Logic

So today I considered the furniture one would need when furnishing a house. Quite frankly, I started out just thinking of a room. I decided I needed a table, one chair for that table, a bookshelf, and a futon to start and a few lamps. These are just the priorities. The way I have it planned, the futon can get me through a month or two till I get my own place and then it can promptly be converted to a living room piece. Now the fascination I have with all of this is the level of permanence furniture indicates. Of course being me, at least in the past four years, impermanence has been the name of the game. The last time I recall being concerned over furniture was when I was a Jr. in college. That was three or four years ago. Stunning. So here I am contemplating these things and it even occurred to me I just might be interested in curtains. I'm poking around craigslist, I'm poking around IKEA and Sears online, and then my brain goes to vacume, lawn mower and before I know it I have decided once again, being a grown-up is expensive. However, if one starts, and I mean STARTS, to decide to be in one place for a period of time I suppose these everyday things become common place and the whole mess of $ $ $ can be reduced to just one early expense (like filling your fridge for the first time with ketchup and salad dressing) and then it is relatively inexpensive.

Surprisingly, I felt kind of excited at the prospect of building my place.

Murry moves on

Murry didn't make it.

His cocoon has been black for days and I moved him, along with all of my belongings today and his cocoon fell off to ooze liquid on the wood floor of his house but no sign of a butterfly.

So all that stuff about peaceful transitions?

I'm skeptical.

How could a caterpillar fail to turn into a butterfly with no known predators or weather to advert this change? Bummer. There have been a lot of references to butterflies this past year and how one needs to sometimes take the time to magically change and take that quiet time of healing (aka cocoon time)... hum.

O Maine

After a glorious two days respite in Ogunquit, Maine, I am just now getting to the artist board to draw my "thank you" note for my friends. While blurry... you'll get the idea.

Moving.

I have pretty much decided I absolutely hate moving. It is probably the worst thing you could tell me to do. Any of you who know me probably are thinking, "What? From the girl who has 12 library cards?" But it's true. I think the only think I hate more than moving is getting a shot, and even that, there's less emotional whorah there because you get to get all nice and anxious then poke and you're done. This whole pack all your stuff AGAIN, this whole, where are you going to be, where can you live, where will you land, is it temporary or do you have a say in it? YUCK YUCK YUCK.

That's what I have to say about it.

Murry didn't seem to have a probably with me moving him from one room to the next.

I just want to get it over with because it's like ripping a bandaid off real slow, or dumping some hydrogen peroxide in the cut. You know it's going to suck... and you still have to do it. I want to be done moving.

It's amazing I know, that I should feel this violently towards the process considering how many times I have done this. If I count since I entered undergraduate.. since I was 20, I have packed all my stuff up and lived somewhere else it's been ten times. In six years, I've moved ten times. Well hell. There you have it. Talk about a lack of permanence.

I guess I shouldn't be complaining because Murry's going to have to move every year.

Maybe I should save him that trouble and let him go at the Butterfly Museum so he can live out his peaceful life in one location, year round.

Murry

I bought a monarch caterpillar when I went to the Butterfly Museum a few days ago and I have been fascinated in observing it's growth. I watched it eat like crazy, sleep as if it were dead, wake up and eat and sleep and poop ect. Many times I thought I killed it because it was so very still but then up again it would be eating the extra milk weed plants I put in it's little plastic cup. Soon I got to thinking it needed a bigger home, so I scrounged around my dad's bee-keeping supplies and came up with a nettled box about the size of a shoebox. Typically, these are used when the bees get shipped to the house and they have a nice screen to wrap around the wood and a bar in the center, and circle opening at the top. I slipped my plastic cup container in, taped off the top and thought the caterpillar would likely cocoon along the center bar. Interestingly enough, the caterpillar had little interest in the new home I created for him (I think of him as caterpillar first, Murry second). Anyways, before I knew it he crawled up the side of the "hutch" and rather than plot out a good journey for where to cocoon, tucked himself in the far corner and made his J, and soon, his cocoon.

The fascinating part about all of this is that it was as if Murry had it all figured out. He ate, he slept. He pooped, he ate, he slept. I sat thinking, "Dead? Not dead?" "Did I kill him? Is his home big enough?" all this time making sure this period of his life was the very best that I could make it. But to Murry, it's all peaceful. He's transitioning. Probably in the very biggest way he will ever know and yet seems so cool and collected.

"Yeah, sure, I'll hang upside down in a J for a few hours, I'm cool."

And even now, each day I come home from work, I peek in the corner to see how he's doing. When I wake up, I crawl over, shut my alarm off and look up to see how he's doing. He's very quietly hanging out in his cocoon, doing what he needs to be doing. Resting. Letting nature take it's course. It's all just so peaceful.

I don't think I have ever experienced a peaceful, quiet transition. My life is just the opposite. When I see transition coming, it's like I invite a tornado into my small hutch and before I know it, I can't find my milkweed, can't tell which way is up, where I should hang, anything. If I were in a cocoon, I'd probably be moving all over the place and stressing out about what color spots I wanted and how I'd need to be to make just those spots happen.

It occurred to me tonight as I peeked in at Murry, that there's a lot I could learn from this little bug.