According to Tim Heard, an Australian entomologist and the author of The Australian Native Bee Book, the visible spiral is just the topmost layer of the complex, multistoried structure the bees build. A fully developed nest can contain a 10 to 20 continuously spiraling layers. As shown in the video below, each circle can contain hundreds of brood cells containing eggs. ~Vittoria Traverso on Atlas Obscura
Silence is the root of everything. If you spiral into its void a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear. ~Rumi
“If you spiral into its void…” I am drawn to silence. And to spirals. I am drawing spirals. I see spirals everywhere. What is that all about?
Since listening is my passion, I image the ear as essentially a spiral in its outer shape. And delightfully, the inner ear, or chochlea, is a labyrinth-like spiral. There, the sound that drums on the ear tickles tiny vibrating hairs into messages of a frequency the resonates with the synapses of the brain.
Listening is not linear, but rather a winding of Wisdom. From inklings in the soul, Wisdom wanders from the vibrations of the vocal chords, through air to ear to brain to mind/heart/meaning. Continue reading
One of the cheers we lead in high school — (yes, I was a cheerleader) — was SOUND OFF. Straight out of the army, it was SOUND OFF — 1, 2 — SOUND OFF — 3, 4 — SOUND OFF — 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 clap clap 3, 4. This was supposed to inspire cheering from the crowd of Jenkintown High School basketball fans who shouted the numbers back to the red and blue clad cheerleaders. It was one of my earliest practices in coercive influence on public behavior.
But when I consider the OUTLOUD part of Sounding Out Wisdom, I am a little more timid these days. Yelling back and forth, one side against another, is one way offered to me to use my voice in the public domain. And it would not be hard to summon up the “spirit” of screaming. But I resist. I wait for another kind of message and delivery system.
Sounding Out Wisdom 