Circle of Seven

Stone cave
Bone in cave
Bone cave
Meat in cave
Meat cave
Wood in cave
Wood cave
Star in cave
Star cave
Stone in cave 

                                                                                                                          I will explain this one, because I have found when I shared it with a few people it completely confounded them.  Trying to explain my meaning is something I rarely do, but I think in this case it is worth doing, because I put a lot of thought into it.  The exercise I set myself here was to say as much as possible with as little as possible… basically, I was trying to capture the entire cycle of life, from birth to death, and beyond, as minimalistically as I could.  So, line by line –

Stone cave:  the sort a caveman might dwell in.

Bone in cave:  the remnants of his food.  A reference to the food chain, survival of the fittest, the interconnectedness of things.

Bone cave:  the ribcage of the caveman himself.  A reference to structure, order, which naturally leads one to ponder the opposite forces of chaos.  Also, perhaps a bit of an existentialist thought here, in the sense that we`re all trapped in these bone caves… our bodies.  What is consciousness, and how is it connected to our physical selves?

Meat in cave:  the caveman’s heart in his chest.  His lifeforce, and his love for his mate.  His desire to live, and pass on his genes.   Also, providing for a family.  On a somewhat more sinister note, this is also a very simple reference to the fact that to another meat-eating creature… the caveman himself is just more meat.

Meat cave:  perhaps not the most flattering description of female anatomy, but it is accurate (What?  I didn’t design them!  :).  This line also represents the caveman’s thoughts, his desire to mate, his instinctual lust.

Wood in cave:  have the children gone to bed?  Given that last line, I don’t think I need to explain this one.  Use your imaginations!  ;)  Branching away from that (haha, get it) this line also represent technology.  Sort of like how we go out into the natural world, harvest things there, and then make them into new things… bringing these new things back to our caves for comfort and convenience.

Wood cave:  the cradle or crib of a newborn, resulting from the last two lines…  Also, the word ‘wood’ refers to the power of Nature itself interwoven through our every day lives.  It can also be read to mean modern housing, sort of like a parallel to the first line but in a different time.

Star in cave:  the newborn in the crib, a new light to set the compass by in the eyes of the loving parents, and a source of joy and wonder.  Also, modern wonders like electric lights, to light our wooden caves, and perhaps even the headlights of cars when seen from a distance at night.  Stars in a dark cave…

Star cave:  the starry sky at night, another source of wonder, and also awe.  Following that line of thought, this line also encapsulates spirituality, the way we explain the wonders we encounter (such as the night sky) through mythology and religion.  And have you ever seen a city at night from a distant hilltop?  Star cave.

Stone in cave:  the moon in the sky, superstition and myth (werewolves, for starters, and follow the tangent wherever you like), and something of a Biblical reference… Jesus died and was placed in a cave, which they rolled a stone in front of.  I’m making reference to both death and rebirth, as well as tying the final line into the first by using the same words.  And going back to the second-to-last line, thinking along the lines of cities being star-filled caves… chasms, really, which are just caves that open up at the top… the stone in the cave is the concrete, the pavement, the weight of the world in a busy, industrialized, time-is-money society.  The stone in the cave might also be the stone in the pit of my stomach when I think about these things, and how far we`ve pushed the envelope of Nature… but so the cycle goes.

In all, I used only 7 different words, variously repeated, to try to capture the essence of life (in an admittedly simplified form).   Still, for the task I set myself, I feel pretty good about the results.  Each line builds on those that come before to create, by the end, a very concise, but (to me, anyway) very clear picture of the cycle of life.  Like life, it raises more questions than it answers.  I think the more I read it, the more I realize is written there… like a mantra, or a strange parable that doesn’t quite make sense at first glance.

And that’s my take on it!  You’re more than welcome to your own interpretations, and I’d love to hear them!  Thanks for reading!