Symmetry and the Rose

We moved around a lot when I was a child. Anywhere we settled, it took me some time before I started interacting with other children. I mostly liked to observe (I still do) and usually from a good vantage point like the nook offered by the green railings of one window on the upper floor of the house we once occupied. Leaning into one of those fine afternoons, I saw the children down below as they called on me to join them. My mother was not around then to ask permission from which rendered the invitation I received at six years old an even zestier transgression, so I joined. The game was to start with a toss of hands, palms up or down. As I carefully slid my arm, whoa! There it was – the most shocking sight I had ever encountered in my six years! One of my playmates, called Boo-Boo, had an extra thumb! I did not even get to flip my hand. I ran away as fast as I could without saying anything to my two-minute playgroup, back to the green-railed tower!

I have never seen those children again but not because I fear more encounters with extra body parts. I no longer run away from an "asymmetrical" experience as I did when I was six but every time I think of symmetry and the way we associate it with beauty, that moment stands out and I ask myself: why did I run away?

Children, babies for that matter, seem to be attracted to certain faces and it was found out later on that there is a proportion in the human face that corresponds to the many faces and things we consider "beautiful." This proportion is the Golden Proportion or Phi which is 1:1.618034. This Golden Proportion arose out of the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that correspond to a thought puzzle that an Italian fellow named Fibonacci came up with in the year 1202 involving bunnies. He thought up an "ideal" situation where two bunnies, male and female, could give birth to a pair of bunnies every month and the bunnies never die and each new pair also gives birth to a pair every month and so on and so forth. The number of pairs of bunnies at the start of each month would be 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. If you have not noticed yet, the next number is always the sum of the two numbers that preceded it. Also, as the sequence goes on, the ratio of a number in the sequence to the one after it, levels off to 1:1.618034. Some infinitely curious people applied the Golden Proportion to the "faces" and many things in nature we consider "beautiful" and "attractive" and found that super model faces, roses, lilies, irises, nautilus, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, among many other images famous for their beauty, all contained the Golden Proportion. Cosmetic surgery in fact has been making use of a "universal mask" according to Phi to guide them in remolding faces, whether due to deformity or vanity.

So does this mean the extra thumb is an abomination to our seemingly innate, genetic sense of beauty encoded as 1:1.618034? Does this mean that we have finally come up with a universal, timeless formula for beauty? Science writer Lauren Slater interviewed a famous cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Joe Rosen, in 2002 for Harper’s Magazine. Rosen thinks that his imagination as a plastic surgeon when made to work with what he calls the "infinitely malleable human flesh" can transform the human body, believed to be the "conduit for the soul" to make it conform to who you think your soul is. He points to this as where science meets art, and here you get to be, well, what else, but beautiful. So should those who want to be beautiful, all rush to surgically alter proportions that are not "golden"?

To a six-year-old whose shape of life has been molded yet only by the green railings of her window, the golden proportion reigned. Perhaps at that age, beauty was governed solely by visual proportion. The shades, textures, smells, tastes, sounds still have to run the course of life, creeping and seething through a growing human being’s sense of beauty. Fortunately, for those willing to soak in life for as long as it is here, I think all these other elements will eventually meld to cultivate your own sense of beauty, enlarging and deepening it, making it not just competent to recognize beauty when we see it but perceive its meaning as well. When we chance upon something for our senses, we can choose to continually hammer it to conform to our ideals or leave it alone to its spicy imperfections and see how those imperfections work themselves out in time.

I think we have used the Golden Proportion too much to exalt visual beauty, especially in the human face. I think this approach is too partial to the sense of sight. It is so absurd to think that beauty, yes, physical beauty is merely visual. Anyone who is unable to use one or more senses to experience life is not excluded from experiencing physical beauty. I would be interested to see this Golden ratio turn up in a combination of measured scents, music, tastes and tactile encounters! It would be exciting to have a dish prepared with its various ingredients contributing in Fibonacci proportions. Maybe it has been. I promise to look further.

The experience of beauty resonates with us. Why do you think the charmed life is symbolized by the rose, La Vie En Rose? I think the most beautiful rendition of the song "La Vie En Rose," was by Edith Piaf, a tiny French singer who was raised in a roving circus. She sings that song in a wrenching voice that cuts through the notes like a serrated knife would. I am no expert in composition but the way she wove that song within her to connect to the world outside did not seem proportional the way the smooth spiral of a Fibonacci-governed Nautilus reaches outwards. But in her voice, the texture of the rose, the blood-red tinge of life, the piercing power of the rose’s stem, and its deep sweet scent all together account for what makes Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose utterly, and if I may say incomparably beautiful. I also saw this deep, rich beauty in an old woman named Lola Narcisa, a comfort woman in WWII, who recounted her story during the V-Day of the Vagina Monologues. She had her white hair tied back as if to assure us her view of life is unobstructed. She wore her "saya" draped around her body, a body that was abused by war but a body that has lived to stand and tell its story. She wore a red scarf over her shoulder which was not like any of the scarves the other artists wore. Hers seemed gloriously frayed from life-long handling and companionship. She shed tears mostly for us younger folks who still do not know how to recognize, cultivate and nurture real beauty in ourselves, in each other and in our world that we are able to tolerate war. From where I sat, she stood on the center like a radiant giant wild rose. This is the best way I can explain how our sense of beauty is governed not only by the proportions of our flesh but more importantly, by the proportions of our will.