Where the path cuts left, a black caterpillar was on the ground – on the move. It looked wooly and prickly and propelled itself with speed.
I picked up a dry leaf, and when the caterpillar climbed aboard, I carried the leaf to the safety of the grass and set it down at the base of a tree.
A man had stopped to watch me. When I straightened with a satisfied expression, the man was there, ready to pop my balloon. He pointed and said, They’re everywhere – but what he meant was, What’s the use?
And I saw that, ahead, caterpillars charged the path in mass, away from the trees, toward the busy road, all hellbent, it seemed, on the same obscure destination.
Who was I to tell them otherwise?
I thought of the traffic-directing hummingbird who likes to bully cars at the corner of Kirby and Bellwether. Stop! I could say to the runners, bikers, dog-walkers and stroller-pushers who rolled up. Watch your step!
But the man – this bald killjoy – was still watching me, and seemed to interpret my hesitation as interest in his sex.
Go on, I said to myself. I put one foot in front of the other.
I passed a person walking a small pig on a jeweled leash. When a jogger flew by, a drop of his sweat landed on my lip. Along an iron rail, a woman scraped shit from her shoe with a stick. In the path-people’s faces and postures were expressions of ownership and isolation – All of this is mine! – Get out of my way! – and as usual, I was thinking about what I wanted, too: silk trousers, calfskin mules, gold chains – geraniums in Gainey pots – nice cheese and a bottle of Lambrusco – a comfortable couch – a comfortable house – a comfortable life.
At the end of the path – or anyway, at the place where I typically turn around – a child-sized car, wheels askew, was abandoned. lvnlrg, said the car’s vanity plates.
Across the street, a man blasted spent white blossoms into massive dirt-plumes with the gas-powered blower strapped to his back.
The municipal trash bin smelled like a corpse.
The lake looked like a pewter platter.
When I returned to where the path cuts right, the crushed caterpillars were dirt-dulled and disfigured by the orange gut-bubbles that oozed from them. I stopped to look and was roughly shoulder-checked, without apology or acknowledgment, by a half-naked youth.
Then I spotted a lone figure, traveling. She was headed toward a patch of pigweed, which thrives in disturbed areas.
When fully extended, the caterpillar’s shape is that of the bold I – the first person – the mark of one who devours in order to transform herself.
Nicolaas Struyk, A Caterpillar and Two Moths on a Branch and Two Butterflies, early–mid eighteenth century
Featured image: Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, A Caterpillar, late seventeenth century
