He rose at dawn and set off north, toward the beginnings of the large forest that stretched all the way to Bourges. The trees were mostly oaks. The first of them had been planted as far back as the reign of Louis XIV. As a walker heads deeper along the forest paths he’ll come across areas where the trees are unexpectedly aligned. Here the random arrangement of trunks briefly gives way to rectilinear pockets that seem to reach all the way to the horizon. This sudden mark of human will amid the chaos of nature is not unlike the birth of an idea in the magma of ill-defined thought. All at once, in both cases, a perspective emerges, a corridor of light that brings order to solid things as it does to ideas, and allows for a more far-reaching view. In both instances, these moments of illumination are short-lived. As soon as the walker sets off again, as soon as the mind starts churning again, the vision vanishes, unless it has been committed to memory or written down.
