A Trace
Explained very simply, this piece is a story about a man being presented with a mysterious object that is either:
- Directions upon which he must act or
- Documentation of his own origins
If they are the former, then the events that are listed are the events that proceed. If they are the latter, the events that proceed are his re-encounter with how he came into being not as an organism, necessarily, but as a someone who believes in space, physicality, reason, etc.
The piece alternates between two locations: "in here", which is where the narrator builds a space in order to orient himself in relation to the question the mysterious object presents, and "that sort of place", which is where the narrator is presented with new information that both helps and antagonizes him. The juxtaposition of the closed, structured space of "that sort of place" with the open sprawl of "in here" invokes the question that the narrator circles around - whether he can recreate or reconstruct his own beginnings or origins to the point of creating the closed, structured space in which he exists now.
(Adapted from: Brown University Wikipedia Entry, saved in Internet Archive)
