Friday, April 13, 2012

What's in a shape?

Circles are famous in literary circles, social circles and the latest Google circles.
All big cities have a famous landmark square: Times square, Trafalgar square, Red square, Palace square.
So i don't know which of the two transcends the mere boundaries of a simple shape and is more 'famous'!
Seems like Circles abound in the literary or figurative world, and squares exist in our brick and mortar world. They are equally represented in the geometry class much to a students chagrin. And to add to the woes, each comes with a set of nasty cousins, the rectangle, parallelogram, rhombus on one side and the incircle, circumcircle and the sphere on the other. Well some fun things do come in the shape of squares and circles! The board games are primarily square, likewise the fun rides are circles. Then there are half a dozen games that are more fun when you have a large circle of friends!

The circle elevates to a higher plane in philosophical circles. It comes to represent life- the vicious circle of life and death. It comes to define the theory of karma- what goes around comes around. Some gurus/religious leaders can always be found talking about the circle of giving and sharing. The halo, again a close cousin of a circle gets to go around in divine circles. So the circle beats a square hands down in this territory.

However this blog hasn't come a full circle yet! I am yet to comment on the viciousness of circles. The horrible infinite loops that you end up in if you code your FOR-NEXT loops wrong. I still remember how my monochromatic computer screen threw up on me each time i made that mistake. When your GPS intends to torment you, it chooses to make you go round and round in circles. The mind traps are circles again. You keep going around that same circular chain of events, each time you think you have learnt your lesson- there you go, it is as if someone wiped your memory clean and you burn your fingers again.

To conclude in a single 'Line' (pun intended) Circles are horrible!
Lines keep you waiting. Triangles are always a bad place to be in. Pentagon has come to represent military power, Hexagon and all its cousins complicate chemistry. Poor little heart was given a shape that it never was and voila i get to end my blog post with another reference to 'love/ heart' and do justice to the title of 'love-bard' which an expert in shapes & structure & architecture conferred on me!!!!
(I am sure he has a defense already lined up for the lines, the squares, the circles and the triangles i rebuked above :)

2 comments:

  1. and there is one more place where circles are famous...size zero "0", size her"o", and my favorite, size P"O" "Panda style" :p

    ReplyDelete