Book of the Pigments 4

 It is a block of undifferentiated text of indefinite extension, without paragraph or page breaks, though conventionally punctuated. Lines on the page begin or end arbitrarily, as in other works of conventional prose. The margins are set arbitrarily. It is intimidating and seemingly impenetrable. Where to begin? That is not the problem. Rather, the question is how to continue, and for how long, and why. The end is not in sight, so it is difficult to say where the landmarks might fall. Where, for example, is the end of the beginning, the middle of the middle, the beginning or middle of the end? Coming back to the text another day, it is hard to remember where to begin again. Surely not from the beginning! How to mark one's place? And the purpose of such a text also seems unclear. Black against a white background, it offers nothing lavender or chartreuse, nothing smelling of thyme or cinnamon. Little by little, a plot emerges, unrushed, lavishly prepared for, greatly anticipated. A silvery thread runs through it. Now, finally, something not black or white. But isn't this just the name for something something gray but lustrous? It gathers strength; though still thin as a thread, standing out more clearly from the background of other whites, blacks, and grays. The reader can grab on to it. It is unclear from this example how well the reader knows the language of the text, a detail that was not apparent from the beginning. You merely took for granted the reader's proficiency at the beginning, but what if the impenetrable monolith were only partially comprehensible. Moreover, the reader might be learning the language of the text through the act of reading it, so that the text increases in clarity throughout the reading process. Since theoretically the text has no end, any time the reading stops the text simply breaks off without any reason. Now its continuity is in question again...