Photo by Jeff Golenski
Spinning Spirals Circling Stillness
Tracy Rose Stamper
Surface stillness. Open highways. Quiet neighborhoods. Empty playgrounds. Schools.
Scratch the surface and see spirals. Spirals embedded within spirals. Movement within stillness, locked down by spiraled front door latches.
A global learning curve so steep it curls into a spiral. We are all learning. Almost no one alive today has navigated a global pandemic of this scale, just those who lived through the 1920 Spanish flu as babies. Eighteen twenty saw the cholera pandemic. Seventeen twenty was plagued by the Great Plague of Marseille. Centuries spiral. The Fibonacci-Fauci phenomenon circles itself today. The ouroboros snake swallows its tail in a cyclical tale as old as time. Confidence swallows its tail. I can do this. What is this? I will do this. How can we do this when we don’t know what this is? I stay informed. I don’t know . . . Centrifugal mind force fields spinning. Emotions ride roller coasters. Spirals designed to adrenalize.
Adrenalized humans locked down solo or in small clusters. Roommates. Couples. Families. Emotional landscapes contained; nowhere to release the energy ricocheting off the walls. Oooof! Ceiling. Floor. Moods ricochet. Toy spinning tops bouncing off one another until we drop. Sleep cycles into wakefulness.
Movement boomerangs back into itself. Bodies crave movement. Movement craves space. With space currently cloistered, we circle within confines of four walls cubed by ceiling and floor. Movements mash into themselves. We hamster the wheel, becoming elliptical machines on elliptical machines. Working out inverts into working down. Spiraling down. Drill bits. Focused. Intense. Heart rate spirals. Interval training. Spikes. Quick breaths of exertion ease into even, steady expansion. Hearts release fists into rhythms of relaxation. Until the next interval. This pattern spins us from anxiety to calm. Movement keeps panic at bay. (I keep telling myself so.)
Yesterday spirals into today into tomorrow. What day is it anyway? Wednesday? Saturday? Whatnesday? 1918? Day spirals into night. Time marked by cycles of light. I cycle back in time to what soothes me. Naps. Baths. Comforters. Carb loading, though the closest I’ll come to a marathon is the circuit from my Netflix couch perch to my bed.
Time twists me back. Decades. Am I orbiting another descent into depression? Concern spirals until I breathe into the knowing that—at least for now—I am afloat. I know depression. We have been orbiting spirals around one another for decades. I know the nothingness of emotional flatlining. Sidelined from life. This is not that. This is cycling through depressed moods during a depressing time. This is that roller coaster, whose (evil) genius is the configuration of disorienting spirals.
As within, so without. Ricocheting within walls, words cement walls. Left ricochets right and right ricochets left. Words spin past ears. How to find middle ground when we spin further away from center? Spin doctors twist all into politics. We need medical doctors. Not spin doctors.
Restless, will we we rush recklessly into the thick of it? Cut into the quick of it? Repeating spirals of spikes? Will we continue orbiting madly around the truth? Or will we pick up the stuck record’s needle? We’re glitching. Itching for a reboot. Will we begin to see children’s dependence on digitalized lives as an adaptive evolutionary feat? Stop deriding it as maladaptive behavior? We’re the ones who put those screens that spun out of our control in their hands.
Life cycles signal roles. Grown children ground parents. Fear fuels worries of life cycles cut short. Don’t let ashes and dust return to ashes and dust too soon, we pray. We will lose loved ones; return them to Mother Earth. Tears will soak the ground. The water cycle as expressed through human bodies, emotions, tears, prayers. Spinning prayers. Prayer wheels. Prayer chains. Mala beads spiral fingertips, breaths. Rosaries elicit recitations. We, whirling dervishes, spinning. Hope. Despair. Love. Desperation. Celebration. Loss. Life.
May we spiral deeper, discover more nestling closer to our core. The heart of what truly matters. May we remember and become our hearts’ lessons. May we be the eye of the storm once the world spins madly on again. This is my prayer in the dance of spirals made visible. What will we see of 2020 with 20/20 hindsight? How to chart having lived through surreal days, sometimes in a daze, sometimes consciously birthing the new? We are the art of reinvention, painted in shades of dark and light. Spirograph art.
Everywhere, spirals. Movement within stillness.
Tracy Rose Stamper
Surface stillness. Open highways. Quiet neighborhoods. Empty playgrounds. Schools.
Scratch the surface and see spirals. Spirals embedded within spirals. Movement within stillness, locked down by spiraled front door latches.
A global learning curve so steep it curls into a spiral. We are all learning. Almost no one alive today has navigated a global pandemic of this scale, just those who lived through the 1920 Spanish flu as babies. Eighteen twenty saw the cholera pandemic. Seventeen twenty was plagued by the Great Plague of Marseille. Centuries spiral. The Fibonacci-Fauci phenomenon circles itself today. The ouroboros snake swallows its tail in a cyclical tale as old as time. Confidence swallows its tail. I can do this. What is this? I will do this. How can we do this when we don’t know what this is? I stay informed. I don’t know . . . Centrifugal mind force fields spinning. Emotions ride roller coasters. Spirals designed to adrenalize.
Adrenalized humans locked down solo or in small clusters. Roommates. Couples. Families. Emotional landscapes contained; nowhere to release the energy ricocheting off the walls. Oooof! Ceiling. Floor. Moods ricochet. Toy spinning tops bouncing off one another until we drop. Sleep cycles into wakefulness.
Movement boomerangs back into itself. Bodies crave movement. Movement craves space. With space currently cloistered, we circle within confines of four walls cubed by ceiling and floor. Movements mash into themselves. We hamster the wheel, becoming elliptical machines on elliptical machines. Working out inverts into working down. Spiraling down. Drill bits. Focused. Intense. Heart rate spirals. Interval training. Spikes. Quick breaths of exertion ease into even, steady expansion. Hearts release fists into rhythms of relaxation. Until the next interval. This pattern spins us from anxiety to calm. Movement keeps panic at bay. (I keep telling myself so.)
Yesterday spirals into today into tomorrow. What day is it anyway? Wednesday? Saturday? Whatnesday? 1918? Day spirals into night. Time marked by cycles of light. I cycle back in time to what soothes me. Naps. Baths. Comforters. Carb loading, though the closest I’ll come to a marathon is the circuit from my Netflix couch perch to my bed.
Time twists me back. Decades. Am I orbiting another descent into depression? Concern spirals until I breathe into the knowing that—at least for now—I am afloat. I know depression. We have been orbiting spirals around one another for decades. I know the nothingness of emotional flatlining. Sidelined from life. This is not that. This is cycling through depressed moods during a depressing time. This is that roller coaster, whose (evil) genius is the configuration of disorienting spirals.
As within, so without. Ricocheting within walls, words cement walls. Left ricochets right and right ricochets left. Words spin past ears. How to find middle ground when we spin further away from center? Spin doctors twist all into politics. We need medical doctors. Not spin doctors.
Restless, will we we rush recklessly into the thick of it? Cut into the quick of it? Repeating spirals of spikes? Will we continue orbiting madly around the truth? Or will we pick up the stuck record’s needle? We’re glitching. Itching for a reboot. Will we begin to see children’s dependence on digitalized lives as an adaptive evolutionary feat? Stop deriding it as maladaptive behavior? We’re the ones who put those screens that spun out of our control in their hands.
Life cycles signal roles. Grown children ground parents. Fear fuels worries of life cycles cut short. Don’t let ashes and dust return to ashes and dust too soon, we pray. We will lose loved ones; return them to Mother Earth. Tears will soak the ground. The water cycle as expressed through human bodies, emotions, tears, prayers. Spinning prayers. Prayer wheels. Prayer chains. Mala beads spiral fingertips, breaths. Rosaries elicit recitations. We, whirling dervishes, spinning. Hope. Despair. Love. Desperation. Celebration. Loss. Life.
May we spiral deeper, discover more nestling closer to our core. The heart of what truly matters. May we remember and become our hearts’ lessons. May we be the eye of the storm once the world spins madly on again. This is my prayer in the dance of spirals made visible. What will we see of 2020 with 20/20 hindsight? How to chart having lived through surreal days, sometimes in a daze, sometimes consciously birthing the new? We are the art of reinvention, painted in shades of dark and light. Spirograph art.
Everywhere, spirals. Movement within stillness.