March 26, 2003
-
PotFeet gives me a writing assignment: ‘spinning.’
I considered learning about making yarn and thus spinning a yarn about spinning, but I decided to combine it with the assignment about childhood memories.
I remember that for some reason there was Silly String in the house. I was about 6 or 7 at the time, I suppose.
To me, the best thing about Silly String was that you could wad it up, and it’d make this ball of spongy stuff with an interesting texture.
Being a weird kid, I put the ball of Silly String on the rug and began to run around it, my eyes fixed on it, the rest of the world moving around it in parallax. The rug was a big corded spiral type rug; white in the center and progressively more brown toward the edge. The spiralled groove formed stripes of shadow and light in my vision, constantly moving and in deep contrast.
I got queasy, but couldn’t look away. I ran and ran. I had a strange realization: That when I stopped, and looked up, I’d be even more queasy than I was at that point. So I just kept going.
I don’t recall how long I did that, staring at the ball of flourescent yellow Silly String as I ran in circles.
Finally I stopped. I think I fell to the floor and spread out, laying on my back. I think the only thing I could do was laugh, but that it made the queasiness worse. I think my mom came and told me the bad feeling would go away, except I knew that it wasn’t really a bad feeling, just what happens when you do what I had done.
I’ve been thinking about how childhood is a sort of rehearsal for life in a lot of ways. Not just in terms of socialization, but in terms of expanding the individual’s consciousness into what it means to live in a human body.
And I think little kids spin around sometimes so they’ll have some experience with being dizzy, to serve them later on, when they grow up to drink too much, get stoned, have inner ear infections, or become Sufis.
Comments (6)
giggle. now talk about the sun?
holding your breath will give you a good buzz, too.
there aren’t enough references to the Whirling Dervishes on Xanga.
Sufis. *snort*
My grandmother remembers a moment in my childhood when I had ass-length hair, which my mother braided into two long braids on either side of my head. She said I was at their house and had so much energy that I was spinning and spinning and spinning and my braids were swinging STRAIGHT OUT because I was going in circles so fast.
Thanks for the funny memory, and your account of spinning.
Reminds me of spinning on a playground swing. You would lay on it stomach or chest down on the seat while friends would twist and twist and twist the chain until finally they let go.
And there you go.
Spin spin spin.
…learning to fit into our bodies…
and they keep changing on us, dang it…