I rounded a bend in Leestown Pike and saw on my right, amidst a patchwork of fenced paddocks, open fields, and crooked bare trees, a group of black angus cows moving like clots of shadow over the blue-tinged grass. A rorshach blot, torn funeral shrouds, gentle beasts. It was a chestertonian moment, a thrill of a dream that never was, the breath catching in one's throat. When I try to explain the moment, I can only think of the strange beauty of black against the bluegrass, of cows in the morning, of the loneliness of naked trees. Those are only the components, the scattered pieces of a puzzle.
The experience reminded me of encountering art (not just "seeing" art), where the combination of texture and hues and subject matter--disparate pieces at that--combine to influence your emotional self, bypassing your reason.