-Operation Forest of Thought was my attempt to create the prison of mind that I hoped would hold Snevets. I consulted English, philosophy, and art professors. I gave them intimate access to Snevets’ case files. Their job was to construct the bars of this prison from the information there within. I had never managed such a group before. The police community is very hierarchical. These men were not. They could argue and talk and seemingly never settle on anything. What I thought would take a week took a year. But, they finally had nine recommendations. 

1. Snevets was a francophile. Any space constructed to hold him must include objects from French thought and letters.
2. Color was important for Snevets. Many of his jobs turned on colors, their metaphoric properties, their relation, and their motion.
3. Fruit drew Snevets’ eye as much as anything. Knowing a high end green grocer to stock the space would definitely help hold Snevets.
4. Walking: The old man loved it. Giving him a park nearby or a large grounds surrounding the property would allow him to stretch his legs and mind.
5. As far as architecture, it needed to be comforting, suburban. They explained that Snevets lived a contradiction. He had the imagination of a libertine with the habits and routine of a middle class life. He needed the physical comfort of suburbia to access his profuse imagination.
6. Privacy: his imagination had a great need for privacy to exercise itself. It was inward facing, needing space from others to plumb its deepest levels. His reveries of mind were ultimately solitary.
7. A library of course. I didn’t need the professors to know this. But they helped me with stocking the library from classics to the literary journals of the day.
8. The fellowship of men, which is a nicer way to say drinking buddies. Snevets was no débauche but seemed to find relief in periodic nights of eating, drinking, smoking, gaming, and conversation. 
9. A study to work in. Preferably abutting the library. Containing the usual: a desk, a window, good lighting, a reading chair, prints on the walls, and a low coffee table. 

Check out other posts from The Snevets Stories here.