5/ But in using language itself--in syntax, the way sentences are made, with metaphor--to disassemble the expectations of ordinary life and reconfigure the world anew to us, anew to everyone we engage with. Sometimes it's confounding. (Occasionally I baffle strangers--which I suspect is my ordinary fate.) But any time we're forced to stop and think about language itself, I count that as--what would you call it? An intervention in the ordinary?