I'd like to explain everything less

Good fractals, a second hand shopping trail and my friend, Marcel the Shell.

Sarah

Feb 17, 2025

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I had to remind myself this week that sharing fragments is a reasonable thing to do.

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I asked myself not to connect the dots.

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Sometimes, when I use lots of glue to stick thoughts together in an attempt to be fully understood, they end up not quite making sense to me anymore.

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You know the feeling of walking away from a conversation with too many words soaked in too much glue on the wall behind you? Words sticking to your shoes, to your fingers, to your chin, as you hurriedly close the door.

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I would like to explain everything less.

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My favourite things to read are made up of shards of ideas—quietly forming and then deciding against formation: half absolutely nothing, half definitely something.

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In the world of fractals, tiny shards of things are vital components of the greater whole.

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A fractal is something that is made up of self-similar patterns that repeat at different scales.

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The interior architecture of a nautilus shell is a fractal—a beautiful, pearly bone staircase, an ever-increasing or decreasing spiral, created through a feedback loop where the formula of one chamber informs the pattern of the next.

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In Marcel the Shell, Marcel (a tiny shell, created by the mighty Jenny Slate) lives in a big house with his grandmother, Nana Connie. Their community has disappeared, leaving them alone and without support. Marcel takes on small, essential tasks for their survival, bringing his sweetness, creativity and appreciation for life to everything he does. You can see the whole of him in every tiny action he takes.

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Extreme pattern recognition can be a feature of autism; it is for me. This looks different for every autistic person, but it can involve things like spotting visual patterns or noticing minute details or changes in sound, energy, or language that others might miss.

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I can spot patterns in the subtle details of how people speak, move, and the words they choose, leading me to predict what might happen in the next few minutes, hours, and (often) beyond.

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In a room with five, twenty, or a hundred people, my brain is absorbing and processing all the swirling energetic information, trying to figure out what patterns might emerge. This can allow me to anticipate and understand other people’s actions or reactions. But sometimes, it’s just too much input. I don’t know what to do with all the information, it’s like plugging a hard drive into a strawberry. I don’t have a system for filtering what’s important from what isn’t.

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Pattern recognition is one of the most exhausting and bewildering parts of being autistic (for me.)

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When I notice old, limiting patterns reemerging in my thoughts and behaviours, I feel trapped in the suddenly eerie, bony staircase inside the shell. I’m scared of getting stuck in a pattern without realising it, adding pieces to it, making it more solid and intricate as I go. Meaning it’s less likely that I’ll find a way out.

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When you notice you’re in an old pattern do you:

a. panic

b. feel very angry with yourself

c. frantically try to do everything you possibly can to change the course of the pattern

d. all of the above

e. something else?

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What about all the good fractals that already exist? (This feels important. I often forget these). The patterns in my life I have built over time that are easeful, supportive, valuable, connecting… just right.

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What can I learn from the thriving patterns to gently shift the broken ones?

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“In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.” Adrienne Maree Brown