“…if only he could rest, gather his strength, he could figure out which of those positions was truer to the person he was, and he could choose what to do instead of simply doing it.” 

S., tired to the point where he feels as though he can’t make the rest of the swim back to the shore, contemplates whether or not he wants to continue swimming or just let the waves take him back out to sea, where he would almost certainly drown. While his mind is entertaining those two contradictory impulses he comes to a third solution: Finding a place to rest briefly so that he could gather his strength and think rationally about his eventual decision.

It seems as though Straka conveying the importance of personal choice over natural instinct. Instead of taking the easy way out (allowing himself to be taken back out to sea) or relying purely on survivalist instinct (keep swimming for the shore) he chooses a solution that involves giving him the opportunity to reach a certain level of rational thought. This is further reinforced by S.’s thought at the end of the page: “This–curious as it seems to him now, with solid earth under him–seemed then like the most important consideration of them all.” What does that say about S.? He must trust his intuition if he is to ever remember who he really is.

Jen and Eric take up most of the page discussing the possibility of Vaclav Straka, the 19 year old factory worker, being V.M. Straka. They more or less end up accepting the fact that he is one of the more unlikely candidates because, according to Eric:

It’s funny that Vaclav Straka is even a candidate. It’s nothing but a name and a rumor. His name was Straka, and someone-one person-suggested he may have wanted to be a writer. That’s all.

Even Jen has trouble with accepting the rumors:

Still can’t find a single trace of him. Nothing. And I’m pretty good at finding things.

The conversation gets a little more personal towards the bottom of the page. When referring to Eric’s underlining of a piece of the text about S. contemplating the third solution( to his situation, she writes:

The underlining makes me think you had a moment like that…  (You can talk about it if you want to…)

Funny to call this “talking”

Yeah, it is (also: that was a total evasion.)

Yes, I had a moment like that + I got through it and I’m never going back.

It looks like there’s still a long way to go before these two truly know each other.

Lastly, Jen and Eric also comment on FXC’s footnote on that page, where she offers her philosophy on life. In his pencil notes, Eric points out:

Caldeira offering his philosophy in this FN. Totally inappropriate.

Jen replies:

She sounds sincere, though. Maybe a direct message to Straka: be real and live!

As advice goes, it’s pretty much a cliché.

All these pointless footnotes help fuel the fact that FXC used them to communicate an underlying message.