Right Angles are Wrong!
According to rumors, we are about to see the advent of a new super-hero, Squishyman! A servant of Mother Earth, his mission is to rid the world of right angles and restore in their proper place, natures graceful curves. He has a particular aversion to rectangles. They weaken him, sapping his super squishy energy, much as kryptonite cripples Superman.
Circles, spirals, arcs, waves and whorls, on the other hand, invigorate and inspire our hero.
Sightings of our new forged Earth Warrior are rare, photos unavailable, so for now imagination must serve. I picture him as a philosophically inclined yet macho-spirited entity of uncertain, perhaps shifting shape, wielding a mighty scimitar empowered to slice adjoined straight lines in twain in a flash. His emblem is a purple blot, his teeth are white and he gnashes them angrily at the mere sight of an accursed right angle.
The question is, in serving nature’s cause, will this dashing figure prove friend or foe to the human race?
In our search for answers my daring research lion captured this secret manifesto from Squishyman’s remote mountain hideout:
Squishyman's Manifesto
Author’s Note: Imagine super squishy font
Consider the circle. Ask yourself, what are some naturally occuring things that are round? The Earth herself is round, an unlikely ball floating in a straight-line-free void where even passing light is pulled into arcs and curves by massive bodies, none of which are even slightly square.
The sun is round, as are the orbits of the planets (more or less), even that of a certain tragically demoted dwarf planet.
Jellyfish are round. So are pupils (that would be eye pupils, not school pupils), tree rings, eggs, atoms, pebbles, bubbles, whirl pools, and takahe birds, though these last only when viewed from the correct angle. (See picture)
By contrast, right angles barely occur in nature. OK, very occasionally in crystal or rock formations, but that’s about it. Virtually all right angles on our spherical world are designed and built by humans. Buildings, boxes, books, chess boards, windows, doors, tables, mirrors, certain abstract art, abacuses, fridges, mattresses and floor tiles.
As the owner of a right angle free body, don't you find this deeply disturbing? Have you never been the object of attacks by pointy cornered furniture that left you injured or maimed? What Earthling has not experienced that moment when the corner of a desk catches your little toe and attempts to alter the angle at which it connects to your body, resulting in extreme agony of the foot? Or the cringe inducing stab of a Lego brick into your instep as you, the anxious parent, check on your 7 year old child in a darkened bedroom.
How can we continue to trust the malevolent right angle?
What harm have we done to these inanimate objects to warrant such aggression? They are clearly malevolent by nature, evil for no good reason, like two dimensional villains who’ve escaped their flattened universe to torment us in our taller, shorter world.
Did you know that the Australian Department of Health prohibits right angles at floor level lest they trap and gather dirt? Or that that great architect of matter, mind and even ethics, Buckminster Fuller, eschewed the right angle and offered in its place the charming geodesic dome?
Water, the very basis of life, forms a meniscus or swirls into whirlpools. Rivers meander, wind drifts and skiers instinctively glide in graceful curves across snowfields built from billions of tiny hexagons.
Deer ever wander, disdaining straight lines as they follow the course of least resistance around hills, forging what will later become paths for people, then tracks and finally winding roads as they unwittingly design our early towns and cities.
Fjords endlessly wriggle in delighted fractals, marking out unmeasurable coastlines, exclusive to the fantasy lands of Norway and the mysterious 8th continent of Aotearoa.
Ill-fated lost ants, following the scent of other lost ants, wander in endless circles till they die.
Picture Manhattan, a wiggly island, built around that rectangular oasis of Central Park. The park is a sanctury from right angles, full of natures arcs and arches, bendy and bowed, crooked and curved, attracting in droves those squishy, water filled bags, the humans, seeking refuge from the looming threat of the square, pointy buildings.
The Feline Exception
Nature being full of surprises, we do have a surprising outlier: cats! Cats love boxes. They climb into them, they hide in them, the turn them over and purr at us from within them, declaring their delight.
I’m not just talking about harmless, domestic cats. Wild mountain lions, leopards, lynxes and tigers all love boxes. Rectangular boxes are apparently central to feline religion.
This seems counterintuitive. What creature better represents the beauty of the curve than the lithe feline? In their varied forms, large or small, terrifying or cuddly, cats personify non-straightness in the power of their pounce, the smile of their whiskers, the stealth of their tread and the green shine of their eyes in the darkness.
Yet, deadly or fluffy, cats of all sizes adore boxes. What can I say? Cats are weird.
Be Squishy
So I urge you, don’t be a cat. Instead, be like Jesus, or me. Cherish your irregular outline, your round formed bones, your squishy cell structure, your globular eyeballs. Revel in your organic glory and shun the frumious corner and all it represents. Hostile to life, the right angle, and its accursed child, the square, is the very bane of life itself. Join me now in my mission to rid the Earth of this anti-squishy scourge!