I learned from labyrinths

 I learned from labyrinths that to get to the center you turn away from it again and again as you follow the windings that will, in the end, take you to the center. In Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, most of the woodblock prints show the famous conical peak, but one shows pilgrims climbing a Fuji that is the very ground under their feet. You can’t see the mountain’s form while you’re on the mountain. There are subjects you can better understand through analogy, context, parallels, the view from the distance, rather than via direct and dogged pursuit.

Rebecca Solnit, In Praise of the Meander