‘I’m spiralling’ said R. She meant that she felt out of control, spinning (mentally, emotionally) downward, further from her centre.

It wouldn’t have been a good moment to say I was happy, and that it also felt like spiralling: uncoiling from the emergency ship’s-mast of the soul to stretch out and expand.

Spirals are beautiful. We live in a spiral galaxy: a type of galaxy that Edwin Hubble described 90 years ago in his book The Realm of the Nebulae. The Milky Way unclusters itself. What we see in the night sky is nearer to the centre. We live in the Orion spur: a tendril of the unfurl. Maybe our view makes us crave the crowd of the denser part. All pictures of the whole milky way are composites or impressions, as we haven’t got far enough into space to photograph it yet. If you want to see a spiral galaxy look at pictures of the others. We can observe those but we can’t see ourselves.

Shells, too. Molluscs secrete calcium carbonate and protein in their mantle, the organ on their back, to build with. They grow in a logarithmic spiral, adding wider and wider rings as they age, while still remaining attached to their origin point. A shell has three layers. On the outside is protein, creating ridges and bumps. Under the protein are carbonate crystals, and under those is a shiny, soft material called mother-of-pearl or nacre. It has to be comfortable on the inside, protective outside.

Vinyl music is an archimedean spiral. Archimedes, who wrote his book On Spirals in 225 BC, was from the Sicilian city of Syracuse and was killed when the Romans invaded. He had invented several weapons to defend his city, perhaps including a set of mirrors that reflected light at enemy ships and burnt them, but nobody is sure. Valerius Maximum says Archimedes said do not disturb my circles (Nōlī turbāre circulōs meōs!) just before he died, as if he’d arranged himself inverse to a whelk, protecting his spirals with his soft body rather than the correct way round.