Metamorphosis 

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I am not illiterate but I don’t know the stories. I don’t read. I am here to understand and to be forever wrong and confused.

I have not rested in a woven nest. I am changing, but with great difficulty. 

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The first book I was asked to read in the first grade warned about the dangers of hedonism. Peter sailed away from the grown ups only to learn the truth about himself, how he would destroy himself with fun if not for his caretakers. Rotten teeth, fistfights, freedom. I remember understanding what they were trying to tell us but feeling slightly offended at being treated like some four-foot monkey who couldn’t weigh risk against reward. Philosophically, I reject hedonism, so maybe the author was onto something. Humans need managers, parents and gods. I am not here to enjoy. In the old days my father would send us off to school with instructions to “enjoy” the day. What the fuck did that mean? I hated school, I could never write fast enough, nor subtract or play or speak. I hated lunch and having a backpack. I hated being around other kids, I hated how none of the teachers ever seemed smart. They were not good managers. 

 

The second book I was asked to read was about a very very hungry, gluttonous caterpillar who had no respect for his body or the diet prescribed to him by the limits of his habitat. He ate all kinds of things, lots of them, things I wanted but my parents wouldn’t let me have. He ate mindlessly like a spoiled little prince who takes bites out of everybody’s food and gets away with it. His tummy hurt a bit but he ended up beautiful anyway. Maybe he meditated for those seven days, maybe he repented and did his time. I don’t think so. Perhaps nature is more forgiving than god.

 

Then in middle school I learned about rocks. I learned that if you bash and pummel and suffocate things they transform in glorious ways. Can you imagine being underneath the earth? Can you imagine the weight of the ocean? Of the mountains, of the trees, of us? Can you imagine the heat of the Heart? How scorching it must be… how terrifying, to be pushed by everything in the world down and down and down towards the dark, steaming, melting truth. The hot coals of hell. It must change you, it must make you tough or evil, and resentful. To become fossilized this way, complex and fucked up by things that happened to me, to you, to my mothers and fathers for some hundred years, to the earth, to the fruit, to the culture and the times- it means the end. Marble is cold and beautiful. Streaks, flecks, solid, treated. The old rock was treated by the earth that made it, raised and punished to reach its fate.

 

Now I am learning that many people figured it out many times. And we wasted the wisdom. Whenever things change for the better, they change back for the worse again. It is quite embarrassing. 

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