In The Beginning
Park used to think that the development of one’s intellect mirrored his growing understanding of a city’s layout. That is, as the mind matured it gained a better sense of how faster to get where, which restaurants to frequent and the streets one ought to avoid after dark. The easy link between thought and action—as if the mind could be schematized and illuminated, filled in, like a map of the new world—this link and its fallacy wouldn’t dawn on him until much later. But at the time the image of a mind’s education mirroring its facility for navigating unfamiliar terrain seemed itself like a beacon, a waypoint to keep him on the right path of progress, like a grandly intelligent idea that only a grandly intelligent youth would harbor. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever were one, and its significance remained undiminished even as Park lost himself every time he tried his way around the city.
