> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.hawthreiter.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Shape of Both/And - URL: https://www.hawthreiter.com/the-shape-of-bothand/ - Published: 2026-07-08T20:05:43.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-19T17:14:19.000Z - Description: A constellation of thoughts on the binary, the body, and the geometry of reality - Author: Hawth - Tags: #Migrated-1787155092750, #Import 2026-08-19 11:58, Embodied Intuition, Transitioning, Philosophy, Both/And *My mind-brain thinks in constellations of data. No linear choreography, no explicit entrance or exit to an idea. Just clusters of stars that relate and can tell a story together. Or relate to other concepts and tell a totally different story. Right now, I’m wading through the thick fog that constitutes space-time, with more questions and possibilities and what-ifs than answers.* *What follows isn’t exactly a story, but I’d like to present the puzzle pieces I’m experimenting with for your consideration and thoughts.* [Subscribe](#/portal/signup) **🌟Star #1: Geometry** I’ve become obsessed with geometry. Partially as a result of my TikTok and Threads algorithms delivering a steady supply of philosophy related to space-time, quantum mechanics, and how dimensions other than the third might be interacting with us in the daily world, but also due to my own spirit guides, ancestors, and higher-dimensional selves pointing me in this direction. Asking me to notice how I talk to myself. Asking me to seek out different ways of understanding. Suggesting that maybe, just maybe, reality is made up. Constructed of our thoughts and words. Structurally geometric in other dimensions. Scaffolding for experiencing the world that we can adjust, shift, or even outright change. **🌟Star #2: Duality/the Binary** I’ve also become obsessed with duality, the binary. Until this winter, I spent my life trying to outrun any axis: good and evil, man and woman, love and hate, love and indifference, happy and sad. I was convinced that the binary way of thinking was ultimately the underlying harm humanity imposed upon itself. If we could “solve” this fundamental principle through changing our thinking around it, perhaps we could “solve” many of the challenges humanity faces. I started trying to see if there was any way for me, in my limited knowledge and ways of thinking, to view the world without using the lens of the binary. Holding an idea in my mind’s eye. Examining it from a variety of angles, trying to find a way to view it from outside the concept of a binary. Feeling into it with my body-brain. Anchor a premise and exhaust all emotional and intellectual possibilities that branch from that set of assumptions. Review the premise from another point of view. Hold up a variety of types of metaphors for comparison: Does this resonate or fit? What does this one feel like? Sink into my body. What does my body-brain think? If it feels like a “yes,” then why? Why not? Where are my unconscious beliefs influencing and biasing my thinking? As fodder, I use anything happening in my life. Something at work. A conversation with my wife. Observations of my four-year-old. My pets’ behaviors. My own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around gender. For the last six months, I’ve had an extra tab open in my mind-brain, quietly (and sometimes, not-so-quietly) collecting data, comparing it against what I know, seeking a fingernail-hold of new information or new ways of thinking. Running the situation through a variety of filters and lenses. Checking in my body-brain. Occasionally running the ideas by my wife, who usually responds with “… that’s cerebral.” (Not exactly helpful, ha!) The conclusions I’ve landed on are the ones that hold across multiple versions of the same question and that resonate with my internal compass. The words and metaphors I use are the pieces of scaffolding that make the most sense to my ways of thinking, being, and moving through the world. There could be a hundred different ways of talking about, thinking about, and framing these ideas. **🌟Star #4: My Body, My Journey** I suppose all of this philosophical musing is a result of my two-year physical transition. Like the Fool jumping off the cliff, I decided to commit to being true to myself, in all ways. I started by taking testosterone in 2024\. As the fat in my body shifted and the hair began to grow, I began to feel more at ease in my body, in the sense that I was coming home. Simultaneously, I was feeling less at ease: the body dysphoria was growing, related to my chest. Well, wait a minute. We need to go back further. This thread / resonance / constellation of ideas really began in the summer of 2016, ten years ago. Cocooned in the very last seat of the very last row of a white 15-person passenger van, I watched my life rewind over the 16 hour-drive from Tucson, Arizona, to my childhood home of Salinas, California. My sister, her husband, and their combined seven kids surrounded me. I had crashed my sister’s road trip back home for the chance to see my step-dad; unbeknownst to me, it would be the last time I saw him healthy. A year later, he died a difficult, shocking, bloody, awful death. This trip, the good one in 2016, is best encapsulated by the memory I have of us sitting on a bench in the sun at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, watching my sister’s kids’ shenanigans. Dad was a quiet man, quiet and stable, always there. My skin drank up the sun while my heart drank up his safety and comfort. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6b/e9/6be97bd5-1882-4dae-a7d5-afd6a9bc5e77/content/images/2026/08/ed2dce2a-ae1a-4ea4-9e23-d2862b256467_2110x2110-jpeg-1.jpg) Image taken on the road trip to Salinas, summer 2016, by Hawth Reiter. I’d been contemplating the long-term relationship I was in. It was increasingly clear that the compromises I’d made over the decade we’d been together were not going to result in the outcome I’d hoped for. My therapist and I had identified that those compromises included my values and, worse yet, my identity. I wasn’t being honest about who I was or what I valued. While I thought I was showing up “authentically,” it was an authenticity that constrained was by the role of “partner,” and specifically, the role of being *his* partner. Subconsciously, as long as I met the requirements of the role, I would show up authentically. I pruned any authenticity that didn’t fit. Somehow, that didn’t register as an untruth to myself. Not yet. Before the trip to California, I wasn’t sure if I was actually ready to leave. After that trip, I knew. I loved myself too much to keep giving me up. Was it because Daddy’s strength reminded me that I was safe, no matter what? It may well have been; after his death a year later, my life choices derailed for a hot minute before I got myself back on the loving-myself and being-true-to-myself track. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6b/e9/6be97bd5-1882-4dae-a7d5-afd6a9bc5e77/content/images/2026/08/4a8c30b7-490c-4b1e-951d-df667a3610f7_720x960-jpeg.jpg) I’m on the left (pre-transition, obvs) and my sister is on the right, posing at the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Dad, summer 2016. Okay, where was I before this rewind? Ah yes, dysphoria. Ten years ago, I decided I loved myself and that I would prioritize myself, my values, my choices, and my morals. From that pivot point, a domino effect of logic and actions led to top surgery in 2026 (with a lot of one-step-forward-and-two-steps-sideways movements)—and also, to having the confidence to write this article. The recovery from top surgery was more difficult than any previous surgery, including the cervical neck fusion surgery I had last summer. For two weeks post-op, the pain and anxiety had me doubting my choice. Even though I’d checked in with my body-brain prior to the operation—who was in complete agreement that the surgery was critical—I was still surprised at the levels of discomfort and outright pain I was experiencing. Much of my life has been spent contemplating the binary of gender. I’m so conflicted over the fact that my mind-brain’s map of my body doesn’t match the biology of the body. On one hand, it’s fascinating to experience the dichotomy of gender: How I’ve historically been perceived vs how I’m now perceived. The feelings of contentment and satisfaction and utter *rightness* when I scratch my beard or hear my voice deepen. On the other hand, it’s agonizing. It’s not something we can easily test for and prove. It’s all in my mind (maybe I’m crazy!), and we can’t quantify things that are not three-dimensional, like feelings and thoughts. **🌟Back to Star #1: Geometry and 🌟#2: Duality = 🌟Star #4: Magnets!** Which brings me back to geometry. And the concept of duality. If something exists, it implicates the existence of the not-thing, or the opposite. We—humans—only understand the world through IS and IS NOT. I can’t find a way around this. I can’t find a way around the observer and the observed. I want to believe that quantum mechanics could show us a way to understand the world outside the context of either/or, taking us beyond the need for both/and. And perhaps the binary is fundamental to the third dimension. Perhaps the two opposite poles of a spectrum are what power the third concept of wholeness. Perhaps the third dimension only exists because of the binary—the observer and the observed. A tension between two poles. A magnet. Perhaps it is only through the push-pull of the electromagnetic force that light becomes dense enough to become matter. Maybe the material world only exists due to that force. It’s the both/and. You can’t exist without the both/and. The whole contains both the good and the evil. The peace and the anxiety. There is never a time that something is NOT both/and. It feels dumb, because, like, duh—ever hear of the yin-yang symbol? My mind-brain has intellectually understood this concept for decades, but my body-brain hadn’t had enough experience to fully understand what it truly means—what it FEELS like—to understand the concept. To know, intellectually, is one thing. To KNOW, bodily, is an entirely different thing. Or maybe the concept of the binary is just a linguistic and cultural approach that has evolved into a biological framework? I don’t know. I do know I wonder what humanity could look like if we could shift our perspective from either/or to both/and. **🌟Star #5: Taking Action, Collecting Data** I’ve begun using the framework of both/and as fundamental with an eye toward balance. Not a static position; like a see-saw oscillating, balance is movement. Let’s take anxiety for a moment. I was having some pretty bad anxiety attacks while I was recovering from surgery. I began to experiment: Where or how can I move along the axis of anxiety-to-peace? Because if I’m anxious, that indicates that peace is also available to be present. I may not feel it in the moment, but it’s there. You can’t have anxiety without also having peace. And since what we focus on expands, by focusing on the peace end of the emotion (where in my body is there peace? What does that feel like?), I was able to bring my body back to a place of relative peace (or relative anxiety, I suppose). Like using a compass to navigate between the magnetic poles of anxiety-peace. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6b/e9/6be97bd5-1882-4dae-a7d5-afd6a9bc5e77/content/images/2026/08/29106e9c-85f4-4dfa-a078-59fd4c08abcc_3987x3987-jpeg.jpg) Image of a portion of a compass. Mixed-media artwork by Hawth Reiter. Once again, I feel a little like: Duh, dude. How often have therapists talked about affirmations, or focusing on the positive, or holding space for the both/and of emotions at any given time? And, also: Brilliant. If this framework can help me navigate things I’ve previously dreaded, I welcome the insight. **🌟Star #6: Multi-Dimensional Geometry?** Which brings me to pondering geometric scaffolding. If the binary is a tangible concept that powers the third dimension of physicality and materiality, what if thoughts and feelings are as tangible as the couch I’m sitting on, but in the fourth (or fifth, or 10th, or whatever) dimension? We know sound makes geometric shapes. We can see the shadow of the shape of sound; organically produced mandalas. As a neurodivergent person, I often locate thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. in objects and space outside of my body. When I work at my desk at home, I remember the things I’m supposed to do. If I work in a cafe, I don’t have access to the same library of knowledge the space my home office provides me. When I was a kid, I discovered that if I woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream, all I had to do was roll over, and my brain couldn’t find the spacetime of the nightmare. In contrast, if I’m woken up from a good dream, I make sure to fall back asleep in the same position so I can reenter the same dream. Some words feel like they carry weight and energy and even mass. Some thoughts are hard to move. I often pour out my emotions to the earth, where the trees in my backyard can gobble up the delicious energy I provide. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6b/e9/6be97bd5-1882-4dae-a7d5-afd6a9bc5e77/content/images/2026/08/f3ea12a9-ec8d-4235-adb1-8d43b74a6953_2865x2865-jpeg.jpg) Sacred geometry artwork, by Hawth Reiter. Will be available for purchase later this year. Are there echoes and shadows of the shape of thoughts? Are thoughts simply us, in another dimension? Does energy have shape? What if the words we use or the feelings we experience actually create structures that we can access and use, even though we may be unaware of it? What’s the geometric angle between thought and reality? Does one even exist? **🌟Star #7, The Scariest: Your Thoughts** What do you think? Where do your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and reactions lead you as it relates to these concepts? What makes sense? What doesn’t? What am I missing? Have any good book recommendations? — Hawth Reiter is a trans husband, dad, writer, artist, philosopher, Tarot reader, and animist curious about what it looks like and feels like to show up with vulnerability and authenticity in a radically changing world. — *AI Use Disclosure: Claude Sonnet 4.6 was used as a thought partner and mirror to reflect back and help me better understand the patterns and narrative in the story I am trying to tell. Nothing was written or edited by AI. And goodness gracious, did AI not like me speaking about these concepts from a “mytho-poetical” lens instead of a solidly mathematical approach. Also, every single em-dash came from my own hand.* [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)