musculature

you're talking about power. tara hunt is talking about power.

we all want to be powerful. to do stuff. to become.

yep. we are all caterpillars.

hungry ones.

a fork is not just a fork. it's the power to get those noodles from your plate to your mouth. my grandfather used to tease us, while we ate grandma's waffles in the mornings around her little round table (never with syrup. butter and jam yo.). he'd say "how come when you lift your arm up like that your mouth opens? every time? why does it do that? it's like you're a robot or something."

we looked at him funny. maybe we couldn't exactly explain why we opened our mouths at the right moment, but we knew why. we were just hungry little caterpillars.

a caterpillar doesn't need much to become a butterfly. nature takes care of it.

humans though... maybe we don't need much to grow up. nature takes care of us too. but we have such consciousness. that turns power into something complicated. we don't just chew on leaves and knit cocoons and end up flying around in the wind. we can think about flying. we can have motives for flying. we can see all the things we might do other than chew and knit and fly. we can tell stories. we can ask why.

so what do we need power for anyway? where do we find it?

we find it anywhere we can. we dig it out of the ground. we suck it out of the wind. we use it to make things happen.

and what if we don't want to be a butterfly?

power is choices. power is seeing more than one way to go about your life.

you can eat noodles with a fork or with chopsticks. alfredo or marinara. whichever. but once you've made the choice...

well, you can't exactly hold chopsticks the same way you would a fork. it all makes a difference. either way your mouth will open when you bring your hand to it.