I am origami
folded up tight,
inside out
pattern hidden inside
just a pale side showing
a crane within
a butterfly within
a paper box.
I was crumpled
now I relax,
shaking out the tiny
folds in myself,
smoothing, loosening
and opening up
into the larger self.
I actually made a set of fork, knife and spoon in this style, but I only had to document one for my final project. I thought you guys might enjoy this as well.
Materials: 3/8″ square
Equipment & Tooling: Forge, anvil, hammer, chisel, twisting wrench, vise
Blacksmithing Techniques Used: Upsetting, drawing, splitting, fullering, drawing
I caught Mad City Chickens at the Film Bar in an audience that appeared to be half urban farmers and half Film Bar regulars. It’s a documentary about the resurgence of urban chicken farming. It was informative and funny, but I couldn’t get over the feeling that it desperately needed an editor.
It was a little difficult to follow to begin with – it jumped around between a family getting chickens for the first time, people who had been raising chickens at home for a while, and a range of chicken experts, along with some animated sequences and a narrator who really, really wanted to make as many chicken-related Twilight Zone references as possible. Essentially, it wanted to be two documentaries – one about Chicken Farming 101, and one about the chicken culture in Madison, Wisconsin, and occasionally diverted from both topics (notably in a sequence about a giant chicken running rampant).
If you’re interested in raising chickens, I’d recommend checking it out anyway. It covers a basic array of 101 information that will give you an idea of what you’d be getting into, though it is of course pro-chicken.
I actually found myself wishing it went into more detail on the battle to legalize home chicken flocks in Madison and how to address zoning issues in your own town. (That’s not actually a battle I would have to fight where I am now, but it would still be interested to follow.)
My girlfriend and I have been talking off and on about farm-ish animals for a few months. Obviously it’s not something we can do right now, what with being in a small apartment with hardly any patio, but I’m interested in chickens I can get eggs from and she’s interested in angora rabbits she can spin from. (After watching the movie tonight, I think she’s more interested in chickens than she was before, but you’d have to ask her.)
The film also talked about factory farms, and the importance of knowing where your food comes from. We’re going to try committing ourselves to cage-free eggs, free-range local meat, and we’ll see how that goes. I don’t think we’ll be perfect – I’m not really perfect about anything. But I think it’s worth trying to pay attention to where my food comes from.
“What? Who’re you?” Confused as I was, I didn’t even remember that I’d locked the bathroom door. There was no way the person staring at me could have gotten in.
“You may call me Sariel.”
“Why are you here? What are you doing? Get out of my bathroom! Don’t try to stop me!” I pulled myself up on the edge of the bathtub, my arms shaking.
“Oh, don’t bother.” Sariel’s voice spat at me. I tried to stand up to the stranger but found I couldn’t move my legs properly.
Sariel stood over me, looking down with disgust. “You’re lucky to be getting some personal attention. I’m an angel of death, you know. Something between an angel and a demon, depending on your point of view. Right soon I suppose you’ll be cursing me for a demon.” Sariel must have noticed my lolling head and known I wasn’t listening anyway. She began to haul me out of the bathtub and onto the floor.
“Usually I see to the destruction of worlds,” Sariel continued, sounding more annoyed than hopeful that any of it might sink in. She turned me around on the steel-grey tiled floor. “Help them to go quietly into that good night, as it were. Sometimes it’s just people.” I smiled at that, thinking it must be the end. I guess Sariel realized what I was thinking; she dropped me unceremoniously over the toilet.
“And sometimes I have to keep people out.” Sariel hunched over me and pressed fingers into my mouth and down my throat. I gagged a few times, then felt the rising sensation in my throat.
Once I was safely vomiting, Sariel unlocked the door and vanished in a flutter of black feathers.
Marie whimpered a little in her sleep. The figure approaching felt a little sorry for her, but steeled his resolve. He couldn’t afford to show sympathy until he knew whether she’d shown him sympathy. Or something. He shook his head to clear the cobwebby logic. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he couldn’t quite work up the nerve to wake her. He stroked her shoulder gingerly.
“Ian…” she mumbled. The man pulled away suddenly, not precisely sure what had spooked him. The force of his shifting weight moved Marie, and she sat up. She noticed the man in a moment, and slid across the bed, away from him. “Wha… what do you want?” she stammered.
It took him a minute to remember why he was there in the first place. “You… your specimens… you should regret…”
“Specimens?” A touch of confusion through the fear. “I don’t have specimens. I’m a physicist.”
He blinked. “What? Where’s your husband?” He remembered the picture of the couple he’d found in the project file. They had both looked familiar, though he couldn’t place either. Amnesia does that to you, he’d decided. In fact, he’d discovered that with his hair down and a pair of glasses, he looked a bit like the man in the photo. This, then, was where he’d start in his search for his skin disease. The name on the back had led him to the apartment where he found himself now. And the woman, who was making little squeaky noises of fear. He’d forgotten about her.
“My husband, Ian… he’s dead. He died two years ago.” He hadn’t even noticed her hand was closed tight, but now she opened it and looked at a broken compass. “This was his… They found it with his body…”
“His body?” He sighed.
“Yes. There were some… parts found. I had to identify them myself. An arm, a foot, a part of his torso…” She trailed off, looking as if she were going to cry or vomit. He could only imagine what it had been like to identify her husband’s parts. If she didn’t know anything, and he was out of reach, what else could be done? “Was there anyone he worked with? Someone who’d know his research?”
“Not really. He had an assistant, Gregorio. That was it. Why?”
He held out his arm and scratched at the skin. It peeled away in thin sheets. “I need help. I think I’m falling apart.”
I brushed my hair out of my eyes again. As much as I liked the novel sensation of having it there, it was starting to get annoying. How did Jian put up with it? I had no idea. Perhaps the sheer force of awesome kept it in place all the time.
“Are you getting tired, Robin?” Tai asked, smirking.
“No,” I lied. We’d been at this for an hour. I was well-enough trained to hold my own at first, but my attention span and my strength were flagging.
I tried to focus on Tai’s movement, but that same strand hung in my eyes again. I looked down and I pushed it out of the way – just as Tai’s kick sailed past my head.
Tai looked offended, but I just smirked and tried to pretend it was intentional.
“Get up. Edwin, get up!” He jerked awake, but it took him a minute to recognize the voice speaking to him as his fiancee.
“My dad’s coming over,” she said as she pulled him off the couch. “You have to get out of here. You know how he gets.”
“You mean calling me names and threatening to set me on fire from the molecules out?” Edwin asked, yawning.
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He was seated at the edge of his bedroll with his legs folded and his eyes closed.
“Jianguo,” I said softly.
Slowly, his eyes opened. He smiled at me, but his face was strained and tired.
“The answer?” he asked me.
“No reinforcements,” I said simply. There was no point in dancing around it. “General Ching says he needs them to defend the city.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. “He expects us to fail.”
“He would not say as much, but that was the impression.”
Jianguo closed his eyes again. I took the moment to sit next to him.
“What will we do?” I asked him.
“We will fight.” Jianguo put his arms around me then. For a long time we stayed like that. I started to pull away; he pulled me down to him and leaned in as if to kiss me, but quickly turned away.
He studied my face in silence for a moment. “I don’t suppose this is one of those fairy stories where the best friend is actually a girl in disguise?”
I sighed. “No, I’m afraid not.”
He nodded, and another very long silence ensued.
“I don’t suppose it matters,” he said finally, before leaning in to kiss me for real. “We’ll be dead soon enough.”
Jim wasn’t really my uncle. I called him that because that’s what kids call the adult that’s in the house all the time that isn’t their parents. He was the fun one, the one who didn’t yell like my dad and didn’t worry like my mom.
He made me all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I wanted and he would take me on vacations sometimes while my parents were away, just the two of us going to amusement parks you’ve never heard of or half-forgotten roadside attractions or children’s museums. I think I enjoyed the World’s Largest Horseshoe Crab and the Superman Museum as much as the Children’s Museum of Cleveland. Somehow even being in the car with him was fun. We’d listen to the Beach Boys or Woodie Guthrie and sing along, or he’d tell stories, and he always stopped when I wanted to stop.
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She was bound, hand and foot, and thrown into the ruined doorway of her master’s house. Kindling was piled around her and the fire started. Enheduana could hear it, popping and hissing and singing.
… Singing? Continue reading
