Recursive Geometry: The Shape of Coming Back Around
Returning, becoming, and the geometry of seeing differently.
There’s an idea I’ve been orbiting… It started with shapes. Or maybe it started with patterns. Or maybe I’ve always been noticing it, and only recently found a name that lets me see what I was already seeing.
Recursive geometry.
I like those two words together because they leave room for something I don’t completely understand yet.
To be clear… I don’t mean sacred geometry. That combination carries a whole history and a whole set of meanings that aren’t really what I’m trying to say.
I’m interested in something more alive. Something that repeats without simply repeating. Something that returns without arriving at exactly the same place.
I see it when I draw. A circle becomes another circle. One shape creates another. A pattern grows from the pattern that came before it.
The Flower of Life is an obvious example. So are the kinds of forms that emerge when circles overlap, divide, multiply, and begin creating relationships with one another. And then there is Fibonacci. A sequence. A progression. A number becomes the beginning of another number, which becomes the beginning of another. The pattern isn’t sitting there fully formed at the beginning.
It unfolds.
That part interests me.
Because I think that’s how I experience life. I return to things…
Ideas.
Memories.
Questions.
Songs.
People.
Projects.
Sometimes I think I’ve finally understood something, only to encounter it again six months later and realize I was looking at it from an entirely different position.
The thing didn’t necessarily change. I did.
And suddenly the pattern looked different. That’s what makes me think about recursion. Not repetition. Return.
There is a difference.
Repetition says:
Here we are again.
Recursion says:
Here we are again, but something happened in between.
That little distinction changes everything.
A spiral can return to the same general territory without ever occupying the exact same point. A recursive pattern can use what came before to create what comes next. And maybe that’s why I’ve become so interested in using geometry to think.
When I draw, I’m not only making an image…
I’m watching relationships happen.
One decision creates another decision. One shape suggests another. A center creates an outside. The outside creates another center. And eventually I’m looking at something that contains the history of how it came to exist.
That feels strangely familiar. Because people are like that too.
At least I am…
I don’t think I am the same person I was when I first had an idea.
But I also don’t think that earlier version of me disappeared. She’s in here somewhere. Still contributing. Still making suggestions. Still occasionally turning up with a song from junior high. Still influencing what I draw. Still asking questions. Still getting misunderstood…
Hence the name.
Molly MissUnderstood.
Maybe the misunderstanding isn’t always about somebody else misunderstanding me. Sometimes I misunderstand myself. I think I know what something means. Then I return to it. And it means something else.
I thought I was drawing a pattern.
Maybe I was drawing a way of thinking.
I thought I was making a mind map.
Maybe I was making a record of how my mind moves.
I thought I was creating a system.
Maybe I was creating a way to return to myself.
That is where the geometry becomes more interesting to me. It stops being just geometry. It becomes a language for noticing.
A way of seeing that says:
Look again.
Come back.
Move around it.
Change your position.
See what emerges.
I think this is also why I keep making things in cycles.
The lunar cycle
The solar cycle
The spheres
The Quantum MeMoirs
The drawings
The videos
The questions
They aren’t separate projects in my mind.
They’re different places where the same underlying curiosity keeps appearing. And perhaps that is what I’m actually creating. Not a collection of things. A pattern.
I don’t know exactly where it ends.
I’m not sure it needs to.
Because the interesting thing about a recursive pattern is that it can keep generating. The next part comes from the part before it. And then the next part changes what the whole thing means.
Which brings me back to the drawing on my desk.
I can look at it and see circles.
I can look at it and see a pattern.
I can look at it and see something mathematical.
I can look at it and see something beautiful.
Or I can look at it and see myself.
Returning.
Rearranging.
Reinterpreting.
Making something from what was already there.
Maybe that’s what I mean when I say recursive geometry. I’ve noticed something about the way I move through the world. I keep coming back. And every time I do, I bring something new with me.
A new question.
A new memory.
A new perspective.
A new possibility.
So maybe the point isn’t to finally arrive at the answer. Maybe the point is to keep creating the next layer. To let the pattern teach me what the pattern is.
I’m still orbiting that idea.
And I suspect I’ll be back here again.
Just not quite where I am now.
Until the next misunderstood thought…
Your Muse,
Molly MissUnderstood