Walking in Spirals

Mostly, I have thought of form as linear, as three-part—beginning, middle, and ending, perhaps, or introduction, problem, resolution—but as I have been traveling and thinking and writing these past few months, as I reconsider narrative form again and again (and particularly after reading MEANDER, SPIRAL, EXPLODE by Jane Alison earlier this spring, a book on rethinking form through nature) I am beginning to experience the relationship of physical form to narrative form, and the linear has spiraled out to become other things. Spirals. Seashells, galaxies, hurricanes, blossoms—all these shapes have a center that binds, and a dissipation outwards, expanding forever, perhaps. And, with all this on my mind, and perhaps also in my bones, I have come to think about my own wanderings in reverse; as I trace an edge then move towards a center, an origin, I can find a way to understand a place, as I explore it.

I began to see the possibilities in edge-to-center movement when I asked a friend in Shanghai about how best to approach Beijing’s gargantuan Forbidden City; her answer: “Everyone goes to the middle, the big buildings. I started at the edges; no crowds, and the most interesting stuff was there anyway.” When I traveled there, her voice came to me, following me on my way around the ancient palace complex and leading me slowly towards the crowded garden at its heart, then out again, marveling at my ability to flit through the mass, to find peace in the edges. And before that, when Lee first came to hang out in China with me, I sensed his knew this thing about the edges from the very first (of many, many) Buddhist temple we went to together, as I followed him first around the perimeters of the space and then finally to the grandest Buddhas in the center. There was something about saving the golden gods until the end, and then, finally, turning away, that made the excursion feel complete, whole. We repeated this pattern again and again throughout our China adventure. And as I have brought this form with me to Spain too, I have come to see that the center of a wandering functions based on what you have heard is the center, but of it always turns out to be something else.

In Cordoba, for example, the Mezquita, which was a 5-minute walk from my AirBnB was to be my center, my target, my last stop, and so initially I only walked around its gigantic stone walls, going on my first morning there to Medinat Zahra, the ruins of an Ummayad city a few miles out of town. This was an auspicious beginning, a scorching hot day, the ruins not much to see but a lot to imagine. Then back in town I continued meandering around the Old City’s twisty lanes, including stopping at the synagogue (one of only three left in Spain, I was told, after the two I had seen in Toledo), down many more twisty streets, and then finally through the orange-tree filled courtyard and into the Mezquita, a vast marble-floored building full of row upon row of majestic arches. In one corner, there were ruins from when the space was a Visigothic church, and, along one wall, archways ornamented with intricately carved calligraphy, the mihrab. What was in the center in the square of this space? A main cathedral. The story being that the Catholics reclaimed the building from the Muslims. That they had been meant to be there all along. That part of the construction had an opulence that didn’t match the rest, the mishmash of both was gorgeous, fascinating, and strange. But was it the center of my journey? No. I ended up going back the next morning and getting one of the limited tickets to climb to the top of the tower, where church bells now chime, where the izaan had once been sung by the muezzin and I also sat for a very long time in the courtyard under the arches, counting all the languages I heard from all the tourists passing by me… The center is me and not me. The center is the thing we make and remake by seeking it…