Moving Forward

Here is a more complicated tessellation that has taken me more endless hours to accomplish.  I've done better versions, but my camera batteries died after taking this picture.  No one would notice the difference, anyway.  It's an ever increasing mystery why I am so enthralled with this project.  I have become "proficient" enough now to begin to wonder why I keep going.  It's my usual habit to work at something just long enough to think I would be able to become good at it.  It's the pursuit of the thing rather than the product.  What in the world would I do with this?  Do I have to prove to myself over and over again that there is nothing I can't learn to do if I try hard enough?

When I was a lot younger I was in the habit of becoming an expert at everything I did.  This doesn't seem to be the case now...........possibly because I don't have the time left on earth to work that hard at each thing I try.  I have been patient with my paper folding in its different forms, giving up temporarily when I reach an impasse and going back later.  In my wake there is origami insects, origami flowers, and free form paper folding.  All of these keep coming and going as my mental energy warps and wanes.  There comes a time when some time for integration of experience takes place better on auto pilot.  Yet I'm not ready yet to say good enough for now.  I have managed to succeed at quite a few of the tessellations in my book when I make just one repeat of the maneuver.  These folds are meant for repetitions, though, and that's the beauty of them. 

Before I can give this a rest, I am going to have to learn at least one well enough to repeat it successfully on a fairly large grid.  Folding the grid is, as I've said, the obnoxious part of the process and I'm not going to invest the time in making a big one until I know I won't mess it up with mistakes.  I'm trying to learn to see it as a Zen kind of activity, as I'm sure it can be.  So far, though, I've made negligible progress on that.