Circles Again (here we are)

Quick thoughts, a music game and a poem.

We used to play a game called Encore where you had to think of songs with a certain word in it or about a certain theme. Teams would go back and forth until they couldn’t think of any more songs. I sometimes play this game with myself and I found myself doing it about circles because that seems to be

It started earlier, but then I, along with everyone else, noticed that the grass is getting green again and our new front yard maple is sprouting new leaves and my peonies are returning. There’s the end of the fasting season and the promise of new life. Spring is lush with metaphors of cycles and rebirth.

RE-start, RE-live. RE-born. But the starting point with circles is sometimes unclear. It’s hard to know where to look. Or the motion of the cycles makes it so that your eyes are still fixated on one moment while your body has already almost made the circle. Then you’re like a ballerina, whipping your head back around to catch up. It’s hard not to get dizzy.

As for the song game, Tori Amos has a song that goes “Circles, and Circles, and Circles again, we are. Circles and circles and Circles again.” And Frank Sinatra sings, “Because this big world keeps spinning round” in That’s Life. Of course, there’s The Circle of Life from The Lion King, too easy.

The problem there is, you get that song stuck in your head and it’s hard to move forward. Oh god, that Shania Twain song about Centrifugal motion - it’s perpetual bliss… This Kiss! There’s You Spin Me and probably a million songs about records. The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell is pretty much solid on the circle of time of metaphor - I don’t know why anyone else would even bother.

Anyway, I’ve been seeing my life in little loops like that. I was noticing all of the circles, and thinking about orbits and then it got literal one day when I found a spirograph in the kids’ crafts in the morning and I got out the spiralizer in the evening for some zucchini noodles - those are really more like loops than circles, but you see how it spiraled out of control.

I also ran into the idea of loops in arguments. Because I’ve realized that I’ve basically only ever had two arguments with anyone I’ve ever loved. Those arguments are specific to that person, they never seem to go away and if I’m ever mad, I just think, same old argument, and then I feel better.

My children are the perfect example. Each of them have two distinct things I need to argue with them about.

Kid 1: Eat your food and manage your time

Kid 2: You will enjoy it if you try it and pick up your mess

Argument between Kid 1 and Kid 2:  You’re not the same person and If you can’t say something nice…

Kid 3: You don’t have to talk all the time and sure, you can have another popsicle

Same. Arguments. All day. 

Anyway, I wrote the following poem while I was in Costa Rica. (Because I’m going to use that phrase “when I was in Costa Rica” until someone smacks me.) But while I was there I was thinking more in terms of orbits and people in orbit, gravitational pulls, and overlapping lives. I was thinking about being away from my family for a short time and then us all coming back to our houses, creating these circles and then finding our way back.

And I did it without talking about ripples, though, you may remember, ripples are my favorite metaphor. Just saying

Anyway, I gave it a shot with this one…

Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

Away/Circles

If we were two planets in orbit
Circling around some fixed center 
This would be considered the apogee 

I am at my wandering's edge 

Or if I was your hula hoop
Coming and going with ease, tethered
at the end of our radius

You are at Center, I'm on a tangent

Or were I flat and scattered like
pieces of glitter, the absence left
by the paper hole-puncher

I am here though I am gone

Or if our circles are concentric 
Or if, Venn-like, we make intersections
That are themselves a whole

I'm never not part of you

Do you have a good circle reference, a circle lyric I missed or even a great argument that you circle back to all the time? I’d love to hear it.