The day is folding itself back inside. When I got home early this afternoon there was no wind and bright sun, a good combination on my porch. I had lunch at the porch table. The weather may be scary warm, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it.
So I moved my afternoon projects out to the porch, origami sailboats first. As the sun got lower and spent more and more time behind clouds, the reality of December started to chill my fingers. But by then I’d mastered the reverse fold of the two boat designs I was using and I kept going, folding and unfolding and pushing the paper back on itself so a valley fold tucked in to a mountain fold and the inside of the paper made white sails hoisted in a colored boat.
Origami is full of reverse folds, and you have to learn to trust that what looks backwards is going to turn into what you want. It’s not intuitive and I mess around until I can make it work, then do it again, and again. Training my fingers to ignore my brain telling me it’s wrong.
Now the day is doing the same thing. The sun is long gone below the horizon and it’s cold. It’s black out my windows, as it is when I get up in the morning, as it is for two thirds of the cycle that makes a day. This is the fold that shoves the pocket back in to the dark. Tomorrow it will turn inside out again. The pocket will be empty, but it will be open and the light will last until the next fold, whether I know how to make it or not.
Grace Mattern 