Don't Even Say It

 I'm not going to say that I'm back.  Nope. I'm not even going to say that.  This blog, that I cherished for so many years, is limping along at best now and I recognize that.  I'd probably be better off just printing it out for my archive and closing it down. But I just can't do it. 

Back when I was doing the original Scrawlspace, it was almost a religious thing for me.  All day I'd be looking at my experience with an eye to the blog:  how I could spin things, what stood out as relatable or interesting.  I'd like to start looking at my world that way again. 

Working in city government does not have the same cache as working for a nationally recognized museum, to say the least. I'm no longer able to shore up any sagging parts of my self image with a glamorous job. Two years into this position and it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere else any time soon. Job hunting in your 50s is a whole different ball of wax. Especially as a woman, I think. I don't even get return emails on jobs I would definitely have at least gotten an interview for ten years ago. I've interviewed for jobs that never even called me back afterward. I think they take one look at me and see a woman ten years from retirement. Someone who is probably technologically behind and may need to be paid more than someone just out of school.  At least, that's what I've told myself when I've applied for jobs and not heard a response. 

So:  without my "career" to give me a sense of importance and usefulness, I look around for something else to sprinkle a little sunshine on my daily life. And blogging was one of those things. It's just about being motivated to keep my eyes open for some sense of wonder every day. 

My latest sense of wonder is not a new one. It's one I experience every year at this time. It's monarch butterflies.  

We raised three sets of caterpillars to raise in the Mayor's office this summer.  First there was a black swallowtail:  a green, black, and yellow monarch lookalike that made a strange greeny-brown chrysalis like a broken bit of twig that hung from a silken sling from a stick for 14 days before "eclosing" (that's the official term I learned for "emerging as a butterfly.")  as a gorgeous swallowtail.  

Then there were the two pipevine swallowtails, which look like giant, creepy centipedes with their fat black bodies and red spines.  These are really twisty, active caterpillars that go on a day-long walkabout right before they pupate. I spent a lot of the day before the first one pupated plucking the traveling 'pillar off my desktop, my computer screen, the edge of my keyboard, out of my pencil cup, etc., and putting it back into the punch bowl we were keeping them in.  Finally I stapled it, punchbowl and all, into a mesh recycling bag for the night so it couldn't wander off and get lost.  In the morning we discovered its brown, spiky chrysalis that looked like a crumpled brown leaf.  The next day the second pillar went walkabout, and in the morning that one had formed a similar chrysalis, clinging to the glass wall of the punchbowl. 

This one emerged (excuse me, eclosed) as a gorgeous, glossy blue-black butterfly with irridescent blue hind wings. Breathtaking in the sunlight. 

The second one, however, has yet to emerge.  Turns out, some pipevine swallowtails overwinter in their pupal stage.  And some remain dormant for much longer:  a year, three years, five years, even SEVEN YEARS.  So this guy could be hanging with us for quite some time.  They say you can simply refrigerate the pupa through the cold months and then bring it back out again in the spring to see if it will eclose.  I imagine the Mayor's office staff dragging this little brown capsule out of the employee kitchen fridge every April for the next seven years...

Our latest caterpillar, however, is a monarch, the Queen of autumn butterflies. This little cutie, in its striped pajamas and adorable black antennae, recently pupated into this beautiful, delicate jewel of a chrysalis:  a jade and gold marvel that looks as if it belongs on a Christmas tree.  

What on earth can be the evolutionary advantage of such a gorgeous chrysalis?  That looks like actual gold on there.  How can this be?  Sure, it's sort of camouflaged if left in a green, leafy spot.  But a lot of things are getting pretty brown around now, so it has the potential to stand out: the opposite of what evolutionary common sense says it should do. To say nothing of all that bling. It's one of those things that shows you how sometimes nature just likes to dress up for no reason at all.  Beauty for its own sake. 

I believe this generation of monarchs: those that emerge this late in the fall, are among the ones who make their mind-blowing migration to Mexico for the winter. That place:  Michoacan, in the Sierra Madre mountains, is one of the places at the top of my bucket list to visit someday.  That and the little pub in the little town in Ireland where Shane MacGowan of the Pogues goes to drink.