From
<b>'What if we learned the language of the leaves?'</b>
<span class ='opening'>THE SEQUENCE</span>
[[Play]]We spoke about it as though we knew
We saw it everywhere
We knew it emerged from the pine spirals
From the unfurling leaves
It has been revealed as a big discovery
We weren't listening
[[0 ->Play]] Ali strokes the fronds and they ripple under his fingers. He takes a deep breath and tries to concentrate.
The sentences are quite new to him.
Words in isolation, manageable.
Words together, a struggle.
He filters the numbers in his mind, he tries to translate them.
"gold below future above rays dirt bed end"
He can't be sure if the order is right
Perhaps its
"end future gold rays above dirt bed below"
or
"gold future above, end dirt rays, bed below"
He can sense this is incorrect.
He is trying to forget his human logic.
He wants to access the rest of his mind.
He doesn't quite know how to think outside his think.
Ali strokes the leaf again,
It ripples,
He rebegins.
[[1 ->Play]]
We are stroked gently. We don't know what to say in response.
It can be hard to speak when you are held.
We fumble our words.
We don't know how to speak in full sentences.
He is trying so hard to listen.
[[1 ->Play]] The pattern is often called the Fibonnaci sequence
But the numbers are not his
They were described by others long before
Acharya Pingala wrote of the pattern in Sanskrit poetry in 2nd or 3rd BC
We add the two preceeding numbers to make the next
What exists before joins to make what comes after
Anything that can be achieved will be achieved by us
[[2 ->Play]]
Initially it was a flurry.
A revelation.
In the fronds and the winding leaves, people found endless events that had been predicted and foreseen: droughts, crop failures, storms, cyclones. The leaves knew which cities would fall, the ideas that would grow.
Some found inscribed names of people and discoveries, chemical elements, battles, dates, days.
There was much joy and elation. Suddenly, we had found a key.
There was also anger. The information had been sitting there, growing in our gardens, reaching to us out of the Earth. We hadn't taken time to stop and listen.
This is what people had thought they had found.
[[3 ->Play]] We can look closely at one number and the number that came just before. These two numbers produce a ratio. A ratio is a good way of describing how the two numbers relate, what kind of relationship they have.
We think of this sequence. As the sequence gets bigger the ratio between one number and the next get closer to just one number: 1.618.
We know this number as the golden ratio.
As the numbers grow their relationships become more consistent.
Their relationship is simply golden.
We want the sequence to take us somewhere. We believe it is our guide.
The sequence will take us to the depths of the Earth. It will show us all it is we don't yet understand.
[[5 ->Play]] Ali searches desparately through his notes.
It is without fevour, he is not rushing.
He has a gentle kind of sinking desperation.
The kind where the truth you are running away from has already surrounded you. You are already sinking together.
He know that there is nothing here. Nothing of value anyway. There are no predictions, nothing to be saved, no great knowledge.
[[8->Play]] The golden ratio can be known as the divine proportion
The ratio holds beauty
The ratio shows us that there is beauty in the balance
Shells hold the golden ratio
So do galaxies, and flowers and pine cones
The shapes of hurricanes
[[13 ->Play]] Ali drops the sheets.
There is only acceptance. The knowledge is that the knowledge will never come.
There are endless scribbles, translated sentences Ali believed were leading him somewhere, towards the future, towards the truth.
They're all one liners.
Mostly terrible, some funny.
Each fern is perfecting it's tight five.
The gentle interlacing of frond around finger is just a gesture towards a giggle.
We want to follow the sequence.
The ferns wants to make us laugh.
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