Golden Crane Part 2
I met Pablo during an event for BBQ fans and ranchers. He told me an abridged version of his life’s story: worked in Chile mining for copper and lithium, taught surfing in Mexico, washed dishes in a couple of restaurants, spent time as a construction worker and recently learned film photography. Pablo’s current ambition: to buy a drone and a 28-70mm F2 lens to take pictures of waterfalls in national parks. In a 10 minute conversation, more details and other intimacies were spared between us. I suggested he look at the work of Cristina Mittermeier and Emmanuel Lubezki. He recommended a Paolo Sorrentino movie. Driving home after the event, I remembered a lecture I attended on Sơn Mài, a Vietnamese lacquer painting technique, at the basement of a shop that sold “crystals, minerals, fossils, singing bowls, salt lamps, books, CDs, incense, souvenirs and unique gifts”. During that lecture I met a charming overtone singer that shared with me a leather bound journal that maps his informal research on American zen gardens. I could imagine Pablo getting along with the overtone singer and exchanging stories.
Consider a possible far future where humanity only retains a handful of images of landscapes from our era. What would these images evoke in a person no longer connected or dependent on natural ecosystems? Taxonomical evidence is as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. One could fill an entire day talking about Monarch butterflies, or cranes. Fossil evidence of cranes dates back 10 million years. They can fly at altitudes of 16-26 thousand feet, higher than the Himalayas. Cranes are omnivorous. During their mating dance cranes pick up sticks or blades of grass; throw them in the air, and stab at them with their beak as they come down. Both sexes, mature and immature, take part in the dances. What would Pablo from the year 4334 interpret in nature beyond its ancient functionality, what emotions would awaken in him after seeing a crane in flight for the first time?
“There’s a kind of literacy in the forest. No two trees are the same to a raven. No two branches are the same to a wren. It’s only people who look and fail to see.”
Crane folklore is ancient and varied. In Greek legend, Ibycus was on his way to a poetry competition when he was attacked and fatally wounded by robbers. Before he died, he called upon a flock of cranes flying overhead to avenge him. Later, while the robbers were in the crowd at the competition, they saw a flock of cranes overhead and one exclaimed, “behold, the avengers of Ibycus!" This accidental confession led to their capture. In Persian tradition, cranes guard pomegranate trees, warning people not to pick the fruit too early. Those who heed the crane's advice are rewarded with a bountiful harvest, while those who ignore it face hardships. In a Korean version, a young woman is engaged to a man in her village before he is called to war. The woman gives the man a golden crane pin as a token of his promise to return. Years pass, and she learns that he has been gravely injured. She fervently prays for his safe return. Moved by her devotion, the gods transform her into a golden crane. She flies to the battlefield and guides her wounded lover back home, where he recovers. Incapable of transforming back into a human, she visits him every day in crane form, circling above his home as a sign of her undying love. After many years, he builds a shrine in her honor, where golden cranes are believed to bring blessings to couples who visit.
My favorite crane stories are Japanese and Chinese. In both tales, compassion, transformation and devotion are strongly featured. In the story Tsuru no Ongaeshi, a poor man finds a golden crane with a broken wing struggling in the forest. He tends to its injuries, feeds it and keeps it safe until it can fly again. One night, the crane takes flight. The next day, a beautiful woman dressed in golden silk appears at the man's door. She claims to be his wife. The man declares he is poor, but the woman gives him a bag of rice that never empties and the couple marries. To help support them, the wife weaves valuable pieces of cloth for him to sell. But she insists that he never watches her at work. The fabric is so beautiful that the man is able to sell it for a high price. Each time he returns, the woman weaves another golden cloth. The curious man eventually peeks and sees a crane plucking her own feathers to weave the golden fabric. With trust betrayed, the wife/crane leaves, never to return. She leaves him a final gift: a piece of golden cloth that never fades. In the Chinese rendition of the golden crane, an old Taoist master lives on top of a mountain, where he raises a golden crane as his spiritual companion. The crane is immortal, wise and able to carry messages between realms. A young man who seeks immortality journeys to the mountain to meet the Taoist master. He becomes the master’s disciple and is given the task of caring for the crane. Over many years, he tends to the mystical bird with devotion. One day, the golden crane transforms into a bridge of light, stretching into the heavens. The Taoist master tells his disciple that the crane will now take him to the celestial realm to sit among the immortals.
Outside of conservation efforts or formal scientific recording, photographing nature implies a celebration of its grandeur or an abstract negotiation between a person and its ecological placement. On that token, my own relationship with nature mediates an imagined placement within a spiritual environment. During a casual lunch with a friend, I was introduced to three philosophical perspectives that speak on the link between divinity and the universe. My friend was kind enough to entertain my unexpected curiosity about his time studying theology. A thorough questioning, in between interrupted bites of pork and shrimp wontons. Pantheism is the belief that the universe and God are identical. God is everything and everything is God. The divine is immanent in all things, and there is no separation between the sacred and the material world. Panentheistic philosophy on the other hand, establishes that the divine interpenetrates every part of the universe but also extends beyond it. God is more than the universe itself, it extends beyond the material. At this point of our casual fried chicken plate, the conversation extended beyond the rice, the fish sauce, the dumplings, the noisy fans and everybody sitting around us. My friend continued with his explanation. Then there is animism, which emphasizes the spiritual vitality of individual elements of the world rather than a unified divine presence. It focuses on multiplicity rather than the singular divinity of pantheism or the dual immanence-transcendence of panentheism.
“People have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line spinning out from one point to another in a straight line forever. But the very oldest trees hold time in ways you can’t imagine.”
When I got home after the BBQ event, smelling like smoke and tallow, I reheated leftover dumplings and thought about the lack of nature photography in my work. I’ve repeatedly told myself the story that landscape photography, at least the one I could produce, is redundant. But I’ve come to realize that my refusal to explore this type of work comes from my weakening connection with nature itself. In Pantheism, a crane would be considered one of the many threads that make up the total fabric of God, with no hierarchical importance. In Panentheism, a crane is part of the many threads that god weaves, God is within it but also beyond it. An according to animism, the universe is filled with autonomous threads that weave in an out of an ever-changing cloth. And as I finished a delicious late dinner of dumplings and kimchi, I fixated on the possibility of photographing the delicate currents of air left by the flight of a passing crane. Nothing more, nothing else and nothing beyond.