Red Crowned Crane at Marwell Wildlife, England. Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle has within a myriad themes and subtexts. Just chasing those around would make the book worth a read. I find the wind-up bird particularly intriguing: a bird whose song sounds like a wind-up key being turned. The bird clearly puts in an appearance each day to wind up the world's spring and keep it ticking over. One day, the bird did not return and the world started to fall apart, with the real and the unreal becoming so meshed together as to make it impossible to tell apart. The red-crowned crane is in danger of extinction all over the world; its habitat is disappearing and so, although it has no particular predators, it will vanish quite soon; and yet this crane is the carrier of immortals as they travel to the afterlife: like the wind-up bird's disappearance made the world an unboundaried place of fact and fiction, so perhaps the loss of the crane will break another wall. And by the way, the first man-made object to pierce the outer limit of the solar system is out there moving right along, carrying a tape-recorder with our sounds and words...
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An ancient Japanese tradition says that whoever gets to fold 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish. Sadako Sasaki was a little girl of two when the Enola gay dropped its cargo on Hiroshima. She suffered from leukaemia all her life and set about folding 1,000 paper cranes so she could be granted a miracle cure. Sadako did not finish her project but, since then, many people have folded on her behalf and paper cranes continue to be sent to the Hiroshima memorial as offerings for World Peace.
In May 2012 Jeffrey Brown completed a tribute to Sadako, an art work which consists of 2,000 paper cranes folded by him in varying shades of grey. They were placed within a frame and represent Sadako's portrait. See this work on You Tube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfM-JFmUHCk&list=TLrR5rvo198YQ The crane is a special bird in South East Asia. It is endangered, although weighed down by symbolism and myth. I am particularly interested in the red-crowned crane, tachozuru, a symbol of luck, longevity and fidelity. And for many, a symbol of peace. Having made a start, I hope to travel further in the company of this magnificent symbol to learn and to dream. |
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