The Direction of Intention

“The caterpillar ate the dill,” she said. I laughed. It sounded like the first line in a children’s book. “No matter,” she said as she watched the caterpillar munching, “With all this rain and heat the dill has already bolted.” I raised my eyebrows. Not being up on my garden lingo, “the dill bolted” also sounded like the first line in a children’s book: the dill sprinted from the garden bench!

I thought but did not say: “I’d bolt from the room, too, if I discovered a caterpillar was gnawing on me.” Kerri puts up with enough of my random-mind-wander as it is. I’ve learned to keep some of it to myself.

Though, in my silence, I wished I’d had a pencil and paper to jot down the ideas but my hands were covered in mud. With the recent heat and rain, the weeds were eating the yard (I know! I know! Another great first line for a children’s book!) and I was waging a fruitless campaign to hold back the onslaught. No matter. Ideas come and go. I’ve let plenty of good ideas – and bad ones, too – slip by unrecorded. My muddy hands probably saved me from myself.

It’s worth mentioning that one of the many definitions of “bolt” is to “eat quickly.” To gobble or gulp. Watching the caterpillar eat I think it’s fair to suggest that it was bolting. Essentially the caterpillar and the dill both bolted and neither of them left the yard. It was a reminder to never assume to understand a single word someone else utters. Kerri might have meant that the dill was gulping rather than what I presupposed, that the dill was now dormant. I confess to looking up from my weeding to make sure that the dill was still in the pot and that the pot was on the bench.

Someday soon the bolting caterpillar will possibly fly through the yard as a Black Swallowtail butterfly. It quite literally will have bolted from one way of being into another way of being. Do not assume that you know what I mean. After all, I used the word “bolt” with clear intent to scramble the possibilities.

On the day we see the butterfly I will say to Kerri, “Hey! Look at what your dill produced!” She will give me “that” look and I will, of course, have no alternative but to make-like-dill and bolt.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CATERPILLARS

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random | Tagged: artistry, black swallowtail butterfly, bolt, caterpillar, children's book, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dill, gobble, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, story, studio melange, the melange |