December 5, 2012

Fog again, starting out the morning, and hanging around making the sky white and the trees muffled to the eye.  It's odd because there is a gentle breeze and usually if fog lasts this long into the morning, there is not a breath stirring.  Jets overhead recall the long rolling thunders of yesterday, rumbling most of the day as a long curving front of cooler air moved down from the north and tried to bring us winter.  It is cooler but not winter yet, and it's supposed to be warmer again tomorrow.  I saw this morning that the Panhandle had weather near freezing, reminding me how big Texas is to have so many varieties of climate, a source of amazement not only for me but for many in other places not familiar with such a vast landscape.

Yesterday I learned to make a little wreath of folded paper.  I was amazed at how simple it was to do, the shapes and the putting together, of course it was only simple after I did it every wrong way there was to do it <chuckle> but once I got the idea, it was like the proverbial lightbulb, the comprehension clicked on just like that!  Now what I want to know is who figured out how to make it, how did they come up with something that would fit together like that and make such a lovely thing out of scraps.  I have seen complicated origami, and while impressive, it somehow doesn't amaze me the way a very simple pattern can be used in a variety of ways to make something so elegant.  Anyway, while I slept last night, I dreamed of origami stars and wreaths being folded by thousands of hands, people were sitting on porches, in parks, even in palaces folding up paper.  At red lights people were making little stars, at school kids were making wreaths of old punch cards, origami cranes flew across the cafeteria, even the guys in suits were standing on the corner were folding up paper from their briefcases while waiting for a taxi.  I guess my brain was innundated by folded paper and just had to process it somehow!  And when I looked for a poem this morning, what should I find . . .

Little God Origami

The number of corners in the soul can’t

compare with the universe’s dimensions folded

neatly into swans.  Into the soul’s

space, one word on a thousand pieces

of paper the size of cookie fortunes falls

from the heavens.  At last, the miracle

cure, you cry, pawing at scraps that twirl

like seed-pod helicopters.  Alas, the window

to your soul needs a good scrubbing, so

the letters doodle into indecipherables just

like every remedy that has rained

down through history, and you realize in

your little smog of thought that death

will simply be the cessation of asking, a thousand

cranes unfolding themselves and returning to the trees.

Stefi Weisburd

Someone else's brain had too much paper folding . . . I love the number of corners in the soul . . . I am sure there are corners there as it contains all we are and we surely have corners <smile>!  I also think that the miracle cure is like that, just beyond our grasp or understanding.  The helicopter seeds are familiar from our maple tree every spring, and I am sure the window to my soul needs a lot of scrubbing.  Why should it be any different from the rest of my windows?!  When we stop asking questions, that would be a kind of little death, withdrawing from the world, until there was no curiosity left.  I'm not giving up my curiosity until they pry it from my cold dead fingers, and maybe not then!  I have not made too many cranes, but the stars in my dream sparkled down from the heavens, all folded neatly with five points and puffy bodies!  It was wonderful to see them there, and funny too, all the people in the dream flinging stars up into the sky by the handfuls!  Wreaths went sailing around like "Frisbees" and I am sure somewhere there is a pattern for a folded swan, and the thousand cranes that bring luck and wishes wish they would end up sparkling like stars in the trees.  I am glad to find out that another poet must have dreamed of origami, makes me feel less . . . strange! 

Fold up your day's joy and fling it to the heavens!  Perhaps it will rain down when you need it, and make you smile!