Many of my mornings this summer have been spent meticulously folding origami creatures of all sorts — paper cranes, double hearts, goldfish, dragons, baby shoes, hats and so on. This pursuit has quickly become dear to me, and I’ve wanted to write about it since this column began.
At first I was going to proceed by giving a little information about the history of this art form. But alas, I was dreadfully uninformed and made no attempts to gain knowledge on the topic during these often lazy summer months. Most of the information I gained from the only book I have on the subject: Steve and Megumi Biddle’s “Essential Origami.”
I’ve been using origami for decorative purposes on numerous occasions. At the end of spring term, I played a show and pinned a turquoise peace crane to my guitar strap. I wore a heart outside my chest during a party with some creative writing students. Most recently, I attended a wedding, and beforehand I decided there just weren’t enough black flowers in the world, so I rolled into the ceremony with a black paper flower tucked into my shirt, eventually handing it off to the groom.
On the car ride home from this wedding, a thought hit me that clarified my fascination with this art form: Folding origami so elegantly represents one of the greatest challenges of our age. It is bathed in metaphor and significance; it is a message for survival in this Western world.
Allow me to explain: As humans continue to tax the planet’s ecosystems with overconsumption, it will become increasingly important to reappropriate what we have already created, making the seemingly most useless things useful again. This obviously exists in the form of recycling, but more direct methods are becoming necessary. Instead of putting your refuse in a blue box to be picked up by some obscure recycling service — and who knows if they’re really recycling your stuff anyway — we should take responsibility ourselves for turning it to treasure.
It takes creativity to reshape what already exists and make it useful again. Origami folding provides insight, allowing one to discover the usefulness in the smallest of things. Personally, I don’t believe in buying overpriced, prepackaged paper at the store, and as a result I have been able to discover another way to use scrap paper. Color it with crayons and you’ve got good origami paper.
Folding origami also takes patience and attention, which are both very meditative, and when taken together, might equal a new kind of awareness. I suggest the significance of this awareness can be taken beyond paper folding and into everyday life.
Then of course, each fold for each shape is equally important for the result. So even the slightest mistake is compounded over time and will affect the final product. This is exactly what’s going on in our “civilized” nations. Our mistakes of the past are being compounded, sundering the equilibrium of our planet, perhaps permanently. It will be hard to unfold the mistakes and turn them into different shapes. Also, fold enough shapes and you will eventually memorize many of the forms. However, it doesn’t feel like a mental memorization, but rather one that comes from the body, almost stored directly in the hands.
Yes, this is probably a reach for some. Perhaps I’ve waxed too metaphorical. So, for the cats who want it put more literally: The idea is that it’s time to stop separating ourselves from the trash heap that civilization has created and start identifying with it — the treasure, and the trash — and combine and refashion what already exists to stop producing so much crap.