Time is most often depicted as a straight line—laid out flat, past-present-future, then and now and tomorrow. Sometimes, however, time seems to curve back in upon itself like a series of overlapping circles. Like a slinky, time can stretch out long and sleek or compress into an almost solid object, short and compact.

A couple of weeks ago I turned 50—an age that as a kid seemed practically ancient but now, of course, feels downright young—and I seem to be going through one of those stages when time and life circle back, reminding me of things I thought I had forgotten or outgrown.

Some of that has to do with the time of year. Every September, as the summer winds down and the sky takes on that clear high blue that I associate with autumn, there is a kind of closure. Living in a resort as we do, the summer is jam-packed with events, activities, and deadlines that for us culminates with Sundance on Labor Day Weekend. That too is a circle of a kind, a recurring event of which we have been a part for 17 years.

At any given moment in our lives we are the sum of all that we have known or experienced. Unfortunately the sheer volume of it all sometimes means that we can’t remember a single detail, which is probably why the circles I’m been talking about seem to catch us by surprise at times. Suddenly a hidden trigger opens a door in the back of our minds and someone that we used to be steps forth with a memory, a lesson, a reminder from days gone by.

At this year’s Sundance auction my 2004 Sundance painting was purchased by a couple from Washington, DC—Albert Scariato and Stephen Ziobro—for a record $14,800. Albert was one of the 18 hosts of the very first Sundance back in 1988. Over the years he has remained on our mailing list and has continued to be a host for the event but this was only the second time he was able to attend. His presence at this year’s Sundance felt like a full circle to me, and it suddenly thrust me back into a different time and place before so many of our friends passed away.

As we continue to develop plans for uniting 37 and 39 Baltimore Avenue into a community space, I keep remembering that the original concept for CAMP Rehoboth contained not only community space and offices but gallery and retail as well. Much of that got lost in the first hectic years of trying to get a new organization off the ground. But now we come again full circle, back to the beginning, back to the dream. Who would ever have believed all those years ago that we would someday be in the position to purchase not one but two properties in downtown Rehoboth.

One of the things that makes Rehoboth such a great place is that it is both a small town and a resort. We have the best of both worlds, a small town atmosphere and big city connections. Each year as people return to the beach for another summer season, it feels like circles within circles. Like tiny stitches looping again and again, each returning member of our community adds to the fabric of our life—crafting a great quilt that weaves us all together into one another’s lives.

No matter how exhausted I am by the end of the summer or all the work that goes into making Sundance happen, something magical always occurs for me in the last hours of the dance—this year even more than most. As the evening came to close, the dance floor was still packed and filled with faces that I have known for many years, people who have claimed Rehoboth as an important part of their lives for a long time. All around the room circles of friends connected and overlapped, separated, reformed, and grew again. It reminded me of the Strand, and further back to the Saint in NYC, of another time and another me. Yet even as that thought comes, I know that a circle has closed again and that it is, in fact, the same lifetime, the same me.

I think that many of us experience life as fragments. We separate and compartmentalize the different parts of who we are. Certainly anytime we hide who we are or deny that which made us who we are, we risk fragmentation. Add to that a stressful, busy life filled with more information than any single human being can handle, and I think it’s easy to see how quickly all of us can become separated, distant, distrustful, and afraid of one another.

The best thing we can do for one another is to keep dancing, to keep our circles alive, to keep coming back together time and time again, not just for Sundance and CAMP Rehoboth but in all aspects of our lives. Every time we reach out to someone else we rediscover a missing part of ourselves. Every time we reach out to the lonely, the disenfranchised, the sick, the hungry, the weak, the poor, and the outcast, we reach out to ourselves as well—to that hidden and forgotten part of ourselves—and we reconnect, re-form, and remember who we are.

At this year’s Sundance the dance floor was covered by giant flower shapes—circular petals connecting to form a bright explosion of color and light. As my dedicated tech and decor crew knows, I always try to carefully pack up and save all the parts and pieces of every event. But those flowers were beyond even my storage capabilities, and on the day following the event we were forced to cut them apart. Like all summer flowers, they had a brief moment of glory and then were gone. And yet they live in the memory where they stand as reminders of the need for each one of us to stay open to one another, to constantly be broadening our circles, to keep building a community based on love, a community with room for every color in the rainbow.

Thinking about circles, and remembering long forgotten parts of ourselves, reminded me of this piece I wrote back in 1999 called Remember Me.

by Murray Archibald