Fibonacci Sequence in my Compost Pit
And the music in our hearts.
My compost pit digging today inadvertently took an interesting form. One can say it has been a lifelong dream of mine to dig a pit, a trench, whatever have you. One of my fears, hence, has been that I may never be able to dig a good trench. (Nawal will find this funny because she knows its true)
I have been thinking of this for a few days, and since I am still recovering from a prolonged period of sickness, I have been putting it off. So, when I started digging today, I started with no plan in mind and just wanted to do this without exhausting myself; in whatever way my body wanted to - the path of least resistance, whatever that may come to be. One way I imagined how I would proceed was - as if I were following the natural contours of a mountain, or a valley while on a trek with myself. I dug away for an hour, slowly, watching my breath at times, and then paused when I felt the need for rest. When I was halfway done, I stepped out and noticed that the pattern that had unfolded, looked familiar, and very peculiar. It was almost identical to the fibonacci sequence.
For those who do not know of this sequence, in very simple mathematical terms (because mathematics is simplified nature, and condensed reality) the Fibonacci sequence is a sequence in which each element is the sum of two elements that precede it. Reading this, now if you go back to the image above, you will see that the sequence starts at the centre with 1 and 1, which is added and the next step, their sum, is 2. However, when 1 and 2 (the current and the preceding element) is added, you get 3, then 5, then 8, and so on. It is an exponential progression.
Imagine a spiral staircase infinitely expanding as it goes upwards. However, there is something special about this sequence - it seems to come from, and infinitely replicate itself in nature.
While reading up on Fibonacci sequences, I stumbled upon another very interesting thing which spoke to my experience from today: “The Fibonacci numbers were first described in Indian Mathematics as early as 200 BC in work by Pingala on enumerating possible patterns of Sanskrit poetry formed from syllables of two lengths.”
The first notice of this phenomenon has been attributed to poetry, to the inner humming, inner rhythm of our hearts, our crescendos. This made me think. While I was digging, I was listening to the beautiful Sufi qawwali of Farid Ayaz. This one in particular:
(You might as well play this and read the remainder of the essay serenading to the tunes I was serenaded by)
Did the music have something to do with the pattern that replicated itself in my digging of the trench? Or does the music, perhaps the path of least resistance and maximum progression, replicate itself from the beating of our hearts?
Mathematics is not my cup of tea but I'm afraid I deeply dig this
What fascinates me is that the Fibonacci pattern in plants emerges from geometric optimization. In phyllotaxis, new leaves or seeds tend to form at approximately 137.5°. It avoids periodic overlap and distributes growth as evenly as possible around the stem. That’s why in sunflowers and pinecones we often observe spiral counts corresponding to consecutive Fibonacci numbers. A simple recursive relationship ends up encoding spatial efficiency.