Shadow Origami

– I shiver. There’s a breeze in the structure. An eave out of place, one of the rafters being defeated by the winter’s campaigns. I sit upstairs, waiting amidst mostly empty rows of metal folding chairs. The whisper of winter travels down the rows and around chairs. Its resolve wanes and ignites and sometimes slams against the frozen back of chairs. I sit, shivering. I wait. I am early still. Not early in the way that fowl sometimes wakes and anticipates the sun, but I am early, in a less rigid sense of the word. I shiver and I wait for the author. I begin to think about the title ‘author’ in light of the fact that this man is really more of a paper folder. An origami maker. Is there a term? ‘Author’ simply does not seem to fit. But all the signs indicating that this man will be here say ‘author’ and next to them are small stacks of books. His book. So I concede. I’m not certain whether one of the components of the roof launched a counter defense against the winter’s onslaught, but I feel warmed. The solitary drafts and breezes, sentries and scouts of winter, have apparently become confounded by the steel barriers of the chair backs, cold but still standing. Or perhaps, it is simply the psychological effect of feeling warmed by the safety of having come into the tent of an ally. I sit there, waiting, along with a small scatter of patrons. There are not many people turned out for this event. The rain does that. Here, it does that. If this were a place where it snowed, people would still turn out. It isn’t. It’s okay with me. But it is easier not to fit into a larger crowd than it is a smaller one. In larger crowds irregularities seem to make more sense. It’s been hard, at least since the balcony’s been empty, to find a crowd of any size in which I fit. I start looking around from the signs and the title ‘author’ in bold, the stacks, the tables, the signs, the word ‘origami’, the word ‘shadows’ and I can’t seem to find a single stack of folding paper anywhere. Then the lights go out.
They come back on, slowly, the way life becomes present under the dawning sun. But they do not return fully. We watch, wait, half covered in shadow. On the small makeshift scaffold, the one all the chairs face and the scattered audience directs itself toward, stands a man. He seems himself made up of folds. The half light bouncing about the upstairs space, off of bookshelves holding scrap-booking materials and craft supplies, reflects off of him at odd angles. One of the refractions blinds me for a minute. He seems almost two-dimensional in the light, especially standing next to the petite bookstore employee wearign her The Signified lanyard in clear view.The woman takes a step forward, further calling to question the man’s dimensionality. She introduces him simply as Sha Tou, the origami master. She then scurries off stage, leaving him there under the dimmed light. He just stands there for a minute. He tilts his head from side to side, in that fowl way. Only when he does, it seems his head is more flopping than tilting. His voice is raspy. It is, reminiscent of the inflections of paper fighting the force of the wind.
“Thank you all for coming. This is not what you think,” he says, “but it’s very much what you think.”
He jumps off of the scaffolding, with a lightness to him, as if the force of gravity were diminished in his presence. He makes his way around the clusters of fold-able chairs, and his scattered audience. As he does, the light continues to reflect off of him, in an odd fashion. Refractions send pulses of light about the room. He stands there and his head flops. He looks at each of us, pausing a moment, intrigued by our intrigue.
“This is perhaps best when the room is almost full,” he comments, in that outward processing manner.
“The book,” he says, “is an introduction.” He crouches down a bit to look at the few people seated. “I am sure you’ve walked by it. But then again, it’s more about me than about what you’ll be able to do. I mean, folding is a discipline. It is an art form. It is about making something out of something.”
He moves closer to a lady, a couple of rows from me. He studies her a little more intently. She is a bit older and seems a bit melancholy. Older than I, and from the looks of it, older than the origami maker. He stays silent a moment, his head flops to his right shoulder. He grabs at the shadow cast over her head. He pulls it and light fills the space over her. He looks at the darkness on his hands. He studies it. He looks at her. She has lightened a bit. A perplexed smile, but a smile nonetheless. He looks back at the shadow in his hands. He clasps them together, then massages it in the same way you mix playdoh or clay. He pulls at the shadow and stretches it out, still studying it. He begin to crease the shadow, and then fold it. He looks up at the woman as he does. Her face is now filled with child-like amazement. She tilts her head under the light still filling where the shadow was. The man continues to crease and fold. The rest of us in the audience, all five, simply remain in quiet intrigue. Then, as he makes what looks like a final fold, he reaches quickly behind him and grabs another bit of shadow. This time light begins to spill onto the seat, under it, in front of me. It cascades down onto the metallic surface and off the back of it. Some spills onto the tip of my shoe, but no further. It puddles around me leaving the shadows over me untouched, except for the spot on my shoe. I am mesmerized. I look up at the man but he is now back on the scaffold. The lady is now standing, holding an origami shadow, covered by the bit of shadow the man tore from over the chair in front of me. She is beaming now, practically giddy. Her hand reaches for the shadow covering the origami figure. But the man yells.
“No! You must not uncover it in front of everyone, but when you are alone, and only by candle light.”
She nods, thanks him and rushes off. The remaining five of us, simply watch him, as he flops his head from side to side and studies our response. His head stops flapping and moves into a nod.
“The shadow on you,” he begins, as he turns his eyes toward me, “is too heavy to fold.”
He looks everyone over, and taking a bow thanks us. The lights go out and when they come back on, he is gone. The four people scattered about make their way quickly to the stacks, to the book the origami maker wrote. They look it over and study it, much in the same way he studied us and the shadows he held in his hand. I watch them, unconvinced of the purchase, and unsure of what just occurred. I get up and make my way down the stairs. I don’t notice it at first, but I can’t not as I take each step in ascension. Eventhough the lights are fully lit, and shadows are scarce now, it continues. As I walk, there is a type of moat about me. Around me. It is, in fact, much like I would imagine a reverse shadow to be. I try not to stare at it. I do not want someone to see it and verify it is actually there. I scan the store. There is no one else on the stair well, or, at that moment, aware of it. I’m not sure what this is, or what this means, but it makes me feel uneasy. I just stand there. I start to feel a pressure. The kind you feel when you jump into the deep end of the pool and torpedo towards the bottom surface. Suddenly, I feel tired. But I do not want to return home. I did not want to leave this place, very soon at all. But I do feel tired and I start thinking it might be the most comfortable thing in the world to indulge slumber on the balcony. Then I remember about the drizzle, and the absence. The pressure gets worse. I become dizzied, and I recall the same feeling rushing through me, a lightness, when I first came home to find an empty balcony. Then, when she first lost enchantment. I crouch down, then sit on the stairs. I lean forward and I notice that as I do, the ever slight shadow above my head begins to drip into the moat and slowly it darkens it and the reverse shadow disappears entirely. I remain, on the stairs, on that last step before the landing. Then I don’t.