Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part 5

Photo by me. I really wish I’d taken pictures right after I put the cranes up.

When my count was at 900 cranes, I slowed down in the folding of them. 

I was anxious about the wish because I realized how much I wanted it to come true, even if I didn’t know what I was wishing for. 

But the folding, meditating, and focusing on love and my personal roadblocks to it was confusing.

I was reluctant to let go of my initial motivation to be a conquest diva. I wrote in my journal about it incessantly and I decided any one of three things had to happen to prove the wish had come true.

And then I was done. 

In several boxes were a thousand cranes that took me four months to fold, not including all the ones I gave away. 

I wasn’t in a hot new relationship by the time I finished, and my phone was not ringing off the hook with people yearning to take me out on splendid dates. 

I finished my semester in the outdoor studies program I was enrolled in, and rented a ladder and platform to complete the art project.

Heather, one of the friends who had taught me how to make the cranes, came over and helped me put up the white Christmas lights that I lined along the ceiling and down the 90° corners and across the bottom of the walls to illuminate the paper cranes in soft golden light. 

After that, I was on my own. Grabbing a box of cranes that had been folded in tie-dye patterns, I started with the narrow wall in the stairwell and pinned a bird to the top left corner and pinned two cranes below that one.

From there, the project just finished itself. 

It is impossible to describe how I felt in that process, but there was no “I” putting up the paper cranes flying in full circle from the kimono from which they came. 

I put the kimono Jeff had sent me up at the top of the staircase, with one arm spread out, one arm bent akimbo, and one half of the front opened, with cranes coming out of the neck, the shoulders, the arms and the bottom, in formation and ready to fly. 

With each turn in the wall, lined up according to species – solid color, tie-dye, manuscript, book, or magazine - the paper cranes flew in formation towards the stairwell, whipping to the left, and to the left again, over the banister to fly back to the Mother Kimono. 

Creatively, this was the most satisfying thing I had ever done and the end result was really something.

“This is absolutely stunning,” said my neighbor, Jacque, as she stood at the top of the staircase and gaped “It’s overwhelming.”

It was the middle of December. I threw a Christmas ‘n Cranes party to celebrate. All my core friends showed up and many people have visited since to see it. 

I had just finished the project late that afternoon, so I was pretty exhausted at my own party. 

But looking around, I saw that I had a very diverse group of colorful characters for friends, and I didn’t have to do for them to get them to like me. 

Something definitely changed as a result of this wishing meditation.

I didn’t get what I wished for, but what happened was probably what I needed. 

And it was definitely what I focused on the most. 

As I said before, I fumed and raged inside at my family while I was folding paper. And I’d been having problems with them for a couple of years. 

I could no longer stand to be in the shadows, watching, listening, and wringing my hands over their doings and dramas. 

As conflicts like this usually go, my parents and brothers were united in keeping the status quo alive and me in the same role I’d always played. 

I was expected in Florida for the holidays.

The night before my flight, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and agonized.

I knew I didn’t want to go, and I was exhausted from accommodating people who had always been so wrapped up in themselves they were oblivious, and possibly indifferent, to the pain they caused. 

I dreaded going back to the state I grew up in. 

At four in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep. So I got out of bed to make some tea. As I got to the staircase, I flipped the switch and immediately felt better.

Does not do them justice. But it’s all I have.

The cranes were flying in the golden light and the effect was incredibly peaceful. I sat in the middle of the stairs, leaned back, and stared at the paper birds I’d folded for four months and put up for two days.

“What is the point of doing all this work, if I keep doing the same thing?”

That question came from deep inside me as I stared at my work. I realized that nothing would ever change unless I did. 

I didn’t get on the plane.

It was one of the most exhilarating and frightening things I’d ever done, and I had no idea if I was doing the right thing. In fact, I wouldn’t receive the validation that I had made the best and healthiest decision a few months later.

I wish I could claim that my family had an epiphany as a result of this. I would have loved it if they became the loving parents and supportive siblings out of an orphan’s wet dream.

They didn’t.

But that was my first step towards empowerment. That step led to another, and another until I felt the satisfaction of being a stronger woman who treats herself like she’s worth something.

Some of them have come around to treating me with more respect.  Even if they are still wrapped up in themselves, they don’t expect me to be. 

The jury’s still out, but things are looking up.

As for my original wish, I’ll just say it’s always a mistake to insist the Universe prove itself. 

The following months after the Christmas n’ Cranes party were the last roar of the dinosaur just before it expired. 

I pursued every type of mistake I had ever made, in an aggressive campaign to make self-centered narcissists ache with desire for wonderful, lucky-in-love me. 

In response, the Universe whacked me upside the head until I came to my senses.

I can’t say that I’m bitter about that.  What was I thinking?

I’ve had some fun dates, but I don’t have a line of people pounding on my door to take me out on a Saturday night. 

Maybe there’s something bigger at work here that I don’t understand. 

Maybe it’s my destiny to fly solo in life. 

I feel more comfortable as I embrace the role of a woman unto herself and I no longer see myself as a failure for it. 

I think my relationship with love has become much healthier and if somebody special comes along, I think I’ll be ready to contribute to something real. 

In the meantime, I’m in love with my freedom.

Maybe folding cranes is a healing thing to do, after all.

And maybe I should have just asked for a good relationship. 

Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part 4

Image by 1278956 from Pixabay 

When I had folded over 700 cranes I realized I wasn’t sure what I was wishing for. 

Was I wishing for love? 

Or power? 

The standard definition for the expression “lucky in love,” was somebody who had her pick of many desirable lovers - a very powerful position to be in. 

That was tantalizing. 

Or did I want to be a world-class seductress, powerful enough to finally win over those beloveds who had always been out of reach? 

That would be proof of my redemption. 

My wishing meditation to become “lucky in love” made me face just how unhealthy my perspective on love really was. 

And knowing my stance was toxic, and…well…unloving…made it much more difficult to play the usual role with the people at the root of that. 

I have come to appreciate the expression “family of origin” as well as its implied meaning that true family is found elsewhere for those who had to make that distinction.

In my family of origin, it was always about somebody else. Drama was the focus in a family where everybody was proud to be crazy. 

As the least powerful and least valuable member of my family of origin, my dutiful role was to be the the watcher enthralled with the chaos stirred up by the colorful people around me, or the peacemaker who listened and make soothing, agreeable noises in the fights and crises that were constant. 

I caused little, if any, trouble, and received as little, if any, attention from the others. If I tried, I was either brushed off or shut down. My main source of approval was from my role to and for the others, not in and of myself. 

I was the good one, but the others were fascinating.

How can anybody be lucky in love with a start like that?

Many times when I folded cutout photos from magazines, excerpts from my abandoned novel, and yellowed pages from the book of one of my favorite writers, I wasn’t in a loving frame of mind. 

I was enraged at those who had brought me to where I was – folding paper in the hopes that maybe things could get better. And I wasn’t just obsessing over family members, false friends, and selfish lovers.

I was angry with myself for my own participation. 

In the meantime, my paper cranes were really beautiful. 

My folds had become very precise; and the designs on them from the manuscript pages, the novel pages, and the photographs were unique - no two cranes were alike. I was excited about being done with the paper birds so I could finally put them up on the wall. 

I wasn’t the only one who appreciated them. 

Going around town, I’d occasionally see cranes I’d folded and given away. 

They were taped to the computer at the hairdresser and the florist, to the cash register at the café where I got my mocha, and the bakery where I got my bagels. 

In colleagues’ offices, I’d see them tucked between the stalks of a plant, or peering at the top of a framed print. 

It was very satisfying to see them because that told me that they were truly appreciated. I’m sure most of the cranes I gifted ended up in the garbage.

But I saw enough of them out that I felt a recognition I never knew I craved.

When my count was at 800 cranes, I was on a camping trip with my philosophy class. Yet I still brought paper to fold. 

Everybody knew what I was doing, but nobody knew what my wish was. 

One of my classmates asked me if I’d heard about the true story, “Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.” 

Allie explained that Sadako had been a twelve-year-old girl born with leukemia in Hiroshima after WWII. Her wish was to be healed and live, but she died before she finished folding a thousand cranes. 

After her death, her classmates finished the project for her and she was buried with all the cranes and a statue was erected in her honor. 

That is how the crane has become a universal symbol for peace and the devastation of war. 

As poignant as that story is, I was distressed at the time I heard it, and then I felt guilty for being so selfish. 

On a deep level, Sadako’s wish has come true, because a part of her lives on every time somebody folds a crane – even me, with my shallow desires. 

But she still died. 

And so did Jeff’s mother. 

I just wanted to date on a regular basis. I didn’t want to have to die to have a mob of people pining for me.

When my count was at 900 cranes, I slowed down in the folding of them. 

I was anxious about the wish because I realized how much I wanted it to come true, even if I didn’t know what I was wishing for. 

Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part 3

Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏 from Pixabay

Meditation is a strange trip, leading to unexpected places within one’s psyche. 

Modern day spirituality – call it New Age or not - has called out fear as the opposite of love, and our problems come down to being in a state of fear and not love. 

That sounds like an easy problem to take care of, and I wish it were that simple. But it’s not. 

I think the opposite of love is all about power, the aphrodisiac of the ego.  

Power is far more seductive than fear.

The more I’ve experienced and the more I’ve observed within the dysfunctional arena of love, I’ve found that power is the enemy. Our most basic good and evil struggles is the tug of war between the two. 

I think most of us can remember not so much the one who got away, so much as the one who was never caught.

Can’t you still picture that would-be beloved who was always out of reach?

Can you still feel the residual of past yearning churning in you belly? 

“Why doesn’t he call?” 

“Why is she so distant?”

“How can they not love me when I’m so good to them?”

Maybe the reason was because there is pleasure to receiving the love without giving any back. Maybe you weren’t challenging enough. 

Power.

On a less romantic note, can’t most of us think of a time when we did something we knew was wrong, but were tempted by the short-term benefits? 

How many of us acknowledged it to the person wronged with a sincere apology? 

Was the burden of your conscience enough to direct you to the high road? 

Even after the long term consequences were starting to demand pay back? 

Enough said. 

In any unhealthy group – family, work, friendship, relationship - in the struggle between love and pride, power usually wins because who wants to surrender in a struggle? 

Power feeds the ego at the starvation of the heart, but the more powerful in toxic groups ignore that painful stress to couple, family, and even community welfare. 

The powerful get their strokes and that satisfies. Guess who gets stuck paying off the emotional tab, and guess what gets used to hook you?

After all, don’t you want them to be happy? 

If you truly loved them, of course you would.

Yet don’t they want you to be happy? 

But you should be happy, for you’re given a place in their lives and how can that not make you feel loved? 

I speak from experience and my track record proves it. 

My significant relationships were with extremely self-centered people.  These men never considered my feelings in the way things were supposed to go in the relationship. 

When it came to “fixing” our problems, the focus was on their malcontent and my inadequacy. As an extension of him, I wasn’t supposed to be unhappy, and if I was, I should just get over it because there was certainly nothing wrong with him. 

And the awful part is that I accepted that dynamic until I was so miserable I extricated myself from the tar baby. That is always a torture.

Such were my thoughts and memories as I folded paper.

Around 500 cranes, I noticed that the traveling gym rat had not responded to the letter I wrote about an incredible kayaking trip I had taken. 

As I focused on that, I fumed that this project was a stupid idea on the day I got a package from Jeff, the friend who had first told me about folding the cranes. 

Inside the package was a blue kimono and a note explaining that he had gotten it for me a year and a half ago in Tokyo, and how sorry he was it had taken so long to send it on. 

But the kicker was on the kimono – it was covered with cranes in flight.

My jaw had to be picked up off the floor.

Since the Buddha said there are no coincidences - and I respect the Buddha - I took it as a sign to hold the faith and keep folding.

By 600 cranes, I had gotten really creative. Cutting out equidistant squares from magazines and photographs made for some far more unique, one-of-a-kind cranes.

One morning, I sitting on the ground in the long line of people who had gotten there early for the annual ski swap – the one chance every year to get good gear cheap. People practically camp out to be one of the first in line.

I sat on the ground, and folded paper as I waited with everybody else. 

A man sitting nearby noticed and told me that he and some friends had made a thousand cranes out of gold paper for a Japanese couple about to get married. It was a traditional thing to do and according to legend, it brought good luck to the newlyweds.

“These are nice folds,” he said, picking up one of my paper birds.        

My road to love has suffered many gridlocks as I dated the no-good’uns and ne’er-do-wells. There were nice guys who asked me out and sometimes I dated one and they were always a pleasure to be around. 

But there was always a reason why it wouldn’t last. And frankly, that reason was because I wouldn’t give them a real chance. 

Of all my self-destructive patterns when it came to love, I had to see all the time wasted for what it was – wasted time – every time I yearned for the love who was out of reach, falling madly in love for the friend who liked me well enough, but just wasn’t interested. 

That disinterest put him on a pedestal high above me and I pined more than ever, paying no mind to the suitors who offered something real.    

When I had folded over 700 cranes I realized I wasn’t even sure what I was wishing for. 

Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part 2

Image by t_s_l from Pixabay

“Your cranes are beautiful,” she said.  “What are you going to do with them?”

I hadn’t thought about that. 

I had folded over two hundred of them, and they were starting to pile up. 

And then I got a vision of my paper cranes flying up the stairs as they were stuck to my wall. 

I had bought a townhouse condo with a tremendous wall space, and for two years, that space had me stumped. 

Since the small upstairs bedroom didn’t extend across the stairwell, the main wall at the bottom of the steps was fourteen feet from floor to ceiling, and at the top, it was seven feet. The wall space was 270°, resulting in a wrap-around effect as it turned in the narrow width of the stairwell and turned again where the outside wall of the small bedroom faced the main wall of the staircase. 

With such a big space to play with, I wanted something more special than the usual pictures, posters, or prints. I couldn’t think of anything, so I did nothing and that massive wall space remained bare.

All of a sudden, my wishing meditation had a purpose. 

Not only was this going to change my life, it was now art in the making. 

I went from origami paper to folding photos from magazines, yellowed pages from my favorite book, bright white pages from my abandoned novel to make the cranes that would transform my staircase and make it magical. 

I folded cranes everywhere I went and got a lot of people’s attention. 

I gave them away at random for I had so many and it seemed like good karma. I left them with the tip in restaurants I ate in, to the barista who made my mocha, to the florist who arranged the flowers. I gave them to classmates, to friends, to strangers.

At work, I covered for the receptionist for a week, and my respite supervisor sulked when I gave other colleagues a crane and didn’t think of her.  So of course, I let her pick her favorite. 

I’d look up from wherever I was and see somebody smiling at me as I folded those cranes bringing me closer and closer to my wish. 

The anti-war movement had a dedicated following here in Juneau, and I strongly suspect many people thought I was folding peace cranes in protest to the President (George W at the time). 

But I was only thinking of myself.

Around 300 cranes, a good-looking bad boy entered my sphere. 

I thought he was obnoxious, but I also thought I could get him if I wanted to. We disliked each other, but our conversations were loaded with energy because we didn’t agree on anything. 

It was exciting.

I also had my eye on a gym rat with a questionable reputation - sought after and commitment afraid. What a conquest! 

We had a couple of dates; and it didn’t matter that the gym rat was leaving town to travel for six months - I was elated. I was finally on my way to being lucky in love. 

And it occurred to me that I didn’t even know what that meant 

When I first made my wish, the image I had in mind of what it was to be lucky in love was to win over the ones I yearned for. 

But the more I observed those sought after beloveds, it was obvious that they were not the ones who yearned.

Most of them were good people. 

Others were nice in some ways and not so nice in others. And there were plenty of beloveds that had all kinds of unlovable attributes – shallow, vain, self-absorbed, rude, vicious, cruel, selfish. 

The list could go on and on, but they all had one thing in common. They loved themselves. It didn’t matter whether it was too much or just enough, but matters of the heart were not something they fretted over as they went about their day. 

One morning, I was folding cranes in my favorite breakfast joint, occasionally catching a phrase here and there from the table across mine by two out of town men who were in Juneau for a hunting trip. 

The cell phone of the man facing me rang; he answered and sounded very happy to have been interrupted. 

The person on the other end was probably his wife and I believe his child was also on, because he ended each chat with “I love you.” 

Of course, that got my attention. 

He seemed like such a good man and I was so struck by the ordinary scene I recorded it in my journal, where I wrote that the people who were his wife and child were very lucky indeed. 

Meditation is a strange trip, leading to unexpected places within one’s psyche. 

Journey of a Thousand Cranes, Part I

Image by Vibeke Lundberg from Pixabay 

I once folded a thousand cranes because I wanted to be lucky in love. 

Having had more runs of datelessness than I needed for inner strength, along with an unpleasant run-in with my last mistake at the wedding of mutual friends, I determined that when it came to love, I was cursed. 

At the time, I was convinced that the Universe owed me the exciting love life that was long overdue. So, ignoring my usual frustration with things that require patience and precision, I started folding paper. 

It took several lessons by two different teachers, but I was finally able to fold the origami crane.

Years before, a friend whose mother had died from cancer told me about a project when he and his sister worked together to fold a thousand cranes during the illness. They had hid them all over the house and presented their mother with a scroll explaining the cranes they had folded for her healing. 

Of course, she was touched to the point of tears - and who wouldn’t be?  For months, she’d find a crane in a coffee cup or in the cabinet when she reached for laundry detergent, which reminded her of the gift from her kids. 

I was intrigued by the story and asked Jeff to show me how to make a crane. We were out, having drinks in New Orleans. He tried to fold his cocktail napkin into a bird.

But he couldn’t get the hang of it - either because the paper was too flimsy, or his brain was from the alcohol, so my first lesson never got off the ground. 

They say that when the student is ready the teacher will come. 

Years later, I was in Chicago, “breaking rice” with a friend and one of her oldest friends, George, who was Japanese. Somehow the subject came up about folding cranes, and I vaguely remembered it as a “healing” thing to do.

“Folding a thousand cranes makes wishes come true,” said George as we finished our sushi.

The light bulb flashed on in my mind. Everybody has something they’ve always wanted, and I was no exception.

This was in the summer of 2003.

At that time, my life was full. 

Between summer work as a hiking guide, winter work with the disabled, and going back to school for an outdoor studies program, I had a lot going on. 

But, like many single people who were not in a relationship, I wanted to be. I was loath to admit this, but I was also more than a little anxious at my relative powerlessness to change that. 

There was a part of me that believed I had failed as a woman by not being married or in a domestic partnership.

“Get on the Internet,” people said. “There are tons of people out there.”

Sound advice, I had to admit. Yet for various reasons, I was reluctant to go there. One of them being I lived in SE Alaska, and the internet was still viewed with suspicion by many.

So I figured I’d fold a thousand cranes and my problem would be solved. 

As soon as I was back in Juneau, I sought out a friend who was an art teacher and who had lived in Japan for a year. 

My instincts were right. Heather knew how to fold the crane and she gave me my first two lessons. 

A couple of days later, I got lost around the tenth fold and my crane had floppy wings. 

That was when I crossed paths with a yoga teacher active in the peace-love-anti-war movement. 

Of course, she knew how to make the crane, and I received my third and final lesson. I think it helped that she also showed me a breathing technique to calm me down when I got frustrated. 

That was when I got it. I had finally mastered the crane and was good to go.

But what do I wish for? 

I knew I wanted to be in a relationship, but I also knew that I was feeling… ambivalent. 

And ambivalent feelings like mine tend to put the kabash on relationships working out. 

I figured that if I was going to go to the trouble of folding a thousand pieces of paper into cranes, I should ask for something that had long-term value and to keep the request simple. 

As a meditation, I knew from experience this would likely result in more than I asked for. I thought of those people who always have a relationship or options to get into one. I knew I wanted to be one of them.

So I wished to be lucky in love and started folding paper with gusto. 

I was obsessed.

This project consumed me. I folded a minimum of 10 cranes a day. 

By the time I’d folded around 100 cranes, it looked as if my wishing meditation was getting results. 

I met somebody attractive, nice…and single on one of my tours. 

We clicked and made a date after the tour, which ended with a walk on the only sandy beach in the city and borough of Juneau on Douglas Island. 

Rather a peculiar spot for romance, given that the “sand” was from mining tailings, and the glory hole where we hung out on a petrified log, was born from the flooding and caving in of the Treadwell Mine in 1917. 

Between the shut-down of the largest gold mine in the world at that time, and the dumping into the glory hole thereafter, that area is one of the most toxic spots in the country.

But you would never know it to be there, even if you had to be careful where you stepped because there were rusted out mining tools, broken dishes, and other parts on the beach.   

The history of the area was the last thing on my mind, however…

Sandy Beach was conveniently near my home, which was part of my master plan. We ended our date making out in my living room until it was time for the ship to sail. 

After an exchange of email addresses, we parted, and I was sure that was only the beginning.    

Initially, I bought the brightly colored origami paper at a few dollars a pop, in all kinds of patterns. 

I folded cranes in cafés, at the bowling alley with one of my clients, in class when I was bored, outside in my yard on those rare sunny days in Southeast Alaska where it’s a cardinal sin to be inside when you don’t have to be. 

It was on one of those days when my neighbor Jacque asked me about them as I was folding away. 

I had a tattered wicker table with an underbelly and was sticking the cranes by the tail in the holes between the webbing as I finished. The faded occasional table was rendered festive with the bright birds sticking out of it.

“Your cranes are beautiful,” she said.  “What are you going to do with them?”