This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Thursday, November 2, 2023
6:57pm
It’s National Look For Circles Day. Not circle day. Look for circles day. It’s so utterly random that I decided to play.
I didn’t think it would be particularly hard to find circles but I didn’t expect to find quite as many as I did. And yes, I did actually look.
By the way. Look? Two circles right in the middle.
Here are a few of the circles I found, in fewer words and more roundness. I highly encourage you to look around for circles, too. You might be surprised by what you notice…
For instance, cocktails always come in circles. I suppose somewhere there is a square glass or even an octagonal one but the good ones are round.
This martini glass, for instance, has the benefit of circular rings, which makes it a multitude of circular goodness. And even though the olives are a tad on the elliptical side, I’m counting them for the purpose of this experiment.
This beauty is just showing off with its round rim and round blueberries.
And this one is circles within circles, which reminds you that every time you slice an orange or a lime or a lemon you get a beautiful and delicious circle. It’s like they were made just for today!
Cocktails are circular perfection, if you think about it. My entire bar is a study in circles. The bottles. The corks. The glasses and fruit slices and cherries. The jars and cans of pineapple juice and bitters. Even some of my cocktail napkins have a circular design.
This whiskey barrel top came from a local distillery. You could buy it for $150 or, if you’re like us, you buy so many bottles that they give it to you for free.
Since I’ve been on a bit of a planting mission lately, there are quite a lot of circles in the form of plant pots. There’s my pinecone in its candle jar. There is a potato that started sprouting and is now in a pot on my windowsill. And there are currently five Alices, with two more rooting in jars as we speak.
As for the pinecones that didn’t get planted, they sit happily in their round bowl.
I decided that I needed to get a little more granular with my exploration. Anyone can find a round glass or a round bowl. I needed to find something interesting.
Interestingly… Hello Kitty has oval eyes. And an oval nose. But her friend Pusheen has round eyes. And Inq has the biggest, roundest ones of all. I bet you can pick them out of the lineup.
I found a jar full of marbles, and even though marbles are technically spheres, they are also going to count. I think a few of them fell out of my brain so I was happy to find them.
Jars of all kinds are gloriously round. There is literally no such thing as a jar that isn’t, at least when it comes to the mouth. Like this candle jar, for instance. It’s my very last chestnut persimmon candle and I lit it after admiring its circular top. In case you’re wondering why it’s on top of the puzzle, that’s because it was the only clean space I could find to take a photo after destroying the kitchen for dinner tonight.
Then I found a whole bunch of bookmarks with circles for charms, not to mention their round companion beads. I had the one with the Buffalo coin specially made to accompany The Grapes Of Wrath. The coin was one that would have been used during those dustbowl days and the beads would have been traded with the native people.
Which reminded me that I have a book with a perfect circle of a moon on the cover. This was written by my friend Bruno, by the way. You should buy it. And tell everyone you know to buy it. And the way books work, he might earn three cents on the sale. It’s a thankless job but some of us just have to write.
My round pumpkin.
And a circle-ish pumpkin that was on the table at the little coffee shack in Leiper’s Fork. If you look very closely there are also circle-ish rings in the table.
My excellent round pencil sharpener.
And the little round center of the daisies on my napkin holder.
Finally, I couldn’t help but include this trivet, given to me by my friend Kaarina. She finds the coolest things, and this trivet is made of a special wood that releases a lovely scent when heated. It is made of circles, perhaps not perfect circles, but their roundish imperfection would please her immensely.
The circle hunt was a great success today. Turns out they’re everywhere but during my month of less I am not going to take more photos and spend all day putting them here. I’m sure if you look around you can find your own interesting circles and take your own interesting pictures. I bet you have one of these, too…
Photo: some cool round lights that hung in the Asbury Hotel.