April 22nd, 2010
Skeleton & Crane
I can’t always think of things to say. So we’ll try something else. What does this picture make you think of? Or, just tell me about your day.
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I can’t always think of things to say. So we’ll try something else. What does this picture make you think of? Or, just tell me about your day.
A balance between nature and artifice. The paper crane is of man’s creation, but it is simply art imitating life. The skeletal structure is what we are: morbidly doomed to erode someday, but deep inside we hold the eternal grin (think TS Eliot’s Wasteland’s imagery of the skull, it does not stop smiling).
A paper crane is a folded piece of paper. It won’t fly unless thrown to the wind, and won’t do anything of its own accord. And yet inside a thousands cranes lies a wish; in one’s mind a crane can be a thousand wishes.
It’s all about possibility :)
the crane is creation, a piece of paper given life. the skeleton is destruction, eventual decay of what once was, yielding way to that which will be. but at the same time, the skeleton will stay around, a reminder to the present of the past, of growth.
I feel like going outside now.
I am exhausted by school and work and am checking my RSS feed reader to keep from clawing my eyes out in frustration. So nice of you to have pretty things for me to look at.
My pleasure.
Very appropriate. My beloved Aunt died on Monday, and though I knew nothing of it and live 7000 km away, I felt the impact. She was 90 yrs old, she’d had several strokes, it was time. And yet, of course, I am sad. The crane symbolises longevity. In my case, eternity.
The “crane” to me symbolises her soul, which has flown from the exhausted, aged body that held it captive for so long. I know she was frustrated by its refusal to cooperate with her indomitable spirit for years.
Goodbye, my beloved. I’ll see you when we get Home.
Condolences.
My favorite thing about this is the pansy right hand, followed closely by the cerebellar shading. I personally also suffer from pansy hands.
I’m experiencing another wave of nostalgic hysteria: Until you died! Until you died! But you’re still alive — and I’m here! To remind you! etc.
It makes me think that the simple things that bring happiness (like the paper cranes I learned to make as a child) will still be simple, happy things whether I’m around or not.
A “Happiness will outlast us, because it exists as it’s own force” kind of thing.
Im not going to tell you what it makes me think because I dont know. Sometimes words are just words and they make no sense.
My day.. I am in the In-between. So my days are limbo waiting to see what happens. I am content in the meantime. So I suppose my day was content.
It reminds me of Rilke. More specifically:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.”
Always look forward to your posts; thank you for constructing art in a way that moth meets us in new and familiar ways.
“Live the questions, and maybe someday you’ll live into the answers.”
not sure if that’s attributable to rilke, but it’s something i remember from a spiritual teacher i had once that i like very much.
I find myself musing on how no one is wholly evil or wholly good; we’re all a mix of good and bad in actions, intentions and thought. It has bewildered me on how I can be such a terrible person in one situation, and such a good person in another, even when the situations are similar.
Not exactly related to the picture, but it’s something that’s been on my mind.
A few weeks ago, I was outside and some birds flew directly at me. They were flying very close to the ground and as I walked away I could feel my foot lightly step on something.
I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t like what I would see if I looked down so I ran off. Once I got away from all the birds, I looked back and saw a dead bird lying there. I still can’t get this out of my mind.
There’s always something…
the skeleton reminds me of jack, the pumpkin king. his smile seems so simple, innocent, content – i almost envy him! he has created something that pleases him. how nice.
today i have been craving creation but remain stagnant for fear. for fear of what, you ask? no. just for fear. ah, well. tomorrow is another opportunity for internal conflict, i’m sure. perhaps tomorrow i will win!
They’re BFFs forever! And they go on craaaazy adventures together! The skeleton is an eternal optimist and the paper crane is his foil, the fragile pessimist.
There. I just started your career in television. You’re welcome :D
That would actually make a fun cartoon.
I’d watch it.
I decided to write a little story about these two on my blog. I put a link to your site in the post, though. Credit where credit is due.
Awesome pie. It’s a fun bit of flash fiction.
Reminds me of Soundgarden’s ‘Spoon Man’ song…
I always knew you were a paper plane bastard.
There does seem to be a lot of paper, folded, torn, written or drawn upon, in my work in general.
i thought of Freedom.
I thought of my ex
It reminds me how I hold on to the little things, the unimportant things, long after everything else is gone.
You and I will be dust, but the work of your hands will always make me smile.
“One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way–will they think kindly of us? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish I could think so.”
“The people won’t remember–but God will.”
(Antonin Chekov, Uncle Vanya)
L’amour a mort…
yes, you are awesome kendra!!! from, secretvespers
Always nice to hear from you, Kendra.
it reminds me that there is always something dying, yet there there always new things coming to being too.
Its what we do to our souls once the thing holding them sighs and unfolds to Nature. It then passes from person to person, sometimes getting replicated, sometimes a copy goes missing. More often than not each person folds it up in their pocket one day after reading whats writ inside then forgets about it, puts their jeans through the washer and “what is this soggy thing I hold? I will throw it away now.”
Eventually the picture of who we are is forgotten. A select few of us have the tip of the tail preserved, the rest cut off and dumped into the ocean, or left to wander back to the lovely bones so carefully dismantled and cleaned: pure, like the soul we left behind.
… I saw a picture like that before. The picture I saw was a comment on the famous crane girl from Hiroshima. There are several statues and pictures of her in parks and books and so on, holding a paper crane. (One of the thousand she wanted to fold to get “cured”) She died after some hundred cranes, so there was more than one artist who felt the urge to paint his/her own version of that “hope is important” message of the original motive.
I simply see beauty lying in the hands of death.