Leaf: to separate into thin layers, each representing a whole. Most commonly, a form of branching seen in trees, in which a tree leafs into leaves because it has entered, focussed or channelled a state of branching through a progression from seed to trunk to branch to twig to a physical expression of this leafing energy, “leaf”, to the veins of a “leaf” and then to the breaking off of the leafing energy from the tree. The principle has been applied to thin sheets of metal (gold leaf) and to the pages of a book, where the separation of the principle of multiplicity and division has been extended to human personal and social worlds. The creation of a book is the reassembly of the potential of leafing energy from many leaves into a unified force again. Readers paging (“leafing”) through the book will then participate in the leafing energy, which will then leaf in them. To read, in other words, is to become a leaf.

Cottonwood Leaf on Ice, Okanagan Lake, British Columbia