a syllabus of orbits, loops, repetitions, and returns
loops, the limits of language, the paradoxical loneliness of "i love you," and what keeps love alive by maria popova
an installment of popova's newsletter the marganialian that draws on the writing of roland barthes. popova begins by describing her repeated daily walking routes, drawing a connection between the repetition of movement and the repetition of speech and feeling-- the recurrent declaration of "i love you."
why did our universe begin? with roger penrose
video with nobel prizewinning physicist roger penrose that explains his theory of "conformal cyclic cosmology": that our universe's deep past bears a similarity to its deep future, giving evidence for an infinitely cycling timeline. see the essay "time after time" by paul halpern for more on physics and cyclical time.
"time, space, and the eclipse of the earth" (part i: abstraction) by david abram
from ecologist and philosopher david abram's book the spell of the sensuous. in this section, he distinguishes broadly between how space and time are viewed in oral cultures and literate cultures. he focuses on the alignment between oral cultures and a cyclical model of time, discussing why alphabets and writing might affect the way space-time manifests in a cultural imagination.
the hero with a thousand faces by joseph campbell
book by mythologist and literature professor joseph campbell describing his archetypical "hero's journey" cycle, a basic multi-step plot shared by myths and stories across many centuries and cultures (also called a "monomyth"). for a condensed version of the hero's journey, see this diagram by lisa paltz spindler designed for the gunn center for the study of science fiction.
"on small seasons and long calendars" by ross zurowski
essay by designer ross zurowski on how we divide and mark time, arguing that we should begin to divide our lives into more organic and useful phases. the essay is inspired in part by the sekki, short descriptive seasons used by farmers in ancient china and japan-- you can see a list of sekki (along with twitter and ical notifications) at zurowski's a guide to understanding small seasons.
wintering by katherine may
book by british writer katherine may on literal and metaphorical winters. may writes about the necessity to periodically experience darkness throughout life, meditating on the winter solstice, cold water swimming, the northern lights, hibernation and fairy tales to illustrate how wintering can catalyze self-renewal.
"ouroboricisms" by alice lesperance
medium essay about trauma that uses the ouroboros as a metaphor for the circular reconstruction of memory. lesperance draws from mystics and writers julian of norwich, anne carson, margery kempe, and flannery o'connor and their engagement with the repetition and recreation of wounds.
"on reset" by brian blanchfield
a meditation by poet brian blanchfield from his essay collection proxies about discovering a series of audition tapes in which the same scene is repeatedly recast with different actresses. he draws a comparison between the audition scene and poetic repetition, not only in the structure of poems but in our engagement with poetry itself.
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