Metaphor
Caterpillars have 12 eyelets known as stemmata which can perceive only light and dark, I read. They’re guided not by sight but mostly by taste, which tells a caterpillar whether the plant it has just taken a bite of has the nutrients it needs. A hatched larvae’s imperative is to eat and grow, eat and grow and eat until it can grow no more. When its body is the largest it can be the caterpillar anchors itself to the underside of a stable surface where its outer skin hardens into a chrysalis. Once sealed inside its own skin the caterpillar secretes enzymes and digests itself into goo.
Further to this transmutation story, the “contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess”, writes Ferris Jabr in 2012. “Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. …Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, [compound] eyes, genitals and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth.”
What a wonder. From egg to caterpillar to digested plant protein goo. Specialized cells resistant to enzymes then organize and re-structure the goo into a butterfly that can cross the North American continent (twice, if it’s a Monarch). This is also how honeybees and fruitflies come to be (any insect that has a larval stage).
In an educational metaphor from an article by Luiz Villazon for BBC Science Focus, we learn more. When they first become active in the pupa, imaginal cells are attacked by the once-caterpillar’s immune system which perceives them as invaders, but thankfully and “eventually the imaginal cells overwhelm the dwindling caterpillar cells and begin to use the raw materials around them to assemble new butterfly structures…”
Attack, invade, overwhelm…I’m wondering about the use of war terms to describe transmutation. So the process is like a coup, or a mutiny? Ah, like human pregnancy as a hostile parasitic take-over of a host body, after which said parasite commands the host’s every action from gestation until birth and beyond. Partly true, but missing the point rather. Let’s correct. Imaginal cells are not invaders, they have always been part of the caterpillar, agents of self-change.
Metaphor in macro. Let’s say our human collective is one enormous caterpillar made of billions of individual people cells. We eat and grow, eat and grow incessantly. Let’s say several big things happen all at once, like compounded climate / financial / food / shipping crises and maybe a global pandemic, crises big enough to dissolve all of our unsustainable growth structures … into goo. Which humans are most likely to step in as imaginal cells to re-form us into something interrelated with other living beings, and sustainable?
Here’s my list, so far: Biologists who write poetically about relational systems, yes (Suzanne Simard, David George Haskell, James Bridle, many others). Indigenous wisdom keepers (Robin Wall-Kimmerer, many many others), many many small scale organic farmers, gardeners and local food co-operatives. Fixers of things, storytellers who know the old tales, artists who are master problem solvers. Builders of practical things; humans who understand and respect water. People who have survived in a refugee camp by supporting each other. You and all the humans on your list of quiet, patient change-makers, because you’ve asked yourself this question.
None listed above could be referred to as invaders, though many are indeed attacked. I wonder, though, if instead of war language, we chose collaborative, relational terms to describe change, might this help to ease the fear of change? Could we give our human ‘imaginal cells’ agency to do and be as they are as things shift for us all?
A final, micro metaphor. I have ten canvases close to completion in my studio, two books of image and story almost ready to be sewn. I’ve been working on these since the month before Mom died, by her choice, in January 2022. All through the shock and gut-wrench of that experience I’ve been a caterpillar, hungry for knowledge about trees, the history and use of their pigments, their interrelatedness.
I learn how to make ink from berries and bark, heartwood and sawdust, how some colours fade quickly, how some dominate and refuse to combine with others. I make colour charts and record the change in chroma over eighteen months, fail many paintings because this new, living media from living trees is different than anything I’ve ever worked with. These colours are alive in themselves; I am in collaboration with sequoia, apple, buckthorn, logwood, brazilwood, osage….
Further-to, let’s call the walls of my studio the pupa I’ve sealed around myself, conscious that I am quite profoundly altered by these two-plus years spent in a circus of grief. Let’s call this profound vulnerability I feel over my Tree Time show a release of digestive enzymes, and my rich understanding of trees, this new confounding medium, and all of my many scrapped designs for the new work the plant protein I’ve consumed over timeless months of fog, grief and study. Once-Me is no longer; I am goo. Send me love please, and wish me well. It’s taking a great deal of trust to let this be what it will be.
Tree Time opens like a chrysalis one month from now, at Cotton Factory’s Doors Open weekend. That just happens to be how long it takes a monarch caterpillar to digest then re-imagine itself into a butterfly.
Tree Time is a show of paintings, stories and bookworks that will run from Saturday May 4 through to Sunday May 19 in my studio. Awkwardly and sideways through much fog I’ve come from an exploration of my mom’s passing and these tree colours to this point where I feel some kind of a statement can be made. Something about our perception of time and loss as entirely subjective – trees will tell you that neither time nor loss exist at all. Change, though, is very real. Change is constant. I hope this new work will express some part of that.
You are hereby invited.
Contact info: email: keira@keiramcarthur.ca Instagram: Keira McArthur
Where: Storehouse 242, The Cotton Factory, 270 Sherman Ave North, Hamilton.
Park in the back lot, come in via the side door to the low building on the north side.
When:
Saturday May 4, 10am to 4pm (Doors Open at Cotton Factory)
Sunday May 5, 11am to 4pm (Doors Open)
Saturday May 11, 10am to 4pm (by appointment – email to book, or message me on Insta)
Thursday May 16, 7pm to 9pm (closing reception for Boudoir, a marvelous show also in the Storehouse)
Saturday May 18th, 10 am to 4pm (by appointment – email to book, or message me on Insta)