Caterpillar AND Butterfly
Today and the last week’s AND has been a thinking about Caterpillar AND Butterfly.
Background: I have been playing with the word "AND" for almost a year now. It seems to be the nicest (re-)addition to my vocaluarly, where possible replacing But. For example, what if we centralized AND decentralized the banking sector? That is great and what about this? Why can’t there be two great programs that work? I can have my belief and they can have theirs? There is more than one way to say something? … And so forth… Feel free to try it.
Action: Replace "but" with "AND"…
And back to Caterpillar and Butterfly.
As Fionnuala reminded me, "We have to see in the world around us that it is possible for the butterfly to emerge from the caterpillar—that, in fact, the butterfly has always been present within the energy field of the caterpillar."
There is a metaphysical and physical opportunity that AND affords us here. Butterflies are often associated with fairy tales and little girls, AND with hard rational Science – biology, and chaos theory and the butterfly effect. And there is the caterpillar who spins and views and enters/participates in the chrysalis – the chrystalization process so inherent in gaining clarity…
This was a huge AND image for me. That in a butterfly is a caterpillar and around a caterpiller is a butterfly. That both are present, and all the stages between, at all times…we just only see one part of the lifecycle…yet all stages exist as possible. And somewhere on the earth a butterfly / caterpillar is involved in all the stages at the same time as the one stage that presents to where you are – afterall, we live in different time zones and seasons…my friends in Australia get to see butterflies emerge from cocoons as I see them spinning them.
It also makes me reflect on the caterpillar: that is it the Caterpillar who weaves the thread, NOT the flying butterfly who spreads the word drops the eggs and let’s the cycle continue again…to be alive means to be all these things: eating / nourishing ourselves, weaving and connecting, building a home, taking internal/personal time to develop, and reconnect, and emerge refreshed and with wings, ready to fly, mate and re-seed…
That to be fully alive and happy and joyous as adults we need to be in all the stages of emergence: – from egg –> flight at all times. Afterall, we as living things, and nature itself, is doing this internally: In our bodies each second cells are continously being born while others mature while others reproduce while others die. All at the same time.
Happy "AND-ing" – butterfly and caterpiller or wherever else you find it speaks to you.
Below please enjoy a re-post I wrote a while ago: Also be a Caterpillar. And below that you will find a quote on butterflies. "In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."– Al Rogers …The thought that is emerging: perhaps at any one point it is healthy to be in all stages of emergence…from caterpiller to a flying butterfly: Keeping us young and fresh on one side, and flying, experienced and, presumably, employed, on the other… In the very least it helps us play easily with everpresent change! –A though the next day: I am now wondering: what if this starting something new gives us permission we rarely take as adults – to be bad at something, to not be perfect, to make mistakes and stumble…"
Also Be A Butterfly
"Adding butterflies to your life is like adding another dimension. The air trembles with the movement of wings. The approach of a White Admiral. The aerial dance of sulphurs. A Painted Lady. A Black Satyr. All this existed before, has always existed, but you were unaware. You didn’t see. At various times and places, in winter, or on a busy street. The air is still and butterflies are impossible. Yet their presence remains, like one of those other ten dimensions. You’ve added this to your life." – Sharman Apt Russell – An obsession with butterflies You may also like to read the poem I have added in the comments section
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November 16th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
A Poem I wrote to a friend iMarch 29th 2005
“we are storytelling animals … do we create the story or reasonate with it?” asks apt russell – ‘an obsession with butterflies’.
a delicious tale – of colour and vine, rhythm and …
of spectacular metamorphasis that is rarer than I thought…so many things can prevent the metamorphasis. for most caterpillers stay just that. dying before they become butterflies.
yet sometimes…
often enough because even the fools ‘have seen them with their own eyes’ so they must be true…
the butterfly emerges…
did you know that amongst entomologists:
nabokov is synonymous with lepidoptera not loltia
rotheschild’s trade in insects not notes
there is a history we have yet to learn
a language we have yet to understand
there is a belief butterflies could be a human souls
they tell of walls of holocaust camps
with butterflies engraved
or en-chalked or en-poemed.
though not the honeybee,
the butterfly has a sophistcated learning ability
and a good memory.
and the smartest butterfly sups the passion vine
Not only the butterfly is beautiful
- it has many lessons and answers to share.
no wonder so many are following the butterfly!
a butterfly mleody is unfolding…
here is its start, or middle,
end, or a soliloquy.
a butterfly melody – tragedy and its antonym
small egg, dropped
dapple the back of leaf.
or clustered on its front.
dropped small egg.
small egg beware
there be dragons.
death walks by your youth
birds and wasps.
endangered small egg
beware speckled caterpiller.
speckled caterpiller sup sup sup
survive against the odds
even with cunning tricks
of mutualism with ants and plants
of masks and acids
and toxins and acrid scents
of stripes and colours
and spinning thread
luck be with you
survive by passion vine.
passion vine supping –
the heliconious do.
genuis of the genus
live longer, learn faster.
sophisticated elegant.
the passion approach to metamorphasis
metamorphasis too flutters by
so shake and beat your wings
take flight and live by the passion vine
dance, learn, mate and be.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:25 am
Additional element / key clarification:
thanks to conversation with Josh – the revolution thjat we are looking for here is to be REMINDED of what we always knew… as humans we are storytelling animals…and storytelling, in its true form has always been a MULTIMEDIA EXPERIENCE!!!!!
we need to remember that and start thinking of the various ways to use differnt forms of media in each opportunity – whether combining visuals and sound to a journal article, a dalogue faciltiated circle(s) at conferences, open space around the water hole/tea-coffee cart in betweeen meetings and so forth…and spaces that encourage this
it is about bringing back ancient practices and seeing them with all the layers and possiblities they always had – the butterfly they always were – with the now timely advent of technology that makes those possibilities visable…thanks Josh and Edgers for sllowing/reinforcing my making story and storytelling my work
February 15th, 2007 at 2:03 am
Excellent, love it!