There’s patterns everywhere,  in everything, I’m sure but I don’t actively seek them….they seem to come to me. Literature is full of patterns. Life is full of patterns. That’s how I usually write my essays – to find a pattern and then find meaning and symbolism within it.

I’m somehow comforted by patterns – to know that they exist, repeating themselves over and over. It gives predictability to unpredictability, it’s rhythm smoothing.

I detest the chaotic.  I don’t like not knowing about what is happening next. I don’t like not having the option of plotting the day, week or even month.  I don’t like randomness, even though I sort of think randomly (or maybe that’s just me and bizarre connections to things).

It’s true that I’m messy. But when someone tidies it up, it disorientates me, as if it disrupted a pattern that even I don’t really know ever existed. Some sort of pattern that only my intuition knows. That is not to say I find things easily – I don’t really, but I sure don’t with people move my stuff!

Despite my affinity with patterns, I hate math and cannot see the patterns in it. Apparently they’re there – people say there are. But I can’t see it or quantify it. I can’t make sense of the numbers in relation to the figures. They dissipate, empty of their supposed qualities.

I like rhythm, as a form of pattern. I do listen to music (mostly pretty relaxing stuff) contrary to popular belief. But I really like physical rhythms. It’s steady motion calms me. I especially like the motion of rhythm, leaning into the steady vibrating feel of the vehicle (buses, trains, cars). I learnt as a child to ignore my head banging into window as I slept on the school bus and now I find it comforting to feel the motion and the bumps. And somehow in the similar veins of movement, some things can hurt and feel good at the same time.

That is probably why I like riding horses too. I was never really the one to jump – the steady rhythm intercepted with the excitement of the horse, my inability to slow down (and half halt) said horse and the awkward small lurch through the air (in which I half dump my reins…oops).  It’s been a long time since I’ve jumped and I never really went that far in jumping – so I can’t say my recollection is correct. I might jump again with the right horse (after all, I did like jumping the infamously fat and lazy Dory) and if I can get into riding more (I only ride weekly) but I don’t think it’ll ever be my main focus. I like flatwork. Walk (okay, so we don’t actually work a lot in walk but it’s still good). Trot. Canter.  There is less unknown (of course with horses there is always an element of the unknown like invisible aliens in the ring corner that exist in a dimension only seen by your horse). There is less threat of being disconnected, although that does not mean the horse cannot pummel you through the air. At any rate, I never got far enough in jumping to really make an informed comment.

But it’s the rhythm that draws me. The steady beat of each gait (well, if you’re doing it right). Of the breath. Of everyone’s heartbeat, drumming the primeval drum. Every step pulsating, the rhythm steady, yet variable.  And then if  the world is still too empty, I can stop, lean down and let me arms embrace a sturdy neck (I ride English and this is also easy to do bareback – probably less comfy western though…).

The funniest thing about patterns though is that I suck at remembering them short term and I don’t necessarily remember all their details in my head when I try to.  Like I said, I don’t go actively looking for them. They come to me. Sometimes I’ll be thinking and then I think of the pattern of something in the literature and decide to use that for my essay. Sometimes I’ll just be deep and thought and then suddenly, I’ll notice patterns – of ideas, thoughts, visuals. When I close my eyes, it’s what I literally see, that is if I’m not thinking about something else…

Whatever the case. whether I’m looking for it or not – patterns and rhythms are everywhere.  Including how I’m unpopular I am. Hmmphh. (Well, people either like me or they really hate me or I simply don’t exist with the later being the most common and the first point being very, very, very rare…).

We need more unpopular, loner characters who are also good at nothing. I’m tired of characters having best close friends or loners finding love or being really, really, really good at something they love. But that’s another rant for another time.