Symbolism.

You know what? I as a writer have a tendency to keep putting bits of imagery or vaguely symbolic things in my stories, with no idea HOW exactly they're symbolic. But I don't do it to be pretentious. I do it because I like looking at my story halfway through writing it and then realizing that I'd been doing something clever all along without realizing it.

My mind works in a way that likes patterns. It likes seeing patterns in other things, and it likes working in terms of patterns. It likes working in terms of patterns to the point where it creates patterns without me consciously realizing it. And symbolism is a kind of pattern, really - a phrase or image repeated, meaning the same thing each time. That's a pattern, though I don't suppose most people realize that's what it is. People who look for such things realize it.

It's more exciting that way, anyway. It's like finding something that way. It's kind of like reading tea leaves or something; looking at what is and what wasn't consciously made that way with a meaning in mind, and finding a shape in it from which you extract meaning. Although in my case I'm placing the tea leaves on purpose without knowing what they're going to look like or what it's going to make. Finding images in places where they aren't. Seeing patterns in places when they aren't there. Making meaning. Like an existential reading of what I'm doing, like taking something initially apparently meaningless and then giving it meaning.

I don't know but that's what I like to do.