## Gold Raining again—four days now I think. Slept on the floor again too. It sets me straight I think. I had a dream of some sort but I don't remember what. Something fitting together. Something to do with affinity. The thought popped into my head this morning that it used to be really hard sleeping on the floor. At first I would sleep on my back, and try to distribute my weight as evenly as possible. I would wake up sore as if I had been lifting weights. Sometimes I would roll over in the night onto one side. This would also get sore. I would wake up periodically through the night to adjust my position. When I crash landed here, my sides would be sore and numb every morning. I was very conscious of my weight against the floor, the pressure it made on my elbows, muscles. This morning I woke up on my side, very comfortable. I don't really think about it anymore. Lying there on my side, facing my guitars and piano in the corner, perfectly floor shaped. I thought about the day. New patterns. Last night I wrote. The day before too. I was listening to Bill Evans. *You must believe in spring*. True. What I did not do last night: buy coffee beans. To my credit, I bought some other groceries, so I will eat like a person this week. But no coffee would sting. I put harem pants over my pyjamas. Bush market is just a block up from me so it's not actually that big of a deal. I just don't go outside before coffee usually. I put on my H&M jacket, it looks kind of funny with the pants. It's brown, but a darker more suave shade. The harem pants are more of a cadbury brown. Beige barefoot shoes from amazon to complete the look. Go downstairs. *Lullaby of Birdland* surfaces again in my mind. *That's what I, always hear*. Sigh. I whistle on my way out. I step out side and the rain is actually pretty gnarly. I walk maybe 20 steps, keeping the buildings close on my right, walking on that little strip of slightly-less-wet sidewalk. I'm still taking on a lot of rain. You know, beanstock cafe is right here. I'll do this instead. A group of 4 or 5 girls are ordering coffee. I'm not sure if they are tourists. A couple is sharing coffee in the corner by the window. I'm by the door waiting in line. I have a good amount of space. If someone else comes in I'll have to stand closer than I want to right now. There are a few pictures on the wall to the left. One of them is a picture of the cafe I'm standing in. It doesn't look too different than it is now. Maybe the same actually. I think the picture will age well. *What would you like sir?* Kind eyes. *Medium black coffee please*. I order medium out of reflex. Small is usually too small, large is usually too much of a handful. *We only have these sizes, is this one okay?* She gestures to the larger of two cups on the raised part of the counter. It has a small vine growing in it. A beanstock I wonder? Cute. Both cups are smaller than I would like. *Perfect! Thanks.* I space out for a split second. Do they sell coffee beans? Eh. I'll stick with Sightglass. *Do you have cash?* Uh. Do I? *Debit?*. The terminal says $3.50. *It's a five dollar minimum*. Routinely apologetic, but genuine. I'll just leave a tip to make the difference. I pull out my wallet; it's the silly mechanical kind designed to save space. I notice I do actually have cash for once. Nice. I hand her a 20. Oh! Two by accident. She hands me back one of them. I feel a sense of appreciation. She hands me my change. She says something to her husband, and he pours a cup from the canteen. I go to reach for it. *Over here*. He goes around the counter to the collection area, and places my cup there. Patterns are patterns I guess. I go get it, turn to go outside. A couple is coming in. A crisp looking guy and a pretty blonde woman, both about my height, nicely dressed. He holds the door open for me and I nod. Or was it a bow? *Thanks*. Thinking back, I realize I forgot to actually leave a tip! I'm so used to the debit terminals *forcing* me to tip, that I don't remember to do it myself. Sad. I go back into my building. Wet carpet smell in the lobby. Which is weird because there isn't a carpet. Maybe something from the humidity. Upstairs. Back in my apartment. In my reading chair, once again wearing pyjamas, with coffee this time. I reach for my kindle. *A Systems View of Life*. Did you know that flower petals can only grow at certain angles? It's not a coincidence; which is obvious in some ways and not in others. Beauty and symmetry are real, and related. Darcy Thomson was one of the first to try and describe life mathematically. *On Growth and Form*. He elucidates shapes we see in life through mathematical symbols. The way cells pack against one another. The psychedelic shape of a sunflower's seeds. Honeycomb. The whole is an echo; in and of its parts. In some way, fibonacci numbers are the most real numbers. 1.618... the golden ratio. What makes it golden? Ayn Rand says that gold is inherently valuable. At face value, obviously a silly thing to say. But then. What the hell *is* value? *Inherent* with respect to what? There is something to be said, how some things have a way of surviving time, and some do not. Gold is a fascinating material. In a literal sense, immune to time; stable. Does not rust, does not react. Sits in a tomb, a shipwreck, a skull for thousands of years, and gleams all the same finally seen again. Untouchable. It's also malleable, in a way that no special technology is needed to create with it. Sticks and stones, a primitive chisel does the trick. Yet, when held, strikingly heavy. Art made of gold lasts forever—unless careless hands melt it down. Gold is an ideal conduit. Moves current, stays put, never decays. Needed to make microchips, connect with the computational universe. In financial markets, practically invariant. Gold is never worthless. The golden ratio is kinda like that. Something we always comes back to. An irrational number; something approached instinctively by nature, but never quite understood. Invisibly logical. Life depends on it. A flower doesn't know how many petals it will grow. How does it push them out? Take a large fibonacci number, then the one two after it. Divide the first by the second, times $2\pi$ you have a *phyllotactic angle*. It approximates the golden angle. On a clock, the golden angle happens one second after 4:35. Grow a petal at noon. Every 4 hours, thirty five minutes, one second, grow another. Go for as long as you like; weeks, months, years, a lifetime. Inevitably, any time you look, there will be evenly spaced petals; a beautiful time flower. What came first? Gold or time? That doesn't make sense. Gold is outside of time. I wonder then, how does a flower discover gold? That's the funny thing it seems—it doesn't. It inherits it.