I was bed-ridden last weekend with a fever.  I have one about once a year, usually, coincidentally or not, in times of stress.  They last for a day or two and then recede.  During that time, I am possessed by geometric patterns - patters projected from within that need solving.  The feeling is difficult to describe.  I do not feel the impulse to solve patterns.  I do not make a choice.  The experience occurs at a level just below conscious.  My identity is not present in the analysis.  Just shapes.  Endless shapes and patterns.  My brain is the machine that explores and solves them.  The higher the fever, the harder this drives.   The cube was the geometric shape of last weekend.  Every time I found a place for a cube, more chaotic cubes would be revealed.  The activity lasted for hours.  In another instance, I can distinctly remember a particularly high fever, 104 degrees, of a few years ago.  I was constantly rotating pinwheel shapes in an effort to point them in the right direction. On the few occasions I was consciously aware of it’s happening, it felt maddeningly unstoppable.  It just seemed to propel the fever higher and higher - The Sisyphus inside.  But in a delirious state, the will melts away and I was unable to engage it. In a recent episode of Clever Apes, Jack Cowan discussed the possibility that hallucinations actually reflect the structure of the brain.  There is a systematic categorization of patterns here, whether they be drug, synesthetic, near-death or fever induced: a form constant.  The man who coined the term, Heinrich Klüver, found  four discreet categories: lattices, cobwebs, tunnels and spirals. So then, the lattices (cubes) and spirals (pinwheels) experienced during a fever are perhaps a conscious look into the invisible workings of the brain.  Structures in nature are scalable.  They work on the micro and macro levels.  It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to conclude that the patterns that mesmerize us when we look at them are just reflections of our own invisible inner-structure. ~ü

I was bed-ridden last weekend with a fever.  I have one about once a year, usually, coincidentally or not, in times of stress.  They last for a day or two and then recede.  During that time, I am possessed by geometric patterns - patters projected from within that need solving.  The feeling is difficult to describe.  I do not feel the impulse to solve patterns.  I do not make a choice.  The experience occurs at a level just below conscious.  My identity is not present in the analysis.  Just shapes.  Endless shapes and patterns.  My brain is the machine that explores and solves them.  The higher the fever, the harder this drives.  

The cube was the geometric shape of last weekend.  Every time I found a place for a cube, more chaotic cubes would be revealed.  The activity lasted for hours.  In another instance, I can distinctly remember a particularly high fever, 104 degrees, of a few years ago.  I was constantly rotating pinwheel shapes in an effort to point them in the right direction. On the few occasions I was consciously aware of it’s happening, it felt maddeningly unstoppable.  It just seemed to propel the fever higher and higher - The Sisyphus inside.  But in a delirious state, the will melts away and I was unable to engage it.

In a recent episode of Clever Apes, Jack Cowan discussed the possibility that hallucinations actually reflect the structure of the brain.  There is a systematic categorization of patterns here, whether they be drug, synesthetic, near-death or fever induced: a form constant.  The man who coined the term, Heinrich Klüver, found  four discreet categories: lattices, cobwebs, tunnels and spirals.

So then, the lattices (cubes) and spirals (pinwheels) experienced during a fever are perhaps a conscious look into the invisible workings of the brain.  Structures in nature are scalable.  They work on the micro and macro levels.  It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to conclude that the patterns that mesmerize us when we look at them are just reflections of our own invisible inner-structure.

~ü

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