Might be a strange question, but is it wrong to think rhetorically about bands of a spiral? One of those random thoughts that get stuck in your head because logic, curiosity, something about it stalls and stays there. Like those black and white spirals, where does the black band end if the white is the background? Where does the white band end if the black is the background? Does it ever end if they're both bands spinning into each other, over and over and over again? Did it even start if both colors are in the background, moving, but only occupying half of someone's awareness as they're caught up in some other thing or idea or set of words filling them up? If a spiral spins in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, is it still hypnotic? 

Ha ha. Ok, maybe that last one is the kind of classic rhetorical everyone's used to, but I still think it's a pretty unique kind of rhetorical about spirals in general. Kind of hard to define since it never stops to be fully analyzed, so it just keeps on spinning, meaning the only analysis you can do is to watch it spin around and around, just trying to keep up with the bands, trying to study the end of one band, as it creates vague circle upon circle of a circle within a smaller circle, swallowed by an even smaller circle, until you're at what looks or just feels like the center, spinning at a constant, oddly comfortable speed where reaction is so much easier that action, where following is so much easier than leading, where sinking is so much easier than thinking. It's a pace too overwhelming to really analyze. It's so constant and so insistent that to analyze it really means to get pulled into it, reigned in for the full, unrelenting ride that never stops. Stuck on a permanent, surprisingly relaxing spin cycle, sinking into it, spacing out from anything else that could've been around you. What else is there really when the borders of awareness are circles that don't stop. Trying to pull yourself out of it is like trying to pull yourself out of a swirling pit of color. If you try to pull away and out, what color do you grasp onto? Is the white more grippable than black? How can you be sure the black is less slippery than the white? Is any color really designed to help you escape from that downward spiral you were trying to analyze? As long as you've been trying to analyze the spiral, have you had any luck yet? Have you had to resort to trying to rationally make comparisons to something similar for your analysis?

What about gravitation pull as a similarity? Hard to imagine? Maybe, just because with gravity, we're used to being pulled straight down. But what if there was a perpetual forward motion you could maintain from Earth's orbit. Constant walking, jogging, running, swimming, flying, driving, riding any forward motion you can think of that you enjoy best at a comfortable, unending pace. Because the earth is so big, the constant motion would feel like a constant straight line. But your forward motion is the only motion in motion. You are going forward, and downward. You push forward, and gravity pulls downward. Starting from space, you're kept moving forward, pulled into the earth's atmosphere, the black of space turning into the blue sky, to the white clouds, to the green of forests and trees, to the brown of dirt and ground, into the black of underground, to maybe blue of an ocean, to more black ground beneath it, colors getting lighter once you pierce the outer core, still moving comfortably until all the bright colors lead you to the heat of the white hot core. Such a long, inevitable journey, such a prime example of push and pull, so many descriptive colors along the way, none more common than the black and white you saw as you spiraled all the way down to the core, the center. Another center to get a little stuck in, because really, where would you want to go from here? Were you supposed to be anywhere else except where you are now? Would the pull of gravity really let you go anywhere else? I don't think it would let you go, really. It's pull is so persuasive, it has a habit of not letting go, letting nothing escape. Kind of like acoustics.

You ever been in a room with what they call perfect acoustics? Acoustics by itself is funny as a science of sound. You'd think it'd be simple. A sound is made, it travels, and gets reverberated on and picked up by really whoever happens to be listening. You make a sound in a small room, everyone will hear it. You make a sound in a banquet hall, maybe someone hears it. You make a sound in a cave, the structure allows for some amazing echoes so people from far distances might hear the sound you make. And those perfect acoustics, made for like opera halls, when the singers hit those high notes, what kind of material do they build or insulate the walls with to make it so perfect? How does that note travel from the center or edge of the stage, at the edge of the hall, bounce all the way off the balconies off to the side, to the upper deck, to the balconies on the other side, from top to bottom, around a bit, until it reaches your seat right in the center of the audience, of the hall? I mean, you'd think it would hit the musical note would just come straight at you. Some of it does for sure, but that's a lot less interesting than notes bouncing off walls, traveling at a slow speed of sound all over a room, from one wall to the next, from one end to the other, the power of that note never thinning out never wavering as it swirls around the room till it hits that lovely center, where you are, seated, comfortable, happy to be the center of attention of sorts, inescapably raptured in that comfort by words spiraling all around you. Amazing, right? Who comes up with these laws of physics anyway?

One of them was named Newton, FYI. The great scientific mind behind the yet-to-be-broken laws that have governed how we live our lives. Just like civic or government laws, everyone has their favorite. Mine has to be his first - "an object in motion, stays in motion." A lot of objects, twisting, arresting shapes can be like that, lots of conversations too, even the one-sided ones where only one side is talking and the other is just delegated to listening. It's still an exchange of communication and participation, shared between two interested parties. I've probably talked about several things that apply to Newton's first law today, and if I was right about conversations, won't be the last. Crazy how someone that influential, if you believe the stories I've heard about his later life, was such a weird down spiral. "Never sensible to passion, no commerce with women," Voltaire said about him. The heights this guy had, to think of falling from those heights must've meant he fell some kind of hard and quickly down, spiraling down, and the influence with it. An influence spiraling down sounds like a bad thing, but is it? It's just a direction, and going down isn't always good, but how bad can it be as long as it still obeys that first Newton law? Goes down, spirals down, never stopping, destined to arrive at whatever centered destination one is supposed to be at, stuck because they're destined to be at that destination, always in motion, even if that motion is meant to be circling, spiraling into itself.

Spiraling into...wait, spirals. Almost forgot what the original topic was. But thinking back, it feels like I've said the word a lot, or implied it; nice to know it never left my thoughts, still spinning, still bearing the power of interpretation, influence, and rhetoric. What do I mean by 'rhetoric'? Is that a thought that crosses your occupied mind? As I think I've just proven, there can be a lot to say about spirals, the designs themselves, and things that spiral just like those designs. A picture is worth a thousand words, so an animated picture of a spiral must be worth thousands of thousands, all of those describing the descent, the void, constructing that void, words sinking into it, pulling you along for the ride until your at the center, spinning with those words spinning inside you. And why wouldn't those words be spinning in you? You've barely had a word to contribute to this talk, but you do seem fixed on it, like everything I say makes sense, like I'm that spiral center, spinning words like webs that stick to you, no matter how fluid everything else around you is.

Spinning and spinning, like a washer and dryer. Mostly the washer, if everything is wet, liquid, slick, something easy to sink into. In fact, that gravity talk we were having earlier, heard from somewhere that the Earth's core, and its gravitational force is due to the fact that it spins. The fact that it spins endlessly means the pull of words for you feels endless. How would you ever feel like you could pull away if the words don't stop flowing? If they don't stop spinning and being spun, how could you ever hope to pull yourself away? Words are often much too strong to be resisted. Our minds love words, process them as fast as we can receive them, addicted to information and data, and when the data tells you that you want to listen and you want to stay put to listen, kind of redundant since you are already listening and staying put to listen. You've got no reason to try to think about doing anything else. And if that wasn't bad enough, in case you've forgotten, you're at the core, the center of that pull, where the force is at its strongest, where you are just comfortably helpless, spinning out of control and into the control of the words surrounding you, pooling and stirring inside you. 

That kind of brings me back to that washer analogy was starting to like before I sidetracked myself again. Don't know why I keep doing that, maybe like how you don't know why someone decided to set you in a washer, shut you off from everything else and turn the settings to practically permanent. You don't really have to be wet in this if you like, and you don't have to really be spinning. It can be like that acoustics hall where things are just spinning around you, spoken from one end, circling around you as words bounce off of the walls around you until they bounce into your ears and then they're just bouncing off the walls of your head, taking the same path into any crevice or hole it could fill. If you don't mind the idea of liquid and flowing, it could be like water slipping perfectly into you, flooding at a pace your mind finds ecstatic, soaking every word as it's all interesting and forms a narrative that not only shapes itself but you also in the process. Around and around those words go, like the band of the spiral, the thing I'm still getting semi-sidetracked about, the thing you look very sidetracked about, which makes me smile. 

I really didn't mean to go this far with this discussion with my chattering self, but I admittedly love when I can just go off on wonderful tangents without complaint. And you look so at peace throughout this, without complaint or issue, like you like it, like it's kind of shaping you. I guess unlike Newton and his genius, I'm just a savant that makes great things almost by accident. But like Newton being an authority of his fields, maybe I'm in a position to establish some laws myself, laws people or persons of interest can navigate their lives and thoughts around. Like laws for any society, they can be like borders, bound to them, like your mind's eye bound to the bands of the spiral, because I don't think your mental imagery of the spiral ever really went away. How could it when I went from describing one, to describing things that can act like one? It's still spinning in your mind with every example I've given it, isn't it? Powered by words that give it energy to spin and keep you between the bands of a spiral, acting like protective barriers where the unimportant get filtered out and your safe amongst the bands where my words find you, speak to your deepest parts, educate and keep you well-informed of truths worth noting, carrying you from center to circumference, convincing you how happy you are to stay and assimilate more. 

And come to think of it, ever forgetful me forgot to explain why I brought up spirals in the first place - the hypnotic concept of open loops. It's amazing for me, because it just happens to be a speaking pattern of mine that I slip back into like comfortable slippers. So many things to bring up, speaking about, often overlapping something to get to something else. This would be the oldest habit to die hard, if it ever died, which it really didn't. And how glad I am that it never died; in-fact I think it's going to remain alive and well for the foreseeable future, and not just in me. It'll be so fun to get sidetracked with a friend. You might be saying something, thinking of things, but there will be times when I interrupt, go really ham on a subject or six, and just pull you in. You know that pull well now, it's got you in its happy grip, speaking to your interested parts about why you should listen and just let go to it. And if it helps, when this happen, your minds eye can start to replay a black and white spiral in your head, an image becoming clearer and clearer as it represents how you're feeling, how you like to feel. Brainwashed, thankfully sidetracked from your own thoughts, woven into words that sound like thoughts you should be thinking about. And that's not all; how glorious would it be if you could be like this instantly? Sometimes it's fun to take the slow way, sometimes its fun to be taken with the fewest words possible, to really show you their power. So I'll never forget what this long, lovely talk about in the first place, let the trigger to this receptive state you're in be this - 'Open Loops.' Just these two words, just from me, and that spiral spins you're relaxing all the way into that listening state that makes me want to go off on all the tantalizing tangents with you. 'Open Loops,' those awesome Open Loops, that expand your capacity for words hearing it while you're already like this. Sweeter than fruit loops, more circles than loop de loops, Open Loops are your jam now.

So what do you think? Just spinning my wheels with this, mouth and mind always in-motion, bringing yours along for the ride? Do you even want to think about it? Can't say, huh? I guess I can understand that. Surprisingly, I think I'm getting a little tired of talking, and would like to hear your voice a little now. So you're going to come up in a minute, naturally, at your own pace. It'll be like you just had a little daydream that made you feel great, though what it was escaped your mind. You'll see I won't mind, and you'll find something great we can talk about together. Enjoy that thought as you start to come up slowly now.

Oh, and hope you can forgive me because I feel the urge to slip in a few words here and there, then you'll really have to be forgiving once I dominate the conversation, or just you all over again. Start imagining forgiving me as you come up too, the Open Loops are already calling to me, and can't wait to see you pick up that phone.