Folding In

There are chapters in life when it feels right to indulge, to fling yourself wide open to the bright universe, allowing that awesome light to touch every inner surface. Passion and reckless abandon have their place: without those qualities, it seems unlikely that the world would ever advance.

Certain moments, however, require us to invoke some emotional origami, a folding in on oneself — a matter of preserving the soul at the risk of alienating what lies outside. "To thine own self be true..."

The lovely night-blooming moonflower knows how to avoid getting burned, unfurling her glory only after dark: secretive and luminescent, exotic and vulnerable. At the coming of dawn she closes in, hiding, like a demure geisha concealed in the folds of her kimono.

Lately, I've been folding, folding, folding, but I have a long way to go before I complete a thousand cranes...