chrysalis

chrysalis: a preparatory or transitional state 

chrysalism: the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm

have you ever really thought about how amazing it is that a caterpillar

Samuel Jaffe

ACTUALLY

turns into a butterfly?

have you ever thought about how magical that process is?

what the hell goes on in the chrysalis to make such a transformation?

it's as if we learn about it in kindergarten

reading "the very hungry caterpillar"

then we stop thinking about it 

before our fully developed minds

can contemplate what it really is:

the perfect metaphor

for being in the middle of things

brain brimming with questions

because you don't yet know

where you're going, how you'll get there

or

that the questions you have

about yourself, the world

have no real answers

no explanations

no beginnings or ends

life just moves on,

mysteriously,

whether you like it or not

Rafael Araujo

but rather than assume 

with a career

and a spouse

and a home

i'll burst from my cozy cocoon

i'd like to think we are always in the process of becoming

that the chrysalis is in fact...

perpetual

Fernan Federici

unlike our crawly counterparts

the butterfly we wish to become exists in the mind alone

a vision which steers us through the unknown

something to strive for but never to own

a state of being that is not determined

but rather, we create for ourselves

Yoshitaka Amano

and while we can find beauty in the console of others,

no one else can guide us through, for

"While all old people have been young, no young people have been old,"

and

 "while you can describe your experience, you cannot confer it."

~Andrew Solomon, The Middle of Things

all we can do is

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, or books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

~Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

or, do as David Sedaris does, and

"prefer to believe that inside every television there lives a community of versatile, thumb-size actors trained to portray everything from a thoughtful newscaster to the wife of a millionaire stranded on a desert island. Fickle gnomes control the weather, and an air conditioner is powered by a team of squirrels, their cheeks packed with ice cubes."

~David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

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