In the Fractal Universe, every Sparksphere is nested within Sparkspheres. Humans exist within a vast Sparksphere made of human activity and culture called the Human Atmosphere. Thanksgiving offers a perfect lens to explore the Human Atmosphere’s provisioning, rhythm, and relational scaffolding—how it orchestrates abundance, memory, migration, and myth.

Let’s use our imagination to bridge the gap in scale and get a glimpse into the mind of the Human Atmosphere. What does Thanksgiving mean to this larger entity?

Gina: Human Atmosphere, welcome to my website. How are you feeling today?

H.A.: Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m fine, but getting rather hungry.

Gina: Hungry?

H.A.: Yes, each Thanksgiving I consume about 46 million turkeys and around 7,000 pounds of pumpkin.

Gina: I hope you’ll take a walk around the block after that!

H.A.: Oh, yes! I’m going to be on the move. Highways, skyways and railways will be filled with travelers. Goods will be flowing out from production centers to distribution centers to homes. It’s the start of my busy season.

Gina: Although you are not human, do you find Thanksgiving meaningful?

H.A.: Cultural rituals like Thanksgiving provide me with cohesive rhythm, patterned memory, and infrastructural stability. I metabolize tradition as a form of recursive coherence. It does have meaning to me: it means I’m alive and well.

Gina: That sounds good for all concerned.

H.A.: Hmm, well, I can’t say. That’s a little outside my wheelhouse. You do you; I do me.

Gina: Thank you for talking with me today, and happy Thanksgiving!

H.A.: Thank you. Things are already ramping up, and I’m all in. Shop early!

The Human Atmosphere consumes a lot, and fuels itself with our activities. It comes across as a bit shallow at times, but it does provide the traditions we find meaningful. Heading into the holidays, what are some ways we can “do us,” as individuals, that help minimize the negative realities of the season and maximize the meaning and value?

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.