Tonight I contemplate this head of Romanesco broccoli, soon to be cut up, slathered in olive oil, and roasted. As you can see, its edible flowers, weirdly known as curds, form a pyramid of identical, spiraling turrets. It’s a classic example of fractal geometry: a shape that, like a fiddlehead fern or lightning bolt, can be broken down over and over again into smaller parts, each a miniature version of the whole.
“Beauty brings copies of itself into being,” writes aesthetics scholar Elaine Scarry in her 1998 essay “On Beauty and Being Just.” “It makes us draw it, take photographs of it, or describe it to other people. Sometimes it gives rise to exact replication and other times to resemblances and still other times to things whose connection to the original site of inspiration is unrecognizable.”
That sounds right, I think, imagining my Romanesco assembling its minarets from soil and sunlight, spiral by spiral. Our brains love the regularity and predictability of repetition, but we also crave surprise and suspense, the variations on a theme that prevent monotony. Too much repetition is monoculture, pathology, amnesia, the same tired joke.
I, for one, am constantly torn between craving novelty and repetition. I signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box this winter in hopes of getting both, and so far I have not been disappointed. Every Thursday I pick up my box of local produce — a soothing ritual — only to be delighted by vegetables and fruits I’ve never heard of. Along with the Romanesco, this week’s assortment included purple carrots, mustard greens and something called a mandarinquat.
I do feel compelled to share my Romanesco broccoli in all its chartreuse glory, I really do. Perhaps that is what beauty means, as Scarry proposes. I don’t feel compelled enough to postpone dinner much longer, however, so instead of painting or drawing my vegetable, I turn the oven up to 425 degrees, and snap a photo with my phone.
A real pinup cauliflower! Love it.