Concentric Circles in Space

My mind travels in concentric loops.

It moves in circles around a point, like the planets revolve around the sun, or like water around a toilet bowl. (Dr. Patty Lovarco just screamed at me that planetary orbits are ellipses and not circles.)

As I grow and level up, I add new, larger circles, centered around the same point.

But the circles hit the same topics and themes, as if the phases of my mental loop are sunbeams that emanate outward from the center point, a psychic sunburst.

I go from people, and my relationships with them, to politics and the formal organization of those relationships. Then, in my irrepressible urge to connect on a personal level, I travel through words, poetry, and music.

As I wish my music and writing was better, I move on to self improvement and personal virtue. Virtue is necessary to create great art--ignore what the American anti-role-models say. My trips to the gym become more frequent, and my brainfood becomes more classical. I read more books of profound thought and meaning, and smoke less internet crack. I shift toward production instead of consumption--my garden grows and I buy fewer things. I build and fix and write songs.

Then, full of health and vigor, I feel like sharing. I look for a channel for energy output, and I search for friends, lovers, mates, and sex. I make family and communities wherever possible.

My understanding of these subjects, and my interactions with them, become larger and more profound as I get older, and the loop becomes larger.

These widenings of the loop seem to happen in discrete, noticeable jumps. I call these moments "hopping to a wider loop". A transformative event or epiphany occurs to me, and suddenly I'm capable and desirous of deeper, steeper mental journeys.

But the center of my orbit and the stops along the loop seem to remain the same in essence, like a large grandfather clock visits the same numbers as a small watch.

After my flare of sexual and social energy expires, I return to considering the nature of interpersonal relationships, hopefully in a wider circle due to some deep connection with a new friend or lover. Then I apply this new understanding to my political theories and ideals, and develop a new composite theory of statecraft and geopolitics.

Then, in an effort to communicate my new wisdom and ideas to others, I overflow with new poems and songs, and discover that I understand art whose meaning was previously opaque to me. As usual, I love what I've written for a while, and hate it after a longer while, which inspires the inevitable Nascar left turn to virtue and self-improvement, so I might write something better in the future.

The new, bigger circles take longer to travel, much as our vibrations might slow as we grow older. However, what might be lost in speed, I gain in finesse and understanding, like an older pitcher who can outsmart batters after his fastball slows.

My crossing through sexuality and sociability is much more intellectual and protracted in the wider circles. In the inner circles, I'm simply horny. In the wider circles, I say things like, "sex is half of creation", and consider the spiritual content of my emissions. I recognize my brain as a sexual organ, and spend longer in that phase as well.

I frequently wonder if the point at the center of these loops moves as well, like the sun revolves around the center of the milky way. Can I shift the circles to an entirely new place if I need to? Perhaps that's the next level after we stop growing...to gain the ability to move our loops to a new base.

One thing I know for sure is that I haven't yet reached the outermost planet. I'm including "dwarf planets" in my concept of planets for the purpose of this discussion. Perhaps Pluto and her friends are smaller because we carry less baggage at that layer of solar orbit.