Spirals

There was a man who saw the world as a collection of spirals. He would watch traffic as it went past and as the tires spun they would warp and form spirals in his eyes. The traffic would ebb and flow into the traffic circle, forming a large ever shifting spiral and the road veered off at various angles in an ever larger spiral. The man would sit on the bench in the plaza, while the pine trees at a distant park spiraled into the sky.

Walking down the sidewalk, ribbons spiraled up the lampposts in a corkscrew of red, white, and blue. Those same colors comprised the blades on a paper windmill in a small boy’s hand. Giggling in delight the small boy spun himself round and round. As the boy turned faster and faster so did the blades of the toy and in the man’s eyes the child blurred into a laughing spiral. The man moved on as the small boy fell in a dizzy heap.

Large umbrellas lined both sides of the street with spiral designs of blue, green, yellow and red. Taking shelter in the shade of the umbrella, young women adorned in skirts of swirling colors twirled the umbrellas like parasols forming spirals upon spirals in the man’s eyes.

Dancers and floats and a marching band filled the street. The dancers whirled and spun holding red streamers as they danced around the floats. Candies rained down from the floats and a young girl picked up a red and white mint spiral, tucking it into a small bag. The band played a tune that twirled like the dancers. The drum majors baton, done up in the same fashion as the lamp posts, kept the time. The tuba’s large bells were decorated with a large spiral like a maelstrom, and they bobbed back and forth with the baton.

The man ripped his eyes away from the display of spirals as though they might drill into his brain through his eyes. He ran, leaving the people and street behind, but spirals sprouted from ground in front of him, threatening to trip him up. He ran into a cafe that had a spiral on the door. The woman that took his order had spirals in her hair and the coffee he ordered had spirals of foam.

The chair legs were spirals. The tabletop was a spiral. The man pulled a spiral bound notebook from his bag. The words incorporated large spirals and small spirals in flourishes as he worked his spiraled pen.

The coffee slowly drained while the pages steadily filled. The man worked and the spirals began to disappear from the world around him one by one until they existed only on the paper. The man drained the last of his coffee. When he put the notebook and pen away a smile crept onto his face. The world was no longer spiraling beyond control.