scaling// reflection// rotation/\////\
For a second I lost sight, got frightened. My brother, it seemed, was diverging from this expectation of sameness that I had recently constructed.
Then our friend moved in to the empty third bedroom and brought an entertainment stand and tv. To balance the new furniture I turned the speakers on each side of the stand slightly inward. The right speaker about a quarter inch, and the left speaker about a half inch. It just looked right that way. It looked perfect.
But I knew what event would play out next— and it did. Half an hour later my brother came home from work and immediately distinguished the change… not of the new stuff, but the angle of the old. He tried to fix it, which led to a jocular protest over aesthetics.
It wasn’t clear then, but the next morning in the shower I was struck with the parallelism that reminded me of our sameness:
He obsesses over symmetry while I obsess over asymmetry. The slant is different yet our method of adherence is the same.
One year from tomorrow he will get married, and everything is in its place.
