The repetition of things

An experiment

“I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.”
— Thomas Wolfe

Day 1

I have one month left in Sydney, and I come across the most spectacular park. I descend into a forest, walk through alleys of ferns and under canopies of cobwebs to find tennis courts and meandering paths. I eventually complete the loop with an ascent of thirteen steep flights of stairs.

With a regretful feeling, I tell a friend I wish I’d ventured into the park sooner. She tells me it’s inevitable to find things you love towards the end, and reminds me that I also discovered things I loved at the beginning.

Day 2

I find myself at the park again. I tend to do that with the things I love—repeat, even if they don’t love me back. In the past, I’d refill an empty glass, extinguish one cigarette only to light another, fall for a different unavailable man.

But they were all false loves. The park circuit is something I can love and repeat and it won’t hurt if it doesn’t love me back. I decide to do a loop every day for the next month.

Day 3

It strikes me that what I want is very simple—this loop of the park. The thump of my heart as I climb the stairs. The film of sweat. And yet I deny myself these simple things—by staying in, by wanting more, by thinking it needs to be something else. Why not just allow myself to desire what I desire?

Day 4

After dinner I walk to the grocery store and buy salt and eggs. I’m tired and tempted to skip it, but I find myself at the beginning again and by the time I close the loop, the fatigue has lifted.

Day 5

I complete my loop early in the afternoon because I don’t want to miss it. I run up the hill with a surge of energy. How quickly we improve at the things we repeatedly do.

Day 6

For months, the hours after dinner have felt mindless—now I have this mindful loop.

Day 7

Perhaps the difference between the repetition inherent to addiction, and the repetition inherent to ritual is found in closing the loop?

I start at one set of stairs, and finish at the other—and that closure brings satisfaction. As

Ted Gioia

wrote in this piece, “Those open-ended processes never achieve the sense of closure which is essential to all ritual—and actually aggravate the problems of a de-ritualized society.”

If the formulae for addiction is an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure, perhaps things with a closed loop can create a steady craving for a contained pleasure?

Day 8

I take a wordless walk today. No music, no podcast, no input. I hear the water trickle down a stream for the first time.

Day 9

My mum is in town, and we do the loop together. She notices the fronds of ferns yet to unfurl and I reflect on how I often feel like a frond.

Day 10

I see the film Perfect Days. I’ve long thought that doing the same thing day after day leads to monotony, but there are always subtle differences and details to appreciate.

Day 11

I think about the compulsion to repeat the past, even if undesirable. Recently, I read a passage from the diary I kept when I was 18. What struck me is that I could have written it yesterday. The thoughts, the worries, the self-consciousness I had half my lifetime ago continue to repeat within me. 

You are what you repeatedly do. If I compose myself through my repetitions, could changing the things I repeat change me?

Day 12

I miss doing the loop today because I go with my mum to the airport and realise some rituals take precedence over others. 

Day 13

I take a phone call during my morning loop and it’s like I wasn’t there at all.

Day 14

It is drizzling with rain and I go anyway.

Day 15

Wondered if this daily loop is beginning to feel pointless, but isn’t it enough for something to just be beautiful and pointless?

Day 16

Today I run the loop because I feel like running and see a man sunbathing on the hill, presumably because he feels like it, and it’s like we both exist in a delightful world of doing what we feel like, just for a moment.

Day 17

I take a friend on the walk and she calls the park magic. I think about this Mary Oliver poem—“If you have ever gone to the woods with me, / I must love you very much”—and the one I miss very much.

Day 18

A fallen tree trunk blocks the path and I think about the timing of all things—how being here and not here comes down to a split second.

Day 19

I run the loop again, this time slower. Sometimes when we feel behind, it’s helpful to zoom out and see we are actually expanding the spiral.

Day 20

I think of how things always ebb and flow, descend and ascend, and yet we repeatedly return to the same level.  

Day 21

I’m averaging 17,000 steps each day because walking makes me want to keep walking. Does love both deepen and expand in repetition? 

Day 22

In the park, I notice an educational sign about fractals: “Looking at the repeated patterns (or fractals) in nature helps to put us in a state of relaxation and awe.”

Day 23

Today’s loop feels like an obligation. I take a nap and then go. Still tired after the loop.

Day 24

Even though I go to the park at different times each day, I see the same people on multiple occasions. The mother and son who play tennis together. The retired man who lunges across the green at golden hour. The shirtless slender man who does multiple laps of the stairs.

Day 25

I hear someone in a nearby apartment playing the piano—practising is repeating mistakes until there aren’t any left to repeat. 

Day 26

I go just before sunrise with two friends and we use our phones as torches. In the beginning they don’t see much, but later they see a man bathing in the pond—I don’t have my glasses, and see only green.

Day 27

I often find it hard to make the decision to leave, but always feel ready to go just as the time arrives. Maybe it has something to do with confirmation bias, or maybe some decisions are like new shoes we need to wear in—step after step after step.

Day 28

Perhaps it’s too poetic that I find an entirely different loop within the loop on my final day walking around Cooper Park.

Views from my daily loop of Cooper Park

These days

It’s now been a month since my month of repeating the park loop and I am learning how to knit. A loop follows a loop follows a loop on a row and another row and another row and I am trying to knit something new within myself.