the non-caterpillar non-butterfly filling a cocoon is liquid.

a caterpillar, once wrapped in a cocoon, will begin to self-digest releasing enzymes that turn it into liquid. in this formless soup, there are cells called imaginal discs that contain the way of the butterfly in them. these cells lay dormant in caterpillars due to their hormones. however, in a cocoon, these cells are not digested, but multiply in this sauce. they multiply until the liquid is molded into a butterfly anew. 

i am liquidating, self-digesting, too. i am rotting in the cocoon of my embroidered black scarf that i keep wrapped about my head and neck no matter where i go. on the train, in the vegetable aisle, at the turkish bakery, my formerly favorite coffeeshop, work, park, water’s edge, not home though. at home my cocoon expands to the four walls of my studio and i let my water leak…

liseli says: “we are not rewarded for our suffering but the truth we carry through our suffering.” i suppose these imaginal discs are the truths the caterpillar-butterfly non-duality false-dichotomy carries through in its smallest pocket of life (a cell). i feel that suffering has a way of weathering truth, carving it, pressing it, melting it into soft plastic. and i suppose i should wait for it to multiply until it shapes my whole being into something that can fly on pretty shapes and pretty colors. 

but there is an artificial pain rooted deep in my stomach that sinks as a rock amist all my watery ways. a stubborn knot that refuses to untangle into loose threads for currents to course.

the artificial-natural is another false-dichotmy, but i say this knotted pain is artificial because it is implanted and cultivated by a system so estranged from the natural world that it severed my body from pleasure and mutilated my pain receptors into nothing. it cauterized the buds at the tips of generational growth. these enzymes cannot digest inorganic material, and i worry that if i start to form a new body around this knot, it will only harden it.

so i wait. and try my best not to gnaw on it. as this soupy non-form non-empty mess that spreads and seeps and swirls into itself. i let my liquid weather this rock away. i let it drip and chip. time lets water carve veins into mountains even if i refuse to give it.