It rains all the time where I grew up. I'm still growing, this time inwards instead of upwards, a spiral oozing its way towards the center of the labyrinth. Fuck the narrative arc: it's time to crown spirals as the new gods of story structure. Moving inwards means carving the solid soap-like substance of me into a precise and intentional pattern. Spirals occur in nature: a snail shell, a chameleon tail, a cyclone, a colony of salps. You don't know what a salp is, do you? I'm here to tell you that it's a planktonic tunicate that moves using jet propulsion. I would like to be a salp, transparent and gelatinous, living with fellow salps in enormous swarms deep in the ocean. I recognize that I‘m part of a greater pattern, but still feel compelled to carve myself up to form a pattern of my own. Humans are bad hive animals because we have a pesky streak of independence. At the same time, people who live by themselves for too long weaken and disintegrate, eaten up by their own pattern. I have no roadmap for getting to my center. I only know that I'm following a predetermined path towards it, narcotically irresistible in its determinate nature. When I have finished growing inwards I will have become a complete girl.
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