Turning Points in a Life: Stand, Circle, Spin, Spiral

This article circles around and spirals through three particular incidents in my life. To begin, I mention these three moments in stark, imagistic form, without revealing much about the stories in which they occur. I return to these same incidents three times, and each time the stories unfold a little more, becoming clearer. The patchwork of stories, taken together, reveals a larger pattern. A section of the article describes dancers learning to turn-turning as a physical act. Dance movements and terms then amplify the story and shed light upon navigating life's turning points. Here, turning points are conceived as moments of meeting between the unconscious and consciousness, Self and ego, graced, at times, by the emergence of the transcendent function.