remember that one time?

an old one.  one of my most favorite ever, and almost certainly the most personal thing I've ever written.  november 2012.

The Glass Jar

Once, when I was smaller,
I came upon a caterpillar.
He was not particularly beautiful:
in general, caterpillars never are.
But I loved him anyway.

I put him in a jar,
its bottom tenderly cushioned with a tiny handful of sweet chartreuse grass
and a twig carefully positioned just so,
in order that my new friend would feel comfortable in his glass house.
He may well have been my first love.

So you can imagine,
the heaviness of my little heart
when I discovered one morning that he had disappeared.
In his stead was nothing but a scrunched up leaf,
a strange and unseemly ornament hanged from the lonely little twig.

I mourned my loss.
Some sadness, maybe a bit of anger.
But then there was the wonder.
Where had my friend in the glass house gone,
and, more, how had he done it?
I think I was a little jealous, even then, before I knew.

Now I am not as small,
and it has been a long time since the caterpillar's chrysalis.
But I still think of him often.

Today was one of those days.



I felt intensely uneasy in my body.


I found myself wishing I was drunk, 


or speaking a foreign language,


so that I might excuse my malaise in conversation,


but I was not,


and I was not.


I would like a cocoon,
please.

A man invited me to a documentary film screening,
and discussion about globalization and consumerism and the destruction of communities, and I wanted to 

scream:


don't you see that I am, you are, we all are the problem, 


and don't you see that today I can barely go on living with myself much less sit and talk, talk, talk some more with you, all the while caught in this terrifying safety net people call civility? 


Don't you see that I am unfit for your discourse today?

I would just like a cocoon,
please.

But I say something else,
something I'm programmed to say,


I don't know what,


and he nods appreciatively,


and then I am talking to some others and I say something else and they too smile and kindly express their gratitude for my compliance with the rules necessarily imposed inside of the glass jar, or something like that.


I don't even know what I'm saying.

I turn and stand alone, 
and then someone is saying I look thoughtful, and it is because I am pressing my lips together for fear of what else might tumble out if I allow them to part.

Just a cocoon, please.


Later, I try to run.
But it is hard when you are a caterpillar. 
My body is heavy today.

Sadness, anger, regret, pain. It does not even belong to me; I pick it up in crowds like so many stones squirreled away in the pockets of an overcoat that is much too large for me. I run to escape, but today I cannot. I try, but suddenly I am slowing, and then I am walking, and my eyes are cast downward, and then I am choking and I can't catch my breath and I think I am crying, but the tears won't come.

When I was small,
I couldn't understand that he was still there,
inside that cocoon.
I couldn't understand that he was working in there,
that something amazing was going on, something even beyond the reaches of my rather expansive imagination.  

If I couldn't see it, it didn't exist.

I couldn't understand that inside the ugly little thing inside the little glass jar, a miracle was happening.
How could I?

I cast the jar aside,
and finished my mourning in the rapid and intense manner typical of small humans.
But the sage mother of my best friend told me to keep it.
To guard it, to keep watching, to keep waiting.
She asked me to be patient, which, I don't know if you remember or not,
is not easy when one is small.
I left it.

I'd almost forgotten,
the day she called me over to peer inside.
The thing hanging from the branch trembled.
Something inexplicable and fantastic was happening.

I would have been afraid,
were it not for the glass house that separated us.
It wasn't what I expected: that's scary.

Shivering, trembling,
the new thing emerged.
It was not a caterpillar.  It was a tiny, graceful, little thing, and it had beautiful wings.
The moment those wings began to unfold, we took the lid off the jar, of course.
We had to, there was no question:
Everyone knows you can't keep a butterfly in a glass jar.

I am in the woods, still trying to run, but my body, my heart, my soul know better.  I step off the trail.    I put my forehead and forearms against a tree and try to find my breath. I don't know how long I stand with this tree in our odd little communion, but eventually I realize that the weight of it all is lightening, that the tree still stands tall, unflinching and without lament, and I am again strong enough to stand on my own.  I am ready.

I face the path and fly.



Sometimes 
less > more.


In negative spaces,


In silences that scream,


Where we become still.
Where we grow into ourselves.