Liminality

I was looking at our caterpillars this morning and noticing how gross they are. Really gross, people. I wasn't expecting that.

What I was expecting was for the caterpillars to be furry and cute from the time they arrived in the mail--we bought a butterfly growing kit--to the time they wended their way to the top of the jar to form cocoons. Then, I figured they wouldn't look particularly cute but, hey, price of beauty, people, price of beauty.

It's not like I didn't read the instructions and the FAQs. I'm all about RTFM (you know, Reading The Full Manual, or something like that). I read everything twice. I learned about frass, which is tiny greenish balls of caterpillar poop. You'd be surprised how much frass caterpillars actually excrete. Or maybe you wouldn't. 

Anyway.

The caterpillars seem to shed. Their outer body started off not-all-that-furry and they were kind of black and prickly but smooth, like the new silicone mascara wands instead of the older bristle wands. Whatever that black was, it kind of rolled or shucked back, like a latex stocking (not that I know) until bit by bit the furrier underneath was revealed and the stockings were left in a prickly ball in the corner. Mostly this happened when I wasn't looking. Except this one guy--and by guy I mean caterpillar--whose stocking seemed to be stuck at the bottom of him so that he was kind of, I don't know, bursting forth.

I'm not sure that provides an accurate picture of how disturbing the whole thing is, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Or picture Robin Williams wriggling free of the aforementioned prickly black latex stocking, because you wouldn't be too far off.

I'll pause while you shudder.

Now the general point is that liminality can be awkward. There's all this inbetween-ness where the old skin doesn't fit and the new skin isn't quite revealed and maybe isn't even ready. I mean, who knows exactly what's going on under that latex? And the whole thing is confusing, so confusing that maybe your mind gets a little muddled, a little not right, and you are typing a post and trying to remember a poem you wrote once called "in between days" and then it comes to you with a musical score and Robert Smith's voice and you realize you never wrote that poem because it's a song by The Cure. But maybe once you spent the better part of chemistry class writing the lyrics on the bottom of your Converse All*Stars.

That's one thing.

Another thing is that maybe you start to discover that most of life seems to be about being in between. Your whole life is a liminal experience. The exception is equilibrium. So maybe no wonder you spend a lot of your time feeling off balance and waiting for the next thing to happen. This is starting to seem the case to me.

Trust me when I say that I have spent the better part of my 34 years on this planet trying to achieve equilibrium. No one dislikes surprises and change, and especially change that comes by surprise, more than me. I like to plan. I like to contingency plan. I do not like to be caught with my latex stockings around my ankles.

And yet, it happens. Lots of times, it happens.

I wonder, which is the true creature: egg, larva, caterpillar, chrysalis, or butterfly and from what I can tell the answer is all of it and maybe a few things I didn't consider. The whole sum of the creature isn't about what it was, because it isn't anymore; or what it is going to be, because it isn't yet and may never be (bugs get stepped on and eaten); or even what it is at this moment, because that is just the sum of the last two and it's maybe changing so fast that it's both and neither of something.

No, the creature just is. Eating and frassing and shedding and spinning and just being because what else would it be doing? And then I found out that the butterflies that we are watching grow, they spin silk allright, and they use it to make it easier to get around and to protect themselves (hey, whatever helps them sleep at night), but they don't make cocoons. They really don't. I know you've read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and it says that they do but, seriously, not even a little.

They are cocoons. That icky latex skin, well, to be really unscientific and imprecise, at some point one of the layers hardens creating a protective shell for transformation and then the caterpillar, when it's a butterfly, breaks free of it's old skin (which I seriously hope I don't have to point out is not actual silicone or latex, people). So the caterpillar, more or less just stops being a caterpillar and gets to being a butterfly. He doesn't work really hard at it. It just happens after the fifth liminal stage.

And then it flies. Until it's dead. But that's not really part of today's lesson.

Comments

[Alice]

I think I was trying to write this about two months ago. Without the caterpillar and the Converse All Stars though.

[loafingcactus]

Oh but Polly, what happens to the butterfly? Does he go to college and get a job? Argh- that's already done!

Cactus here is feeling mid-career fluttering-unto-death and this butterfly that's already done all the miraculous transformations that he's ever going to do any only has left to swim upstream and die (so to speak, children around you know) isn't making me feel any better. :-/

[Polly Poppins]

The caterpillar transforms five times before it becomes a butterfly. Six, if you count being born in the first place. I wonder if, after the second or third transformation, the caterpillar things "that's it, I'm done" or if he knows there's more coming. Does he look at butterflies and think, "wow, that's going to be me some day?" or does he see a bigger furrier caterpillar and thing "man, that's probably as good as it gets."

[loafingcactus]

I thought that after I wrote that comment, only far less eloquently- gee, what makes me so sure the miracles are over? Well done, Ms. Poppins.

[Diosa]

Love the Robin Williams analogy.

[The Dol]

Ah, life is change! My husband has a Buddhist prayer-bead bracelet, called a mala. The beads on the bracelet are skulls, which may seem sort of Metallica, but it's really supposed to remind you to live in the moment. Life is ever-changing, or, like a box of chocolates, I suppose. There is so little that we can actually control that it seems a shame not to take joy in as much as we can, as frightening as it all sometimes seems. I try to live that way, but I'm not always successful.

[SistahFromAnotherMistah]

I liked the post a lot. I haven't jumped into the genre yet. Of course, the only thing I've been reading lately is Real Simple and Fortune--can't even make it through the New Yorker, and that was my absolute favorite way to spend a Sunday pre-kids. My all-time favorite man / woman relationship series ever is Anne of Green Gables. Can't get enough of my Lucy Maude Montgomery.

[SistahFromAnotherMistah]

0h crap. I meant to post the above on the DOL's romance genre post. Sorry! Back to multi-tasking (poorly at that).

[The Dol]

i saw your comment, sistah! thanks for coming by to read it. :-) i need to read the green gables books. i watched the series on t.v. back in the day, and loved it, but i never read the books.

[SistahFromAnotherMistah]

WHOA!!!!! WHAT!?!?!? Get your butt to Amazon straight away and download immediately. Those are orders from your older sister! Do it now so we can talk about them at night in Bolton after the kids and guys are sleeping. My best friend in HS used to be Anne and I was Diana. She even had her own Gilbert. Oh my. I'm swooning.