What Circles Know
In grade school when asked to name my favorite shape, I don’t know what I said. I likely rejected the question on some invented theoretical grounds.
At some point in my life, I became enamored with circles—their mathematics, whimsy, emptiness, all that they hold.
You can place any number of points inside a circle, connect the segments, and find another shape. I mostly draw triangles inside my circles. This has taught me to see their strength.
Children are the best to talk with about circles. Wheels, spirals, loops. Cylinder, sphere, maybe not. Circles inside circles. What about hiccups? How a worm makes soil. What a spider knows.
I’ve lived inside a circle—rondavel nestled in mountains next to sea. The curves knew how to stretch my dreams. I didn’t miss the corners.
I see circles everywhere. Sometimes I play a game to try to not see a circle. Even when I narrow the frame to the tiniest thing, I always find one.
A button will never be a circle because I can hold it. I remember writing this line decades ago, when I discovered Bachelard and sacred geometry, when I learned to blur the edge between sky and sea.
There’s a reason writers talk about walking and the moon. Their rhythms are reminders. Walk a labyrinth at night and you’ll remember, too.
“It’s hard to know which moments are life-changing when you’re in them.” I used to believe this. That I needed some sort of distance to know the stories of my life.
Circles have taught me how to see. I am in my garden, a cherry tomato in my mouth. I am its nutrients, roots, wisdom of soil, infinity of seeds.
It’s not about geometry. Or metaphor. Everything spins. All that happens comes from the spin.
Nemetona is an angel of the sacred grove. She delights in circles, knows how to clear space for them. She’s the one who reminded me about tomatoes. How each one is a world.
I’ve always lived inside the worlds of small things. I never forgot how to be a child.
Circles know this. And I know they have granted us a wish:
We remember how to listen to moss, feel the rhythm of ants, find the curves of a bumblebee, trace the roots in its wings to our own.
-love and light, Melissa
A septarian stone that sits on my desk.
My grandmother’s button tin.
Everything that’s possible exists in small things.
This is why I write about small things, design for children’s learning with small objects, facilitate communities of practice around small artifacts, and support adults who want to experience the expanse of small everyday moments.
