This is the fifth of five pieces from The Spiral Dreams Series.
I went through a period when I dreamt about spirals all the time. And then I started noticing them all around me in real life. I couldn't quite work out what it meant to begin with but because they were recurring and occurring everywhere suddenly, I instinctively began to draw out what it was feeling like on paper and these are some of the pieces that turned up, which incidentally reminded me of other things as well as the dreams in question.
I eventually found out however, that the Spiral is an NSIBIDI SYMBOL for "Trekking" which was what I found myself doing a lot of in the period when these dreams were occurring, and for a few years afterwards, in order to get away from quite a fair bit of unpleasantness in my surroundings at the time.
I was forced to go out every day on very long walks, sometimes in the middle of the night till the early hours of the morning. In hindsight it was actually very beneficial to my health and far better than going to a gym because I could hear myself think clearly in those small hours of the morning and at night when there was literally no one about.
NSIBIDI is the name of an ancient African pictorial-type Script belonging to the IBIBIO people of South Eastern Nigeria.
In one of these dreams I found myself in the Centre of a Spiral Circle surrounded by a group of seemingly happy Tribal People from the North. They were dancing backwards and outwards towards the circumference of the Spiral Circle and then forward and inwards towards me in the Centre.
I began to feel very nauseous and ill from the seeming ritual continousness of it . And it soon dawned on me that it was in my best interest to remove myself from whatsoever this was that I appeared to be participating in without my consent.
As soon as I thought that, I found myself outside the Spiral. And the tribes people were now regarding me with utter shock and a lack of comprehension because they couldn't work out how I got out.
I actually tried to leave a couple of times previously when they danced backwards and outwards away from me but then they would dance inwards again into the spiral centre and hem me in.
I was already in tears by the time I realised that I had to leave without letting anyone know my intention. So I calmed myself down and pretended that I was not going to escape anymore and that was when it happened that I found myself outside.
It seemed as if something was broken after I'd left the centre and the tribes people couldn't get me back there. They didn't even attempt to buy just looked at me in stunned disbelief as I removed myself from thereabouts.
