The World in Folds

The World in Folds

In the beginning, the world was flat and paper-thin.

When the paper god was designing the world, he chose a 10-20 cm x 10-20 cm paper as basic building block. "Let there be straight lines, folds, and creases," he said.

"Mountain folds and valley folds. Reverse folds and flaps. Pleats."

The flat, inanimate material was--with sleight of hand--slowly transformed into an ecology of genetically diverse forms and silhouettes, and the world was papered over with simulacra of life.

It's an endlessly creative world made out of flatness.

I enter this world enticed by animal figures I never figured would emerge out of almost nothing: first the jumping frog, then the crane.

It is the beauty of the form of the crane that would get me fascinated. I get obsessed with it. I do crane after paper crane, using printed words as guide until YouTube videos come about.

It seems simple at first until you try it for yourself and find certain steps difficult. It requires practice. Or several repeat plays. Thank goodness for changeable speed settings on YT.

It is easy to get frustrated, exasperated, irked, insulted, if you don't get things right. "How come my folds are not the same as those in the video, like it's some false advertising?" I retrace my steps to find out which steps I missed.

I collapse some flaps. I smooth out some edges. I fold, then unfold, then squash certain folds. I nip and tuck, so to speak without cutting out anything. Using scissors is verboten, one might as well cut out toy soldier figures in neat silhouettes like some newborn child.

Why do I do what I am doing? I think that's because I feel calm and relaxed doing it--my state of anxiety is reduced.

While it's true that mistakes irk me so easily, I exercise the virtue of patience and perseverance along the way. In my experience, certain origami animals are an extra-challenge: the double-humped camel, the squirrel, certain dog varieties, certain beaver variant... These really tested my patience.

Every minute expended is a way of saying thanks, honoring life in minutes received, being grateful that I am still here, producing at least a thing of beauty no matter how trivial.

I started out with the easy ones: the peace dove, the fish, etc.--all kid's play. Then I slowly graduate to the medium or average, then to the difficult and complex three-dimensional ones that sometimes require structures they call tessellation.

I am now dealing with the really challenging ones. Sometimes I emerge victorious, oftentimes not.

I am afraid to do the advanced 3D ones that are monumental in dimensions. After all, I have limited resources, not just time. I do this in between important things, during my resting hours. I also originally set out to use just scrap papers, nothing store-bought.

The origami animals I produce have been essentially from trash, until a kind-hearted soul gifted me with proper store-bought origami paper. It ruins my unintended intention to recycle trash through arts and crafts, but I don't mind gifts from the big-hearted.

Pretty soon, I am able to create an entire paradise of creatures in abstractions, hundreds of them and all sorts of genera and species: duck, rabbit, lion, flamingo, toucan, kiwi, Pomeranian, tiger, worm, fly, hermit beetle, possum, aardvark, other Amazon organisms, other African savannah creatures...

After finishing a creature, I stare at each one in appreciation of the form, not too mindful of the miniscule errors. There is an utter beauty in the symmetry, from the exact mirror images generated through all the angle bisectors. There must be a God, no question about it--one specializing in divine architecture and design, a geometry genius behind each silhouette. How magical that each one, each complicated structure, could be so created--out of nothing, out of thin air--or in just a series of high-precision folding and unfolding, to be exact--no cuts. How transformative, how endlessly creative!

They say this ancient Japanese artform is all about mathematics, with practical applications in engineering, medicine, especially surgery, aerospace, and other fields. If you think about it, a foldable umbrella is an example of origami in day-to-day application. The possibilities of paper are infinite.

But it's not with the practicalities I am obsessed with. With origami as a form of faith in cost-free pleasure, papered over by surprise from all of the right angles, I return again and again to the fold.