ProblemYou want to excerpt an element and move it into the left margin. You want to put images and notes in the margin. You want it to align vertically with where it would have been placed in the flow.
SolutionYou can
create a large left margin and use absolute positioning to move content
into it.
Disadvantages
Nothing prevents marginal elements from vertically overlapping each other.
OVERLAP!
However, you can prevent marginal elements from overlapping with content on
the right by creating a wide enough left margin.
Advantages
You can render inline markup like tables.