On Spirals
I've been thinking, and thinking, my worst habit and my greatest gift.
A thought is a spiral. That isn't a bad thing; it's a beautiful, chaotic kind of motion. But you have to learn to stop it in time and plant a new one. A spiral left to grow too large stops being interesting. It starts to become harmful.
When I close my eyes I see them: healthy patterns and unhealthy ones, interwoven spirals crossing lines crossing spirals, a kind of fractal. And I've always felt that seeing this means something. That we are closer to nature than we let ourselves believe. I swear I'll get to the point. But first tell me: did you see it? The pattern? How does it look to you? Maybe draw it.
Because that is what I see every day. Patterns, and patterns. When I'm bored I draw the same things I've always drawn geometric shapes, 3D wireframes, strange symbols, impossible machines. So many of them repeat. I can open a notebook from my childhood, my teens, my early twenties, and find the same shapes waiting there.
I used to be ashamed of this. I thought it meant something was wrong with me, bad wiring, or stupidity. But under the shame there was always a quiet certainty that my subconscious was trying to tell me something. And the wish to understand what that silent curiosity has been the engine of my soul for as long as I can remember. Where do they come from, these patterns I made from nothing? Only instinct, and a few simple rules.
It's the last piece of my innocence still intact. My little game of shapes and rules.
I wish my mind were less afraid. I wish I could disappear into the patterns for days. I wish I could lose myself in the work the meaningful work and the pointless work alike. Maybe that kind of immersion arrives with peace. Or maybe with its opposite: a crushing obsession. But my body can't carry the obsession anymore. It refuses to keep torturing itself over my nonsense, and I'm learning to respect that refusal.
So the only way forward is healing.
Today I say goodbye to the colossal thing that fear has become a chameleon, a dragon, its claws hooked into every corner of my life. Maybe I won't kill it today. Maybe it takes the rest of my life. Maybe the moment I think it's gone, it's already back watching, waiting, ready to rise again. The fucking dragon might be writing this very prophecy. Fear is not exactly a liar. But there must be a separation between its claws and my soul. That decision is mine and it is today.
Here's the real reason I'm writing.
I need to remind you and myself that loving my passions isn't a strong enough force to leave fear behind. Not even the larger mission I sometimes believe I'm here for, however noble and enough it can feel in the moment.
The only thing that survives this liquid state we live in, mind and body, is love. That should be the whole purpose of a life. And love strangely doesn't live in others alone. For it to exist at all, it has to include the self. It took me a long time to understand that, and my liquid, forgetful mind pulls me away from it constantly. But in a sea of spirals, love is the one thing that holds. The one thing that persists, and transcends.
Goodbye to the spiral of fear.
