From the sore eyes and the headaches from the clicking mouse of the first week to the fusion with the text to "become an intimate part of it, rather than just passively reading." (R) in the last week, Patchwork Girl ranked as a physical, as well as intellectual, experience. The responses of the body made tangible the psychological and intellectual collaboration the hypertext demanded and close critical reading tries to teach.

A finger moving to click shifted the reader from one text block to the next. The act of transition existed as a movement, as well as a synaptic exchange. As one screen erased the another, the reader saw the gaping spaces between the words where imagination could work. The text elides in time as well as space: what is passed/past can often not be easily retrieved. Collaboration with the text shifted from being an arcane intellectual skill to be learned to an unavoidably physical and sensual act.

For example, R wrote, "This new medium has simply created possibilities that were not present before." My observations of the reading process argue that the 'possibilities' were not created in the medium. Instead, the possibilities inherent in all texts were seen much more clearly through this particular medium