An archetypical symbol, found in nearly all cultures. In general, circles tend to exemplify the Earth Mother as opposed to more masculine gods. They are used to help represent balance (yin-yang), the sun, the moon, completeness, or even reincarnation and infinity (Ouroboros).

There are lots of circular toys, like yo-yos, inner tubes, hula hoops, and frisbees.
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Offtopic: This writeup exemplifies my life. It used to be a writeup for the wrong node (see: Rolling), but I decided to delete it and meaningfully contribute to the discussion about circles. Kind of like when I give the nice guy behind the counter the wrong order or when I don't get what I ordered and I just take it anyway to try something new.
From Essays: First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson


Circles

Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.

     The eye is the first circle; the [horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace; that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

     This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department.

     There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity.

     You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable? Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls.

     The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, -- as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, -- to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions.

     Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, -- how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.

     Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour.

     Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.

     There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

     Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

     The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love; yet, if I have a friend, I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought, as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should I play with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble, and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.

     How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? it boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

     Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle Platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

     Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

     Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease.

     There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God IS that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.

Onward>>

Circles. By Dag Nasty, from their first album, Can I Say.

Music and Lyrics by Brian Baker

This is probably one of the best songs I have ever heard. It single handedly got me into Dag Nasty after I heard it on the 20 Years of Dischord compilation. Even ages after I heard it first, there is still something about it; possibly the first guitar riff or the way the drums come in. Maybe Dave Smalley's amazing vocal talent. I don't know. anyway - if you like hardcore punk at all, you could do much worse than to listen to this track, or buy the 2002 remaster of Can I Say. It's one of the best songs I have ever heard, and it was written before I was born. That's quality for you.


I wouldn't speak my mind
I didn't want to make them mad
I looked up to them
For the courage I thought I didn't have
I never bothered to lift a finger to make my point
Now I'm spelling it out
And nobody's listening!

It's hard to take it to heart
It hurts to be apart
But I can't watch and not be heard!

The days go by and things get worse
But they say they can only get better
I try to make a dent
But it blends in with all the damage
I try to look the other way
But there's a mirror behind me
I see images of what can be done
It seems like I'm the only one

I wouldn't speak my mind


These lyrics reproduced thanks to the kind permission of the Dag Nasty website manager. See Dag Nasty for more information.


www.daghouse.com


up to copyright information - - up to this album

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do you ever feel so small that you feel big?
coiled up in your head, behind your eyes,
a distance of only a yard becomes an immeasurable chasm...

every where & dots
dashes coming in a long th
e walls interfereing w/ th
stream of quiet in my ears
dripping out into cupped hands
a thick shimmering of every color
where words have dissolved
and every thing only
circles
& dots on the skin little
prick points (stray moon rays)
drag out to lines curving all
over edges of dry leaves angls
sharpedged messenger in my ear
how quietly you drag&tap out
little circular sermons (familiar like last year)

in the fireplace the flame licks the darkness
where in the back is an abstract winged embossing
and suddenly i am in a candlelit black room
across the table from your hidden flickering face

which makes it difficult to judge distance
would that i could walk around any corner to find you

bright red liquid is pooling on the floor
coming down the wall here behind the drier
and in the corner of the sitting room
and upstairs it's coming from the attic

SOME OF THE THINGS I WILL SHOW YOU HAVE NOT YET HAPPENED
AND SOME OF THEM MAY HAVE HAPPENED , SOME WH*
IT IS NOT FOR ME TO SORT THEM OUT ∫∫∫ſſſssshh, forget

it's dark up here, the light switches don't work
and we're all ready to pair off
tomorrow there will be pooling on the floor
behind the drier and in the sitting room

in the biting cold at least there is solace
in condensing breath, in silverblue moonlight
for i have the memories of a river &
the patience of a drop of water
who continues to fall across the face
of an autumn apple every morning nd evening
for this moment is every moment
i can not tell one apple from another
i wish i knew how it would feel to be free
just kidding they all look different
BUT THEN IT WASN'T ENOUGH

"A trout, a trout! My kingdom for a trout."

you must climb the stairs through yellow fog
and pass the traffic cone to become a ghost but i can't
i would stay here and guard you
but i can't do it, i can't do it

jealousy like anger is a terrible habit
but you are the Midas of my heart

worse than tilting at windmills i grasped
a straw in an empty cup under the wind's command
& i sung nd the crickets took notes

when i was buzzed and thought i couldnt' come back
i put it all into a cup & i poured it out
folded my hands and listened

but still they burned
marched in
disturbing my balance

but i was still

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