The Pleasures of unwinding

"To begin to solve this riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on Ariadne's thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we do not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully wound skein - isn't that the joy of all productivity, at least in prose?"

Walter Benjamin, Hashish in Marseille, quoted in: Spieker, Sven (2008), The Big Archive: art from bureaucracy, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, p.56