catatonic chrysalis 🪲
the tapestry is unfinished
this is a manifesto
this is the truth. the butterfly life cycle involves four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. the metamorphosis occurs during its pupa stage. during this transformative period, the caterpillar’s old body dies and a new one is born. this occurs within a protective shell called a chrysalis. the caterpillar spins the chrysalis around itself with silk. it can be of many colors, soft or hard, solid or web-like, see-through even. chrysalises hang in concealed, safe locations–on the undersides of little branches; leaves.
contrary to popular belief, caterpillars do not rest at all within their chrysalises. in fact, they are in a state of rapid, hyperactive transformation. it’s quite gory, actually. within its iridescent bubble, the caterpillar’s body digests itself from the inside out. the same juices that once nourished the caterpillar as a larva turn on its physical being completely. the caterpillar begins consuming its own flesh, cell by cell, until it melts from its once solid form into GOO. liquidized!
the explosion juice breaks down the caterpillar’s old body cells into imaginal cells. they are undifferentiated, meaning they can become anything. blank slates. these imaginal (imagination!) cells are the building blocks of the caterpillar’s new body. they rearrange themselves into a new physical form–the butterfly–through histogenesis 1 (the formation of new tissue from undifferentiated cells). caterpillars/butterflies are holometabolous 2, meaning they undergo complete transformation.
i return to this creation metaphor 3 again and again and again.
glossary
1 histo: relating to organic tissue, genesis: the origin or coming into being of something; histogenesis: materializing from the goo/elements into an alive being, fleshweaving
2 holo: whole/complete, metabole: change, meta: beyond; holometabolous: all-encompassing transformation towards the Beyond
3 meta: beyond, phor: bearer/agent/producer-of-specified-thing; metaphor: weaver of Beyond
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some sounds for u that felt vaguely relevant
octavia butler says GOD IS CHANGE. her book, parable of the sower, took place in the year 2024. we’ve entered the year 2024. this is her poem ‘earthseed’
A PRAYER FOR THE NEW MOON:
we will be touched, we’ll touch others. our cells will die and they will be reborn our eyelashes will fall and they will regrow blurry. we’ll plant seeds in our stomachs. we’ll let the roots grow through our intestines they’ll poke holes and the acid will drip out the explosion juice will eat our organs we will MELT. our intestines will be un-twisted from their redspools, they’ll be unstrung; we’ll wrap them round our necks and we’ll tie them on fate looms. we’ll go [down and up and down and up] we’ll fleshweave our tapestries from the Goo of our own bodies; from our catatonic elements. إن شاء الله Ameen.
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the nervous brain-system in your body is electric. it short circuits. it’s made of strings; just tied to one another (synapses communicate through zaps).
we’re weaving our tapestries out of conductive wires and unwound guts. our fingers get electric shocked. they’re red from the fatestrings
blood flows in our bodies’ red strings. human blood is metal, it’s iron; it’s oxygenated sustenance and it signifies death. iron’s forged in two thousand five hundred degrees.
iron turns to GOO before becoming, goo like the core of a chrysalis, goo like guts and God’s man-clay. it’s glowing and it’s melted. it bubbles [up up] hot like molten-rock lava before an ancient eruption.
we shape iron when it’s liquid. we hammer [down up down] till our hands burn and they sweat and they bleed and we pour into Inferno.
after it’s smithed in black, the red goo becomes an object. shiny and solid. you can hold it heavy in your hand. maybe it’s a vase for waterkeeping. maybe it’s a sword for bloodspilling. either way, its surface is mirrored.
change is VIOLENT! the placenta eats the mother’s body. boil hot for purification. pressure for diamonds. blood for revolution. muscles rip for growth. hearts rip open for surgery. life sucks and it’s fucking beautiful. the world sucks and it’s fucking beautiful. GOD IS CHANGE (does it make sense yet?)
this was my year of self-destruction. the liquid that sustained me in my old life began consuming my body whole. i broke down into my elements. i wrapped my face in cellophane to keep the fire in. the grass burnt anyways. it was silent. and then, from the soil of my radioactive wasteland, a glowing bud emerged. i rewound my DNA [down down down]. imagined a forest made of light [up and upwards].
FILM: Annihilation (2018), dir. Alex Garland
gorgeous sci-fi horror movie about five women in an iridescent alien prism. “Lena, a biologist and former soldier, joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X -- a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.”
a movie about cancer cells and self-destruction, refraction, weaving something new and the GORY fucking process of creating yourself. the alien bubble serves as a metaphor for the chrysalis we all enter when we are spiraling, ripping ourselves apart. as the women discover, this process refracts everything into a million base colors. strange, beautiful things can be rebuilt from the refractions, from reframing things and combining them in new ways. but if we allow this refraction to break us completely—we get destroyed, like most of the women in the movie do. if we face ourselves truly, look in our own warped reflection like Lena does, and gain the courage to be at peace with our selves (forgive instead of fighting)—we can make it out of the chrysalis transformed. i have so much more i wanna say about this movie but i don’t wanna ruin it totally, so go watch it!!
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i believe fungi are far more intelligent than humans and have devised a way to communicate their lessons to us through visions. these visions are effective because (like the alien prism) they refract all the colors and materials in our minds that we’d been using to build our former perceptions of reality. they undo the tapestry into a million jumbled up strings—we’re finally able to see where everything is coming from, and re-weave our minds in new ways from our own base elements. the pieces are all there.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOLOMETABOLIZING (P1):
recognize that there must be a change. you’re ready
remove yourself from the external whiplash. find somewhere safe to weave your chrysalis. be internal, be really with yourself.
take a pause.
unwind to your base elements. what made you who you are? what formed your interests, what did you always love and why, where did your trauma stem from? are the digestive juices you synthesized to sustain yourself as a child still nourishing you, or are they eating you alive now?
after going back and figuring out how you got here—what, of those things, is most important to hold onto? what do you need to let go of?
allow yourself to turn to goo: purge and mourn.
now that the pieces that needed to go are gone, and everything has been refracted, begin forging a new body from what you’ve learned + the elements of you that are most important. expand on the soulfeeding things you may have lost touch with. grow your love in the areas that matter—solder your molten imaginal cells together with new visions. [histogenesis: rechannel, respin. (i don’t know how yet)]
slowly rip a hole through your iridescent bubble. stretch your wet wings and feel the weight of your new form through every crevice of your senses. flutter yourself heavy a couple times. maybe fall into the wind. breathe in.
fly [up down up down up…] towards Beyond. until the beating of your wings finally matches the pulse of it all. (سکون/sukoon/a deep peace)
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larva (caterpillar): your childhood / pupa (chrysalis): adolescence through most of your adulthood / adult (butterfly): probably after middle age, or something. a caterpillar is in its chrysalis for about the same amount of time as it lives as a butterfly.
an entry portal, into the night of 1/2/23 as i’m writing all this
i’m in my aunt’s old bed in my grandparent’s house right now. new year’s eve was the wedding night. they danced with colored lights and they weren’t supposed to. i wasn’t supposed to so i just watched them. i cried four times. once alone then with my mother then with my cousins then alone again. we spoke till five in the morning. my little sister got food poisoning and threw up till seven. today i cried about miiti saunf (colorful sweet fennel seeds). my grandfather showed me a massive family tree, two books on my great-great uncles who were revolutionaries, and one on my great-great grandfather who was a poet. he wrote about God. yesterday i had an adventure with my long-lost bestfriend from the first grade. we were on a scavenger hunt for the georgetown lights. we found each other and old fairylit pieces of ourselves. it was january 1 it was a ghost town and the metro closed our dads picked us up from the city. i rode the metro by myself to the art museum in new york, ate a cortisol bagel, then got lonely and met my mom in the harry potter store. i keep getting forcefed soulfood here. i guess i’m still growing. i drank three cups of chai with my grandfather. my insides are pretty full. i had three pieces of nicotine gum. i’m quitting for God like my grandfather. he showed me his calligraphy. my grandma gave me her jewelry and a shawl for the cold. i didn’t wear it and my hands went numb. i couldn’t hold my pen so good. and everybody says: mano i remember you when you were thiiiis big, do you still make so much art like you used to?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR نئے سال کے لئے ہدایات
wear bright colors (dye on saris, tulips in your old backyard, rave lights)
dance violent in crowds until your legs give out and your head starts rolling
never go more than 3 days without praying (pray at least once in the nighttime)
carry 4 colored pencils in the front pocket of your backpack
doodle often and without thinking, even a little
write physical-media love letters to friends. create small trinkets to give as gifts
always order something you haven’t ever heard of from the menu
arm yourself with vanilla musk and black surma; amla oil your hair
cry
eat fruits piece by piece. breathe up, breathe down…
collect rocks (and other interesting objects that you can hold in your hand)
never don’t care. love freely
i'm late but I LOVVEEE THIS!!
amani this is amazing i’m flabbergasted