A shape I keep returning to

I often post and talk about the shape of a story but there’s a shape that has long captivated me. And I find myself reflecting on why I love it so much.

It’s the shape in the tail of a seahorse and the nautilus shell. It’s in my favourite Classical Greek column, the Ionic column. And it’s in the arranged stones found at Kettle’s Yard, the former home, now a gallery, of Jim and Helen Ede in Cambridge. It draws me in wherever I see it, so much that I made it part of my logo - a nautilus shell with a quill emerging from it.

It's the scroll. A volute, from the Latin word for something rolled or wound. A spiral, but never a maze, because a maze has no centre, only walls and wrong turns. This shape always moves gracefully towards a centre, and you find it everywhere once you start looking; in nature, in art, in architecture.

It bestows on me a deep sense of calm and clarity of mind. Perhaps it appeals as my mind loves to find the shape in things. It is drawn to structure, but not in a rigid way.

Discovering the shape of a story is something I find quietly satisfying. On a surface level this could be the flow of the plot events. But it’s deeper than that. It’s the path walked by the main character. And it never moves in such an elegant or clean way as the path of a scroll.

Perhaps I am always looking for some clean structure in my own life, ever elusive.

The history of this shape talks of growth and harmony, cycles, and the idea of something continuing without ever quite ending. Both order and beauty working together, never pulling apart. A mandala holds something similar and is a shape people have turned to for centuries when they wanted a sense of tranquility, or clarity of mind. I don't know if any of that fully explains why I love it, but it doesn't surprise me either.

What shapes are you drawn to? Do you know why? I would love to hear.