Red-Crowned Crane - The Fairy Crane

This is the Red-Crowned Crane which is a rare bird that makes its home nearby in the Yancheng area.  I took the photo in the Yancheng area not knowing that the bird is on the protected species list as the second rarest crane in the world.  I took the photo because the Red-Crowned Crane is featured in the mythology of China in a significant manner.  In Chinese, the bird is called Xian He (仙鹤), or fairy crane.

In trying to do a search for the myths that surround this large bird, I kept coming up short with only a few lines that were repeated and repeated endlessly about how this bird was "a symbol of longevity and immortality" and of "nobility." The myths themselves eluded my search.  Perhaps they are yet to be translated into English and so I am left with all the images that are abundant here in China, images that feature the crane.   

"While the world as it is is infinitely more complex than we can imagine, we are provided with the helpful tools of metaphor and symbol to move from the knowable world to the unknowable.  If the poet compares the beloved to a flower, or analogizes the human life cycle with the seasons, we know full well what is intended.  From this capacity for metaphor, symbol, analogy, we have the possibility through imagination of creating a partnership with mystery."  (Hollis, Mythologems, p. 31)

I am learning something here.  I wonder about how there are things that are knowable - known - to some, such as the myths surrounding this crane, and those things that are a mystery to all.  We sense/intuit something numinous but we can't move from the fuzzy edges of contact into conscious awareness.  What comes after death is the best analogy that I can think of - do we become immortal?  The crane suggests that we do, a noble immortality that demands a transcendence from a corporal form.  There is not "truths" to be had here, just the fuzzy edges of mystery.

In Search of Answers

Looking out a window at the world passing by, this young Chinese girl is enjoying late fall sunshine in Changzhou.  There is something comforting about being in the sun's warmth and looking at out at the world while being safely contained.

One looks out with real curiosity at the world and wonders.  All those passing people, all the stories untold are mysteries that feed an inner curiosity.  One wants to know, but one doesn't know.

"The problem always comes back to the fact that we do not know what we do not know.  We are not conscious of that which we are unconscious.  We do not apprehend that which lies beyond our instruments of apprehension.  The wise from Socrates to the present, know that they do not know, so all of life remains a mystery, a curiosity, which gets, as British astronomer J.B.S. Haldane once concluded, ever curiouser and curiouser." (Hollis, Mythologems, p. 29)

Children, like this girl are also wise, an instinctual wisdom, as they know that they don't know.  So many adults, in fear of the unknown, proclaim truths and hold to the "hard facts" of science or the "word" of their religions.  Curiosity is a danger as it questions and doubts.

Did our world emerge out of a big bang or was it created by some deity or . . . ?  So many answers claiming the "truth," the ultimate answer.  Yet, the truth is that we don't know, that we can never be conscious of the unconscious.  And coming to realise that I don't know any of the answers, I allow myself to become curious, especially about the questions themselves and where the questions come.  What is it within the human psyche that probes into the unknown in search of beginnings, that searches for the roots of self?