- The artistic and destabilizing ability to see texts, people, and places as palimpsest, as continually redrawn figures, faintly seen; [what preceded the top layer?]
- A willingness to pause when confronted with a rhetoric of obfuscation; [tease out ambiguities]
- The capacity to recognize and value ambiguities within, between, and among palimpsest without resolving them; [what doesn’t it?]
- The patience to wait until ‘the right moment to speak or write’;
- The capability to practice ingenium, of forging new connections, by living in the interstitial world created by 1-4” (165-6).