Patterns

I tend to look for patterns in everything. I'm comforted by symmetry. Perhaps that's why the grid of Manhattan's streets was so easy for me to learn and fall in love with. And perhaps that's also why I gravitated so much more toward those gridlike city streets than the endlessly winding canyons of L.A.

When my mind insists on racing, keeping sleep at bay, I employ a few personal "insomnia busters." Most have to do with patterns. Or lists. I'll list state and national capitals in my head. Or try recalling Best Picture Oscar winners by year. Or try to remember the names of all my teachers, starting with kindergarten. (Interesting how easy it is to remember elementary school teachers but harder to recall names of teachers once I hit jr. high and had 6 each semester.) Sometimes I'll visualize cities I've visited and try recalling street names and subway stations. Hey, it beats stressing over things I can't control and most times, I'm unconscious before I can complete my list.

Patterns are soothing. There is beauty in symmetry, right down to the tiniest objects found in nature. The shell of the nautilus is symmetrical to the point where mathematicians have studied it. Animals with more symmetrical markings attract mates more easily. In just about every aspect of nature, there is symmetry humans can't possibly detect but appreciate on levels on we're not even aware of. And it's all about patterns.

When my parents moved us from NYC in 1978, we settled in an L.A. suburb called Granada Hills. Our house was on Tennyson Place. The surrounding streets were also named for writers: Bronte, Boswell, Byron.

There, I returned to first grade (we'd moved mid-school year) at a school called Van Gogh Elementary. It wasn't long before I noticed that Van Gogh was the name of the school's street and that the surrounding streets were also named for artists: Goya, Titian, Whistler. Before I could even comprehend why (I suppose I still can't), this type of patterning soothed me.

Years later, my sister would live in Santa Monica, where east-west streets are named for U.S. states and north-south streets for universities (Princeton, Yale, Stanford). Of course, New York's numbered streets provided the most comfort to me, as well as ease of finding my way around. I developed mnemonic devices for remembering the order of Madison-Park-Lexington and the twisted, truncated streets of the Village. I did the same in memorizing the periodic table of elements in high school. Recognizing patterns in just about every facet of daily life not only got me through school and helped me learn my way around new cities more quickly. As long as I can remember, it has provided a calming effect understood best by those, like myself, teetering on the edge of the OCD precipice.

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On another note: I have 4 family members who live in Houston. Beginning Wednesday night, they spent 10 hours on the highway, headed for Fort Worth. Instead, those 10 hours got them only 50 miles outside of Houston, where they (along with another family) are staying with friends. My thoughts are with them and with the millions of others whose lives are being turning upside down by the forces of nature while the rest of us are safe and dry.

Posted by ayelet at September 23, 2005 09:54 AM