From the very first line Michaux warns the reader (and himself as a reader) to prepare for combat, a bodiless, abstract combat learned by daydreaming. He hectors, cajoles, encourages, and entertains us like a grumbling "Communicate? You too would like to communicate? Communicate what?... You're not yet intimate enough with you, poor fool, to have something to communicate." At the same time, he challenges us to be filled with the adventure of "However weighed down, washed-up, bullied you may be, ask yourself regularly - and irregularly - 'What can I risk again today?'"