me somehow? How? A question raised by the book? A question raised fruitfully or something neglected, perhaps willfully neglected, by the writer? Have I systematized my marginalia? Does my system of marking the margins constantly dissolve because that which deviates can also be something I already know? Am I more awake during some moments of reading? Does my marginalia simply record those biorhythms? Do I mark for now or for later? How many lenses of reading do I operate at any given time? As a professional reader in training, should I be undone by an inability or unwillingness to respond to any of these questions?