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Naturalist

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Author Topic: Naturalist  (Read 362 times)
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guest88
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« on: Jan 18, 2020 05:20 am »

Entomology


Maria Sybilla Merian, April 2nd 1647-January 13th 1717



Quote
There was a way of beholding nature
that was like a form of prayer.
When she painted a caterpillar,
she limned the whole bracing saga of its life
from birth, instars, and metamorphosis
to the plants it gorged on
and the predators who stalked,
ambushed and gobbled it.
Balancing the mingled dramas
on one toothy page of vellum,
she by the bye bore witness
to feats of nature both outlandish
and ordinary, such as maggots
hatching freely from eggs
like many living things,
not from dead flesh or dust,
without cause or coupling,
in a mysterious brew
of spontaneous generation.

She chose to reveal the smallest,
most despised creatures on earth as divine works of nature,
and without cant or vanity tag them not in Latin,
the scholar's language and lingua franca of elite circles,
but colloquially, in the colorful cant of street talk,
inviting men, women,experts and workaday people
alike to join her in putting aside the mask of habit,
the hostile omens of superstition,
any disgust they might harbor about vermin,
or fable that bugs toil as Satan's minions,
and peer in wonder at the visible but unseen life all around them,
dining, sparring, molting, mating,
in a mad frenzy of war and survival—
worlds unseen because unnoticed,
not because, as piety taught,God purposely hid them from view.
Here is a caterpillar's eye, her paintings said,
look how cleverly it's designed!
Here is a spider's toe with tiny hairs.
Can you imagine how they tread?Here is time elapsing inside a chrysalis,where caterpillar becomes butterfly,
shape-shifting with infinite gradualness
from one unlikely form to another,
its behavior and purpose radically changed.
Come closer, I will show you.
"Maria Sibylla Merian, January 1670" in Scientific American January 2020
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guest88
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« Reply #1 on: Apr 10, 2020 06:06 am »

by Chris Corrigan

Quote
Chrysalises both inspire and baffle me. The thought that a caterpillar can crawl into a sac made of its own body and dissolve its form and come out as a butterfly is a cliched image of transformation, but holy rubbish. Stop for a moment and really think about that. Does the caterpillar know this is going to happen? If it does that shows some tremendous trust. If it doesn't, then that shows some incredible courage. It just hangs out there, isolating itself from the rest of the world and changing in ways it can never understand.

Does a caterpillar see a butterfly and go "that will be me one day?"
https://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?op=audio&tid=2413

This article left me with a feeling of wonder, reminding me that we don't know the next stages in life, that we might be completely changed into something else... but that doesn't stop the process of metamorphosis... all the meanwhile, thinking that, those things we thought we had to strive for or, those things we gave some importance to, or felt some regret towards- lingering emotions over passing moments... all that will fall away as we follow the natural course of our lives, unfolding the blueprint of our own transformations.

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."
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« Reply #2 on: Apr 16, 2020 12:03 am »

by Chris Corrigan

Quote
Chrysalises both inspire and baffle me. The thought that a caterpillar can crawl into a sac made of its own body and dissolve its form and come out as a butterfly is a cliched image of transformation, but holy rubbish. Stop for a moment and really think about that. Does the caterpillar know this is going to happen? If it does that shows some tremendous trust. If it doesn't, then that shows some incredible courage. It just hangs out there, isolating itself from the rest of the world and changing in ways it can never understand.

Does a caterpillar see a butterfly and go "that will be me one day?"
https://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?op=audio&tid=2413

This article left me with a feeling of wonder, reminding me that we don't know the next stages in life, that we might be completely changed into something else... but that doesn't stop the process of metamorphosis... all the meanwhile, thinking that, those things we thought we had to strive for or, those things we gave some importance to, or felt some regret towards- lingering emotions over passing moments... all that will fall away as we follow the natural course of our lives, unfolding the blueprint of our own transformations.

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."


Wow!
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