Cocoons aren’t just for butterflies you know…

My ex-husband used to occasionally spend a week or so just reading and absorbing things. He called it “going larval” and while pretty much most larval forms of creatures give me major willies, the idea is pretty cool. It means you’re not quite ready to emerge yet, you’re developing, in the process of becoming.

I haven’t written anything much since one poem on 9/11. Well, I’ve written tons of sentences down for later. I email myself in the middle of the night. And during the day. I leave digital post-its on my office computer, notes jammed in my purse. If I carried a Sharpie, I’d have words written on myself most days. But I think I’ve been in a month-long larval stage myself (only without the icky squirming thing with too many legs, or with none at all). 

I know I’m no butterfly. Those days are behind me I think. Maybe I’m more luna moth, those things go through so many stages of being, it’s amazing. Of course, they’re much faster at it than I am, but they do a lot of waiting to become. I feel something like that, like there’s so many stages to life, and I’ll never truly be “done” anyway. I mean, the adult luna moth lives only one week, and doesn’t eat (doesn’t even have a mouth!). It reproduces and dies. So here’s where that metaphor dies too, heh. I hope to at least get to fly awhile longer than a week.

And I’m getting closer, I’m figuring things out. I’ve been reading so much my eyes hurt. And I’ve done a couple of websites for other people too (my husband’s latest musical project for one). I think now I need to find a nice leafy spot to chill out, to take some extreme quiet time in a cocoon of my own. I know there’s a project for me on the other side of this, and I can’t wait to see what that becomes. Or, really, I guess I can wait. I guess that’s the point.