plain paper
Origami – The ancient art of paper folding. One of the things that everyone of us learns as a child. As far as I can remember, the first few things that I had learned was the airplane and the boat. And if I am not wrong these are probably the first two most common thing which we learn as kids or are fascinated to, simply because they can be put into action.
As we grow up and if we retain our interest, get some guidance, help form some books, we get to learn more technical details of this ancient art of paper folding.
One of the very important aspects of this art is that it does not ask for complicated tools. And the very basic material that is required to created any shape is a sheet of paper (generally square). Then depending on what kind of guidance and references you have got and used, you usually end up learning some basic shapes and figures. And as you learn more, complexity of these shapes increases.
Boat
Starting form simple shapes like the boat, which requires few basic simple half division folding and creases, you may go to complex designs like the frog (my personal favorite) , swans, lily, rose, rockets etc, which require good practice of folding the paper properly, generating creases and including some tricky maneuvers like the mountain folds and the valley folds when some section requires making a crease on the same line for both the sides of the paper and then inverting that section.
Once completed these images display their complexity and beauty both at once ( that is if done properly).
creased paper
All this time most of us appreciate the final shapes, the plain simple paper with which we started has been forgotten and even if you open up this shape, the crease have been set so deep and strong, the simple plain paper is lost behind these creases, which we created during the time we learned this art, and probably, now, cannot appreciate the beauty of the plain paper, even though all the shapes are and are only because of the simple plain paper.
God is simple, over the ages we have learned to fold him into such complex shapes and designs. These creases have been set so deep in our minds that we cannot see past through these shapes and see the “Simply Divine”.
Had written on 13 December 2004, and was previously published on horizontalrings.com
