[RCL]

O Balls of Being O

The “all” in “ball” suggests “be all/is all,” a cosmic duality where two-are-one: the cyclic beginnings and ends of life and death and, possibly, every game that’s played with balls. Many people instinctively, some fanatically, play and follow ballgames, experiencing the pulses of ahead-and-behind, winning-and-losing, gracefulness-and-awkwardness:

American and European football; ping pong, tennis, racquetball, softball, baseball, pinball, soccer ball, golf ball, volleyball, pickleball, basketball, bocce ball, bowling ball, croquet ball; also, pocket pool and billiard balls, handballs, clay pigeons, hockey pucks and dart boards, echoing the balls of sun, moon and earth, as well as planet orbits tracking our calendar.

Our bodies too echo O: eyeballs, ears, nostrils, breasts, nipples, testicles, balls of feet; as do our emotional cycles (sad/glad, love/hate et al) and myriad other expressions of cyclic wholeness, including formal tracks for foot, horse, auto races and sites for wrestling and cage matches, each round and repeated within cages wild with sharp contrasts, bipolar forces.

For centuries, the world’s children shot marbles, hard small stones (primal weapons) smoothed by streaming water, later manufactured as plain and ornate glass balls, ammunition for this ancient war game, like so many games. A player shot his “shooter” marble (thumb flicking it off the crooked forefinger) at other marbles within a circle drawn in dust, winning or losing some “mibs.”


S3L1: too for also?

This final English 101 thesis sentence, below, omitted. Thanks, Cameron!

In manifest ways, the archetypal ball permeates human culture’s facts and thoughts—instinctively and intentionally mimed for weapons, arts, games and narratives.