caterpillars | reverse threading

August 6, 2024
by kerrisherwood11 1 Comment

consider the butterfly. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

a little summary of the 1972 picture book – hope for the flowers (trina paulus)

stripe, the caterpillar, after eating many leaves and crawling many crawls, was driven to climb a pillar of caterpillars he could see that stretched way, way high up into the clouds. it seemed an imperative – the thing every other caterpillar was doing. without question, he began to climb, stepping on other caterpillars in his zeal to get to the top of the pillar. he couldn’t see what was up there and he did not know where they were all going. he begins to wonder aloud. yellow, another caterpillar close by, agrees that she was also wondering, but that “no one else seems to worry about where we’re going so it must be good.” stripe needs to keep going and so he steps on yellow who is in his way in the caterpillar pillar, stating, “well, i guess it’s you or me.” he then crawls off and apologizes to her.

stripe and yellow continue climbing the pillar. but stripe is feeling bad and wonders, “how can i step on someone i’ve just talked to?” together – realizing that the pillar made no sense – they decide to climb off the caterpillar pillar and make a peaceful life together crawling and nibbling grass.

after a bit of time, it seemed that crawling and nibbling grass and hugging each other in a caterpillar sort of way was not quite enough, that there was more to life. stripe felt the call of the pillar once again and, leaving a reluctant yellow behind, went back to climb high, high, high with all the other lonely climbing caterpillars that had no idea of what was at the top.

yellow, desolate without stripe, wandered away from their home. she came upon a caterpillar spinning a cocoon and it spoke to her, telling her it was doing what was necessary to become a beautiful butterfly. it told her that “without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers.”

yellow could not believe that there was a butterfly inside of her, but the cocoon explained to her that she had to wish to fly with beautiful wings so much she need give up being a caterpillar. it explained that “life is changed, not taken away.” it explained that a cocoon is “an in-between house where the change takes place” and though “it will seem to anyone who might peek that nothing is happening…the butterfly is already becoming. it just takes time.”

and then it tells yellow that “once you are a butterfly, you can really love – the kind of love that makes new life.”

yellow chooses to spin a cocoon.

stripe – on the caterpillar pillar – determined to get to the top – watches the caterpillars squished at the top falling off to their deaths far below. he is ruthless, with the words “don’t blame me if you don’t succeed! it’s a tough life” at his lips for any caterpillar on the pillar who would complain. nearing the top he felt the pressure of the other caterpillars jammed in around him.

one day a beautiful yellow butterfly with eyes filled of love flew near him. “looking into the creature’s eyes he could hardly bear the love he saw there. he wanted to change, to make up for all the time he had refused to look at the other…the others stared at him as though he were mad.” and stripe realized that to get to the top he needed to fly, not climb, delighted to believe this possibility – that there was a butterfly inside of him.

stripe began to carefully descend the caterpillar pillar, looking each caterpillar in the eyes and whispering, “i’ve been up; there’s nothing there.” other caterpillars were shocked, refusing to listen, dedicated to blindly climbing. one asked, “don’t say it even if it’s true. what else can we do?” stripe answered, “we can fly! we can become butterflies! there’s nothing at the top and it doesn’t matter!”

the other caterpillars were not as convinced and it was a struggle to get down off the pillar. one “crawler sneered, ‘how could you swallow such a story? our life is earth and climbing. look at us worms! we couldn’t be butterflies inside. make the best of it and enjoy caterpillar living!”

stripe made his way to the bottom, exhausted, falling asleep.

and just as in every good story – yellow, the butterfly, flew to him and – with great love – helped him to spin his own cocoon and then waited. until one day stripe emerged as a beautiful butterfly, able to fly to the heavens and bring love to the flowers. 💛

the simple metal coneflower sculpture outside in the garden of the shop in the tiny town of stockholm on the river road invited me to walk to it. soldered slightly askew, it was the perfect flower for our ornamental grass garden right in the middle of our backyard, right next to the old bricks from the standing basketball hoop, right next to breck, our aspen tree. a permanent flower.

i could not help but think of this little book as i looked at this photograph. published in 1972, it is completely relevant in today’s world.

if you need a visual for kamala harris that is different than all the joy and positivity she is already offering our country, you might think of this story. she is a butterfly.

it is without a doubt the maga party is the caterpillar pillar, full of ruthless pillar climbers, of crushing pressure and no compassion, of nowhere to go, of no one asking questions, of no love.

it’s a clear choice, worthy of thoughtful consideration.

i choose the butterfly life, just like stripe and yellow.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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October 3, 2023
by kerrisherwood11 1 Comment

stripe and dot. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

and nature bent way down, furrowing her brow at her canvas. and then, after careful consideration, she took her paint pens to the swallowtail caterpillar and drew stripes – the lightest green, almost opalescent. thinking that wasn’t enough, she took out her most vibrant sunshine-yellow pen and polka-dotted in-between the stripes. she sat back and looked at her work, smiling. “yes,” she thought, “yes, this is right for the swallowtail.” she moved on to the other caterpillars waiting to get their colors.

it never ceases to amaze me what is quietly starring just in our backyard alone. when i opened the little gate to our potting stand, they took me by surprise. they stand out.

since i am a big fan of painting polka dots on rocks, i was instantly fond of the two caterpillars eating their way through the wild vegetation growing between the big flat rock-slabs on the ground. they made me think of children’s books and writing stories of two caterpillars out adventuring for the day, their obvious names “stripe” and “dot”.

i was careful not to disturb them as i tended the parsley and basil, snipping back the spindly ends. they stayed right there, not at all thrown off by my presence. i closed the gate and checked on them later. they had made little headway, maybe an inch or so. but caterpillars, so i surmise, are not in a hurry.

we think we are so brilliant, we humans. we study and research pantone matching systems and cmyk process charts. we bring home paint and fabric swatches. we mix paints on palettes thick with color.

and nature giggles – glancing at her caterpillars and butterflies, flowers and trees, canyons and mountains, sky and prairies, oceans and fishes, birds and rainbows and sunrises – knowing she will always have the upper hand. it comes naturally to her.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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July 16, 2021
by kerrisherwood11 1 Comment

fluid. with wings. [k.s. friday]

“when she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. they wanted her to change back into what she always had been. but she had wings.” (dean jackson)

“trust the wait. embrace the uncertainty. enjoy the beauty of becoming. when nothing is certain, anything is possible.” (mandy hale)

i had an IME on tuesday. an IME is an independent medical exam. it is a brief exam ordered by an insurance company and the physician is both chosen and paid for by that insurance company. it is defined as an independent assessment of an injury or illness, in my case, my wrist, and the determination by the doctor-chosen-and-paid-for-by-the-insurance-company-paying-for-treatment will be placed next to the reports of the medical hand specialist and the occupational therapist who have been treating me consistently for the last five months. a basic review of articles about IME reveals that the insurance-company-paying-for-treatment will pick the report they wish to concur with and that will decide if there is to be future, in this case, my future, treatment. so be it.

there is nothing to do now but wait.

my OT is wonderful. she has encouraged me, pushed me, held me accountable and she has brought me from twenty degrees of forward right wrist movement to fifty-five. this is big news, since, at first, six degrees was all i could muster. brutus and my OT have caused me much pain, but what’s that saying? no pain, no gain. we have worked hard. and, in the way of hard work and healing, there are things i can do now that i wasn’t able to do a few months ago. and there are things i fear i will never be able to do again. uncertainty.

there is nothing to do but wait.

sometimes i wonder what life will look like in a year or two years. i wonder what i will be doing. if i looked back a year i would never have guessed back then what this year would have looked like. no, last july looked very different than right now. it just suggests that truly everything is uncertain, that everything is in the act of becoming, in the middle of the fire, maybe everything is ashes transitioning to riches over and over again. possibility, evidenced in tomato plants bearing fruit on an old barnwood potting stand, evidenced in a nest-home created in a birdhouse hanging empty for years, evidenced in the smell of the rain bringing cool on a summer morning.

there are times, when you are simply going about your business, going about life, that you don’t expect change. you don’t expect to be thrust into ‘different’. times when you find out the caterpillars were talking about you all along. after reeling from the surprise, after trying to grab the wheel to stabilize, after railing about the unfairness of it all – for life does not seem to be fair, you find yourself out of the deep, dark water – in the shallows.

and in the shallows there is abundant life, abundant food, abundant shelter. in the shallows we can rest and nourish and breathe. we can sit in uncertainty and the unknown. we can imagine new. because anything IS possible.

there is nothing to wait for and everything to wait for. it’s now.

i’ve written here about transition before. and again. and again. and i suspect i will yet again.

because life, i am learning over and over, is one transition after another. fluid. with wings.

*****