Shape

27 Answer Number Two—Three More Ways to Look at It That Tell a Story
New relationships click as squares go around, rotating them in different ways connects
everything to everything else.
These are hard earned results that should last. Yet they don’t repeat in the
shape
in which a small square is added to complete a copy of the shape
The number of segments looks to double in this way. Still, meaningful (exact) divisions
are elusive—at least if I want to go on calculating with the options my rule provides,
and do nothing extra. There’s too much happening to get it to mesh. The five palindromes
I need now, that is to say, the divisions I have to make symmetrically, clash.
Specifically, the palindrome
ababaababaababaababa
that reflects my original one has substrings that are palindromes at aba, a quarter, and
a half, but not at ababaa where sides of the largest squares overlap after they’re rotated.
This seems little to fix, only I can’t find a way that doesn’t loop forever. It’s no use
permuting a and b or refining segments in differences—restoring symmetry in one
place breaks it in another. What works for three squares doesn’t work for five squares.
Langer’s negative account of syntax for photography, painting, drawing, etc. is all
the more persuasive as the outcome of a finite example that doesn’t rely on ‘‘myriad
elements and relationships.’’ Words (segments) and sentences (palindromes) aren’t set
all at once and once and for all, as I rotate five conspicuous squares in twelve lines
45 degrees at a time. I can count the possibilities—looking at one, then drawing
another—in an easy enumeration in which parts change. Sensitivity isn’t necessary to