When I was young, one of the few things my Popo(grandma) mailed me was a pack of origami paper, each sheet measuring 4 centimeters wide and 4 centimeters tall. My mom taught me how to fold paper cranes so that I could make use of it. Throughout early elementary school, during recess, I tended to sit on the sidewalk near the playground by myself. I perched next to an empty flowerbox and the school’s brick wall and spent my time folding paper cranes.

Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper into shapes that resemble various animals, objects, and more. Ori means “folding” and gami means “paper”. Origami has been around for about one thousand years, and the crane is the most iconic and traditional pieces that appears in the origami art form. I am Asian, but not Japanese, yet I still have a habit of folding paper cranes.

Sometimes the world keeps changing, and nothing is stable. Suddenly I didn’t go to school anymore. I would wake up in the morning, open a laptop, and watch my teacher’s face through a bright screen. Everything changes, everything shifts, everything adjusts, everything varies, everything but my paper. My paper has, is, and always will be 4 centimeters wide and 4 centimeters tall.  When the world is not constant for me, I find my anchor in folding paper cranes.

I spend an awful long time standing in rooms of a perfectly rectangular shape and completely full of people. Some of these people, I used to call friends. We were playful and we were free. Now I cannot look them in their decorated, cold eyes, like all the other eyes in this building, without being blinded with tears. Even when I know the room of people, I cannot talk to them. They are all the same, distant people who speak the same, destructive language, and wear the same, shallow personality, and I find no joy with them. Instead, I stand near the wall, folding paper cranes.

I have one mason jar full of paper cranes, and I intend to fill many more. They are tiny and delicate, small enough to hold on a thumb, but every one of them tells my story. This one is from my tiny hands, which folded this instead of climbing up plastic structures. This one is from aside my silver keyboard, which was crafted to avoiding the lesson droning from the speakers. This one is from my swollen pocket, which was overflowing with cranes folded in a lonely corner. Sometimes life is ugly, a writhing mass of hatred and suffering. Sometimes life is beautiful, an angular and miniscule piece of art and delicacy. Sometime life is both. Sometimes, life is folding paper cranes.