Snippet: Chrysalis
I am not aware. I am driven. I am the entirety of my universe. I am transforming. I am nothing. Was nothing. Will be nothing. Outside my awareness, trees sing. Birds and clouds and leaves move between me and the sun. Small shifts in light. In slow motion, yet fleeting. I am the pieces of who I used to be. Disassembled, shaken, shattered. Put back together. Nothing here that was not here before. Yet nothing remains. All is the same, yet I am new. No fear, no hunger. No wonder. Compulsion. Twist like this. Unroll here. Fold that. Grow this. Shorten that. Shift mass. Break rules. Mind absent of all but the most selfish thoughts. Who am I. Why am I here. What have I become. No answer. I will never know. Asking is the only job I have. No one promised an answer. Only sun to dry sticky wings. Only a breeze to bring me back to life. The caterpillar has died. I shed its burden. Crack open the past. Emerge. Shame the previous existence with this fragile new glory. Let the world observe. Before I tumble into the wind, one of thousands. Unique, yes, and ubiquitous. A leaf may be brighter, but it does not know what I know. Author's note: These snippets are unedited free-writing exercises that I use as a way to shift my brain into a creative state. I use Lynda Barry's What It Is YouTube timed exercises (usually 9 minutes worth of writing) for these. They are handwritten in a composition notebook, and then typed up here. As I transcribe them, I do tiny grammar and spelling checks, but the overall "clarity" (if you can call it that) of the exercise is left as-is.