Hal on accomplices and the blizzard; the Weston house
Our subdorm room’s only carpet was an oversized corruption of the carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels in which you had to look very closely to make out the tiny pornographic scenes in the Byzantine weave surrounding the cross. I’d acquired the carpet years ago during a period of intense interest in Byzantine pornography inspired by what I’d seen as a titillating reference in the O.E.D. I too had moved serially between obsessions, as a child.
Context
Hal supine again, 20 November, inventorying his own room like a stranger. Even the carpet is a footnote to the O.E.D.: a childhood obsession with Byzantine pornography traceable to "a titillating reference" in the dictionary — the reference book as the origin of appetite, desire arriving pre-lexicalized. (The plan's screen note misquoted this as "serpentine"; the raw says Byzantine.)