I became obsessed with symmetry some months ago. I would feel it more than see it, in an erotic sense or an emotional sense - everything in equal halves; I wanted to draw the straightest line down the middle of my body. I wanted to live on the center line of the Rorschach.

Nature throws a lot of symmetry. Teeth and toes as are horns and hooves. The liver really throws you off though as do the intestines and a spleen. I skirt these physical outliers and narrow my preoccupation to the metaphorical sense. Actions and reactions. Essentially Newtons third law. Maybe I'll teach a physics class at my new school.

Lusty for this new descriptive tactic, I began to silently categorize all of my experiences as functions of a sine wave. The amplitude of the crests corresponding to the troughs. A drought/a deluge. Ecstasy/Misery. Sometimes I save the water I wash salad greens in, the next week I take a bath. The pendulum swings.

It's what we didn't get as children, or in past consciousness that we so desperately crave now.

If I'm talking about symmetry, I may also be talking about karma. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I have a second cousin named Karma... as a child her name registered as notable. Even before I knew what the word meant (although can anyone know?) I knew it was very different than my name, and that she was different from me - her family different from mine. Its a reminder to me how powerful language - the act of naming, describing and labeling is. I like to pretend I could merge myself into the world of the animals around me who have no language. No math. For them relational hierarchy seems much simpler. The mystery of love reduced to nature's laws of gene distribution.

A mysterious anger visits me often. It is so strong I want to break dishes, slam things. I fantasize about being tied up and beat up in bed and then being cared for; my body oiled and wrapped in warm towels. If I allow it to fully boil then the heat dissipates and is followed by an overwhelming sadness. Does it matter where this comes from? I'm tired of intellectualizing it and trying to assign it's origin.

Symmetry or any other creative metaphor I dispatch hovers above the one terrifying thing I know to be true: in the end, I am always left alone with myself.