I am always fascinated by the poetic geometry of vegetables. Whether it's the stripes of a tiger beetroot, the pattern of a sliced persimmon, the heart of a pear, or even the shape of a walnut resembling a brain, I often feel like I'm diving into a mysterious mirror—both foreign and intimate.
Since I was young, I've loved delving into parallel worlds, my own and those of other species. I remember spending long minutes gazing at leaf veins or the insides of certain stones, and the spirals of certain flowers still mesmerize me. It's the elegance of earthly elements that strikes me in these contemplations—their beauty and especially the movement present in every design, even static, like a hidden impulse that eludes my eyes yet is undeniably real.
Spirals and fractals appear to be the most common design on Earth, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Most of the animal and plant kingdom is made up of these fractals, including our internal organs. Our lungs share the same branching structure as trees and serve the same purpose—to breathe. These fractals are complementary: trees release oxygen that animals (including humans) consume, and in turn, animals exhale CO2 that trees absorb. We can even draw parallels between our veins circulating blood to our organs and rivers fertilizing the land.
But what fascinates me most is when these self-similar fractals are also logarithmic spirals. The first to describe a logarithmic spiral was Albrecht Dürer (1525), who called it an "eternal line" ("ewige Linie"). More than a century later, the curve was discussed by Descartes (1638) and later extensively studied by Jacob Bernoulli, who named it Spira mirabilis, "the marvelous spiral."
The Romanesco cauliflower is a perfect example.
I feel my love for markets, eating with others is alos a dynamic spiral , a movement that gives me a place in the world. Not an identity, but a relational place in the web of life.
Knowing who nourishes me, connecting with producers who share their vegetable stories, taking the time to witness their transformation into a meal—all of this allows me to imagine the invisible chain that binds me. From purchasing ingredients to cooking, peeling, composting, and growing butternut squash that we cook again, I feel part of the circle. I am the logarithmic spiral of the fractal matrix. Just like each fractal that composes it, I am the movement that continuously unfolds, the fragment of an exploded truth within every existence. I am food and compost of the world, consuming and being consumed by the world.
I will never see the “grand cabbage “of my reality, but knowing that this grand cabbage depends on me (among others) to exist begins to make sense. I can finally feel at home, independent yet connected in a reality that surpasses me. This answers the absurd appearance of my separated life that reveals itself without my being able to see it.
This video based on the mathematical formula of the Mandelbrot set allows us to see the wonderful fractal weaving of our reality, with a central form that strangely reminds me of a meditating Buddha!
It also makes me think about what makes this fractal coherent, which in the food system relates to the taste of food. What defines the good taste of a carrot or cheese, if not its coherence with the rest of the spiral ? It's the fact that cows nourish the soil with the plant diversity they need through their dung, that chickens scatter this food, that goats sculpt and protect pastures, and that humans take care to sow, protect, and feed these animals so that this fractal can nourish and feed other fractals, including us.
Thus, each vegetable tastes like the earth that nourishes it—that's the concept of terroir and culture. Terroir is not about putting inputs into the soil, as conventional agriculture does, and hoping it suffices to nourish it. What nourishes me is the taste of the dynamic spiral, all these fractals linking the future to the past in the movement of the present, this simultaneous reality from stars to microorganisms, from our love to that of cows—a grand universal cooperation, both microscopic and macroscopic. That's the taste.
So, when tomatoes or carrots lose their taste, it's a clear sign of the decline of terroirs, our culture, and our human coherence on Earth. When some fractals can no longer stay connected to others, the spiral falters—it turns only with oil (pesticides), functioning for a while, but some gears rust, seize up, or collapse (soil erosion), leading the entire system to decay (nutrients escape, plants weaken, and the quality of our food disappears).
This is the effect of intensive agriculture—a loss of coherence in the disappearance of what binds the elements of the system together.
The way we manage plant and animal production in so-called conventional agriculture corrodes the entire cabbage; we just don't see it. Yet, the harmful effects of what we allow behind the walls of intensive farms or in monoculture fields (lacking plant and animal biodiversity) affect the taste of life we consume and starve us more than it nourishes us.
This affects our place and the meaning of our human reality.
But fractal theory is also linked to chaos theory and integrates its parameters, which at a small scale appear tragic. Its perspective encourage to embrace nuance, confusion, bluerryness as both a theory and a practice of change.
I see this as an invitation to sit in complexity, to no longer hope without giving up, much like the Buddhist vow. Simply connecting, finding our place, and acting from that place, knowing that this action will have an effect on the general system—that's the concept of contemplative activism. Seeing what is and acting from there without trying to solve the entire system, or anything at all, but staying in the momentum of our own lives.
Food is inevitably political, and politics can be seen as a means to restore coherence to the spiral. For example, the creation of the slow food movement and its latest addition, slow schools food , aims to defend the taste passed on to children in schools who currently eat food produced by facilities using dead ingredients.
Through our consumption choices, we don't always realize how we denature the life present in our food, how we manufacture the taste of our lives through the food we eat, and especially how choosing our food will allow future generations to choose theirs.
We are made of what we encounter, of what we interact with, since the beginning of humanity. We are the microcosm of the macrocosm, in the simultaneity of all past and future times—this simultaneity is what we call the present.
We can restore dignity and claim our place as humans on Earth—those who regenerate—and we can already become the benevolent ancestors of our grandchildren by choosing and celebrating the good taste of life at every meal!
Links on fractals: Fractal Foundation Wikipedia - Benoit Mandelbrot