There was this very little dog that played with a basketball as big as he was in a large snowfield. He would push the ball around with his forehead at a tremendous speed, sliding and slipping on the snow but gathering great momentum nonetheless. Eventually, the ball would collect wet snow and its new irregular shape would prevent it from rolling straight, so the dog would stop and dutifully bite at the snow until the ball was clean again, at which point he’d resume pushing and chasing it around.

There was this window washer, unaware that his efforts rained down on the pedestrians below, endlessly ascending and descending along a building wall on his cable, tiptoeing on ledges, a fish on the outside of a human aquarium. There are so many windows to a tower.

And there was this rather determined tug boat engaged in an aquatic ballet around a huge freighter, seemingly kissing her from all sides in the middle of the Inlet. It reminded me of the surgeon fish delicately picking parasites off the shell of a grateful giant sea turtle in Deep Sea 3D.

And then there was this adorable redhead sitting at the empty terrace of a café, absentmindedly brushing a rebel lock of hair away from her face as she read an old book. She kept laughing silently at the story, completely absorbed by it, never noticing that the very laughter would unavoidably shake her wild hair loose and back in front of her eyes.

And there was, too, a lot more happening, in a regular, rhythmic, systematic, repetitive fashion. But I didn’t see all that, too busy looking back at all the times I should’ve broken the pattern and taken a different step.

The problem with repetition is its hypnotizing nature. Everything in the universe is vibration, from particles to our very actions. We unconsciously seek a rhythm, a wave pattern, and we settle in it. We ride it as it carries us.

But since I know all this so well, I’ve made a rule for myself to keep changing my patterns and to take improbable side-steps. So much so that it’s become a pattern of its own. Check mate.