Round and Round in the Circle Game

May the circle be unbroken.

I found this graphic on my computer today while I was looking for something else. I suspect I saved it a few years back when I was writing about global wildlife migrations and the fact that everything is connected, left to right, up and down, all over the world.

Yes, migration is about more than birds. It includes whales, sharks, tuna, seals, wildebeests, elephants, turtles, pronghorn antelope, butterflies, dragonflies, and even senior citizens going to Florida for the winter.

Of course, the circle game is bigger than that isn't it?

The nuclear molten core of the earth is a bubbling cauldron of magma, and that magma is seething up and cooling down, like boiling water in a pot.

Even as the molten rock goes up and down, it slowly pushes the vast plates of the earth around, and on top of these massive plates of super dense rock floats "the light stuff" like granite, dirt, sand, redwoods, elephants, and us.

And, of course the great nuclear ball that is the sun heats up the oceans which have massive upwellings of water at the equator, and massive downwelling at the poles.

These in turn drive vast ripping ocean currents we call the Gulf Stream or Humboldt's Current, or the Indian Ocean Gyre, and these in turn determine where the fish feed and whether we need to throw another log on the fire in December.

Several times a day the gravity of the moon pulls billions of pounds of water this way or that, driving water backward up rivers, fueling tidal bores, and pushing waves up and down a million miles of crab-speckled beaches.

The atmosphere too boils up and cools down, with massive upwellings and downwellings of air, and vast ripping currents of wind driving themselves around the earth in clear patterns we call the Air Stream or the Trade Winds or the Doldrums, depending on where they are and what they are doing.

The ground we live on also boils with life as worms and groundhogs, ants, plants and fungi, turn over the soil and build upon it, pulling things down and lifting things up.



And on top of this boiling planet we fight the change.

We try to build for permanence and prevent extinctions.

We fear both global warming and global cooling.

We worry about energy and where we will get it.

We are upset when butterfly, bird, mammal and fish migrations change, and we are equally upset when they do not, and the animals pass away in the face of changing circumstances.

As a rule we are oblivious.

Elephants now live in the heat of Africa and Asia, but their cousins once roamed the frozen north, and we do not think to wonder why none are there now.

Birds fly overhead unseen, coming from places we do not wonder about, and going to places we cannot imagine.

We do not know the name of the drainage we live in, or how the creek behind our house makes its way to the ocean.

We do not even know the names of all the trees in our backyard.

Meanwhile, we go to work in our prisons on the road, stuck in traffic, insulated from the weather, our minds spinning; the world's longest playing record, all the grooves running to the great self-obsessed hole in the center.

“Efé children of the Ituri Forest in Zaire (Rep. of Congo, central Africa) begin the Osani game by sitting in a circle, feet touching, all connected. Each child in turn names a round object like the sun (oi), the moon (tiba), a star (bibi) an eye (ue) and then goes on to name a figurative expression of “round” like the circle of the family, togetherness, a baby in the womb, or the cycle of the moon. As players fail to come up with a term that is “circular” they are eliminated from the game. Eventually, only one remains. Tradition has it that this player will live a long and prosperous life.” :: source

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