Walking through the forest at evening I do not stop for the ladyslippers in bloom,
     because I know that in looking I will be consumed.

There is also the fact of the setting sun.

Insects drawn by its heat circle the stocky sun of my body, which is also setting,
     only more slowly.

To view the forest as a garden is to commit, at best, a nearly unforgivable act of
     nostalgia.

In the best paintings some key figure is always missing. This is the magic behind
     both Vermeer and Delacroix.

In the forest, the key figure is never missing, only hiding. This explains most of
     Western literature, and Robin Hood.

To feel sure that the person you need most is nearby, even if you can't see him or
     her, is the besetting fallacy of the forest. It is also comforting.

Christianity's innovation was to preserve the figure while abolishing pretty much
     everything else.

The reason why the Bible doesn't spend much time cataloguing the sins of the eye
     (which are myriad) is that the eye is a double agent. The forest, on the other
     hand, is working for itself.

Darkness replacing the forest—now, for instance—is just another expression of
     metonymy, inside which various plants & animals travel.

I imagine that the figure hiding in the forest is a pilgrim, and that he carries a
     candle. Or, I think the figure hiding in the forest is a hunter. I imagine that
     he carries a gun.

There exists an eclipse of the body which is not the body. The ladyslippers in the
     moonlight have become bladders of ash.

I look down and see the flickering gun in my bare hands.