I've been staring rather hard at the view from my window recently. I'm moving from rural Gloucestershire to urban Yorkshire at the end of the summer. So I'm trying to imprint on my memory the sight of spring in the garden and across the valley.
One thing which always beguiles and sometimes startles me is the sudden transformation worked by the sun emerging from cloud or the simple and temporary brilliance of the evening sun on the fields and the trees. It's like a light being switched on - an illumination.
My experience of my doctoral research can be like that (ok, not that often!). Suddenly, through reading, or writing, my perspective shifts, opens up and ideas, concepts, metaphors connect. I realise the connections have been there all along, but invisible to me, just waiting for the clouds to clear or the sun to move, imperceptibly, to another spot.
I want to capture these moments of insight, just as I'm trying to hold the sight of the fields, trees and shadows in my memory. If I don't get them down on paper/on screen, then like the way the sunlight travels across the fields and the leaves, they can be all too transitory.
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