The Loops & Ruts

The drawing above I created just after meditation on December 29, 2024. I’ve waited to share it, imagining I’d discover a way to make it more self-explanatory or visually bold. I did darken the smaller corner drawings a bit, enlarging the wheels and ruts to make the connections clearer. I decided that’s enough. You can get the idea.

Below is an image I found online of The Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Burren comes from boíreann, meaning “a stony place” in Irish. When I visited this summer with Val, I was mesmerized by the grikes—the crevices in the limestone “pavement.” Despite their harsh, rocky appearance, flowers were growing in the grikes, adding bursts of unexpected color and life.

The image stayed with me. It came to mind as I considered how to reimagine the thought ruts in my drawing. If I were more practiced at drawing, I’d depict the brain and its thought patterns as something like the Burren, with hamster wheels popping up all over, connected by an intricate flow of grikes running in multiple directions. I even imagined myself jumping from wheel to wheel, avoiding the traverse of a single grike entirely.

This imagery captures my experience of repetitive, ineffective mental analysis—spinning endlessly on certain topics and people. The wheels turn, the ruts deepen, and the same grooves replay over and over. And yet, as I look at the drawing now, I don’t feel the need to change it or fix anything. There’s nothing wrong with the grikes, nothing to prove or explain or excuse. They simply are. What I seek isn’t repair, but perhaps a new perspective—a fresh way of navigating them.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the grikes resemble the grooves of a human brain? Maybe that’s the point. The ruts aren’t obstacles; they’re terrain. They hold the potential for growth if I approach them with curiosity rather than frustration. What if I could fill them in? Not to erase them, but to plant something meaningful within them. Could those grooves support wildflowers, like the Burren? Could the wheels stop spinning long enough for me to notice the life growing in between?

I’ve often described my obsession with certain thoughts as “spinning” to friends, and they all seem to understand the concept instantly. We’ve all been there, stuck in a rut—or perhaps a grike, if you prefer. I love the word. The sections of limestone between the grikes are called clints. Isn’t that fantastic? Even the language of the Burren feels alive, inviting me to reimagine my mental terrain.

​For now, I’ll let the wheels spin and the grikes deepen while I wait for my inner wisdom to reveal the next step. Maybe I’ll fill in the grikes. Maybe I won’t. There’s no rush, nothing to fix—just the joy of observing the landscape and being curious about what might bloom.

After all, even in the Burren’s rocky crevices, flowers find their way to grow, adding life and color to what seems barren at first glance. Perhaps the same is true for my mind—those grooves and ruts aren’t just limitations. They’re spaces where compassion, creativity, and new perspectives might take root, given the chance. The second image is my own photo... the flowers were blooming in the grike when I was there... as witness.