The asterisk refers to text in the footnotes—content that, for various reasons, is deemed unfit for the main story. In the same way that a map can never fully describe the terrain, language can never capture the entire context or all the details of the material world. Something is always left out—relegated to the footnotes, you might say. The sign is also used to blank out letters in profanities. These words interest me. They, too, contain multiple or indeterminate meanings. Entire conversations can be conducted using only one of them. Sometimes I wonder whether language itself is not an asterisk. True meaning is always to be found somewhere else: in subtext, mistakes, and contingencies; in the body and in the material.