Circles, Spirals and Labyrinths

With the enthusiastic focus on the April 8th solar eclipse, I felt inspired to do a piece on circles. While I barely got to see it here in California, the theme for this piece was already percolating. This led me to revisit some of my older photographs and shoot new ones here on a California beach. I’m sure I’ll continue to go around in circles for years to come.

While we come across circles and round objects in anything from bicycle wheels, tea cups, door knobs, plates, lamp shades – basically anything our hands can twist around or hold, I’ve chosen to focus now on flowers and other natural phenomena.

Here below, are royal blue velellas (aka sea rafts) which my husband, David, arranged in a circle on the beach. Resembling jelly fish made me at first feel wary. However, as I learned they are non-poisonous. Still, these little creatures known as chydrozoas are carniverous and feast on kelp. Featuring transparent “fins” resembling a sail, they appeared like castaways on the sandy beach. Below I came across white foam from a wave.

With a little help from our friends comes earth art. Discovering one left behind by an individual we may never meet makes for a true gift. The cairn was particularly impressive on that beach that also introduced me to velallas that appear only at certain times of the year.

Getting back to more practical and useful items we also can find a path made of inverted glass bottles.

As to spirals, they can almost make one feel dizzy…

Clocks are a reminder that time is cyclical. Today’s digital as opposed to analog watches and clocks lose such a quality. I don’t know why most of these I photographed at a watch repair store in Mexico are missing their “hands”. Mexican time??? Perhaps it starts and ends with manana…

In the Japanese concept of wabi sabi we are reminded that nothing is perfect…