Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.
— Joyce, Ulysses (45)
What geomancy reads what the windblown sand writes on the desert rock? I read there that all things live by a generous power and dance to a mighty tune; or I read there that all things are scattered and hurled, that our every arabesque and grand jeté is a frantic variation on our one free fall.
— Annie Dillard (1974, 70)