The Widening Gyre

By Vifetoile

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,

The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

– William Butler Yeats, 'The Second Coming'

Towards the end, her dreams always had something spinning in them.

Even when she plugged in her arm and her brain to a shared dream, controlling the dreamscape, there was always something little, spinning, spinning around. She did not lose her ability to dream freely like Cobb had, and so the spins became anything.

In a park, she would walk past a merry-go-round, painted horses and calliope chimes, revolving.

After she read fairy tales aloud to the little ones, before going to sleep, she would find herself in a hut. And there would be a spinning wheel, still moving of its own accord.

She dreamed of a city built around a spiral shape, and she walked down its roads, turning and turning.

She would be trying to solve a murder mystery in a great theater, where on-stage ballerinas pirouetted with twinkling toes, never needing to stop.

On a foggy moor, she would release a falcon to spiral above in the air, now out of sight, now visible again.

But most often she dreamed of whirlpools.

Water, said her Jungian guide to symbols, was one of the most powerful symbols there was. It often was utilized by the unconscious to signify the unconscious itself – the uncertain depths, the deep currents, push and pull, the fathomless mysteries.

A little whirlpool in a birdbath. A cup of water agitated into a froth. A vortex was born in the middle of the Seine. On the high seas, whirlpool after whirlpool, Charybdis devouring everything.

Eventually, even when she was awake she would sense the revolving. Something was spinning, even if just out of the corner of her eye, or behind her. Something, and it wasn't going to stop. Some balance was kept permanently taut, in motion. Paranoia stretched her nerves, made her taut. She would lie down for hours in the middle of the day, awake, trying to control the vertigo.

Everything spun.

To watch Phillipa and James play hula hoops, or simply spin with their hands out, drove her to a frenzy. She would scream at them to stop, because once they started to spin, they would continue, and never end, and her children would be lost. She had to stop that before their spinning began.

It started to make sense: Only in a dream will they begin to spin, and never stop spinning. And Mal was dreaming. So that would happen if she didn't stop them from spinning. So she broke their hula hoops and forbade them to spin.

But her real children…

The night when she laid the trap, to lure Cobb at last into awakening, she sat on the stone ledge of the window because any other surface would have started to give. The room opposite satisfied her. It was a lovely picture of carnage – poise and grace had been shattered. All had toppled over, no longer keeping up the pretense of balance.

Even when she had spilled the wine, it had twisted in the air, corkscrew-shaped.

She sat on the ledge, and waited. She could feel the revolutions of the earth – the tilting of the moon above her – the winding locks of her hair – the circuitous path of her own blood through her body.

Everything was spinning, spiraling.

"Non, rien de rien," she sang gently as she heard the door open.

And then, why, everything would work out in a moment. Cobb came in, and spoke, and was stubborn, but he had always been stubborn. He would come around eventually. How could he possibly resist the pull of the spin, everywhere? He would soon realize the gravity of the situation.

She laughed to herself.

Because it was all ending tonight. She could give in. She could stop maintaining the impossible balance.

So she detached herself from the ledge, and stopped the spinning.