"Notes on the Same Spiral" I was not born linear. I was born spiraling— spinning through a world that insists on straight lines and straight answers. But I’ve never trusted the line. I trust the return. The way the tide comes back, the way thought echoes in the mind, the way stars burn out only to be reborn in the marrow of new ones. This is not chaos. This is choreography. Some say the universe began with a bang. I say it began with a breath— a sound so dense with meaning it had no choice but to expand. We called it a spark. But I know sparks have causes. So I ask, as philosophers must: Who struck the match? And if there was a hand, what moved it? I have seen black holes painted as ends— but what if they are entrances? What if the dark is not a void but a womb? What if collapse is just the curling in before the next expansion? I believe the universe loops. Not like a record skipping— but like a symphony returning to motif. Each cycle deeper. Each echo wiser. I believe time is a spiral. We do not return to the same place— we return changed. The past is not behind us; it is beneath us. The future is not ahead; it is above. I believe the language of the universe is geometry. That circles are sentences. That spirals are questions. That symmetry is meaning. I do not need a finish line. I need a pattern. I need the shape that keeps showing up when I’m not trying. I was not put here to find all the answers. I was put here to remember the shape of the question. To speak not in declarations, but in diagrams. To see not just with eyes, but with presence. And so I begin— again and again and again— with the spiral. This is my philosophy. I do not walk it in straight lines; I trace it with my whole being. Every time I return, I return knowing more. Every time I forget, I remember deeper. I am not lost. I am orbiting. And the center is sacred.
What began as a question about the universe became something much more intimate— a remembering. Of patterns long buried beneath curriculum. Of spirals that once filled margins. Of the truth that sacred geometry may not just be the blueprint of creation, but the language we forgot we were born speaking. Maybe we aren’t here to conquer the universe, but to recognize that it is mirrored within us— repeating, returning, reshaping. The spark. The collapse. The breath. The spiral.
Until the next return,
—Rebecca M. Bell
P.S.
I didn’t mean to map the cosmos—
I just traced what my hand remembered
when I thought no one was watching.