Meditations on the Worm

[altered]

I am a small, soft bodied creature, gross and peristaltic. I move slowly and try to remain undetected.

This does not mean I am powerless.

All of us have witnessed someone become utterly paralyzed by flies, worms, spiders.

There is a strength in vulnerability, sliminess, crawling. It paralyzes your foes, and galvanizes your allies.

Your secret weakness becomes indifference. Those who hate you fear you and can’t come near you. Those who love you protect you.

Those who do not care see something to step on.

Of course, even that becomes reduced if you have teeth and can bite. As the saying goes, even a worm turns.

If you can’t leave them in awe of you, sometimes making them disgusted by you is enough. And if not, it helps to be able to utterly destroy them in an instant.



This is only the first part of a series. I don’t know if it will be two parts or 15, but I have more coming.

[altered]

I am not likely to be the top or the bottom of my local food chain. My form may vary. I have foes and friends, but all of them understand the world I live in.

It is not your world.

You cannot know these secrets. I dwell in a stranger land than you can imagine, and my day to day life would be incomprehensible to you. If you see me, it is as a shadow behind your reflection. Of course, unlike the usual use of this trope, I do not dwell in higher, rarified spheres.

I swim beneath.

There is power in this. No matter whether they are gods, kings or paupers, they are blind to the world I am a part of. They cannot intervene, and they cannot watch. I dwell in a stratum separate from theirs, and their castes mean nothing to me. We have our own pecking order, and no matter my place in it, you do not belong.

My weakness is the reverse truth: I have no place in their world and am not part of their order. Whatever my status in my lands, it means nothing above the waters.

But a good bluff can sometimes make a stranger king in a strange land.

If you cannot make yourself understood, it can be enough to make yourself incomprehensible instead. If that doesn’t help, lying boldly can do the trick.


I have even more. This might be a whole THING.

[altered]

I am fast. I have fifty legs, and I fit in the cracks. My fangs are my hands: I envenomate what I grab.

My touch is poison.

I am larger than you expected, and you might wonder how long I have slept, curled inside the banister. You wonder if I have heard your knocking, your footsteps. And then I am gone, an eyeblink, and you lose sleep over my unknown whereabouts.

You should. My touch is poison and I am hungry. It is true that you are larger than me, but I am long and thin and armored. And, need I remind you: I am fast.

The saying goes, walk softly and carry a big stick. But I sprint and carry knives dipped in acid. I am shock and awe, I am a bolt of lightning in negative, a black streak on the retina and then gone.

I do not need to bite. My appearance is enough to terrify my enemies.

But I do not have friends. I kill what I touch.

If you cannot make friends, sometimes it is enough to be terrifying and lie in wait. Respect comes in many forms.

[altered]

I am massive. Their stories speak of me like a small, cute thing, but I am a grotesquerie made manifest. My face is a mockery of theirs: dumb, compliant, silly.

They laugh as I feast on offal and dung, and they consider me ripe for harvest.

But I am of an older bloodline. My ancestors were so feared that they built new weapons to kill them, because ordinary weapons were not enough. I am a rolling boulder and if I begin moving, I will crush what is before me.

For now, they follow my whims. They are torn between memories of the small thing they once loved and the lump, large as a car, that now stands before them. They do not know that anything is amiss, and they keep me sated.

When I scream, they will know the time has come.

There is no shame in accepting what you are given. If you do so blindly, however, you will be easily led into a trap. It can be enough to be larger and more powerful than them... but this is rarely the case.

It does not hurt, though.

[Fujikoma]

It is better to be loved than feared. But if you cannot be loved, you must be feared.

I have had enough of being feared. It's easy, unfortunately, it drives people away, given that I am an alpha male. That is why I have made significant changes. I will nest in your guts and partake of your feast, but never enough for you to notice something is wrong. I will hug your insides tenderly, and whisper sweet nothings from your bumhole. And when you take a dump you will spread my warm, wholesome offspring far and wide, to take up new hosts who will, too, feel our affection and gratitude, as we remove that naughty nutrition from their misguided food binges.

[altered]

You’re getting the wrong message.

[Fujikoma]

Possibly. Anyway, enjoying your ranting, please continue.

[altered]

I am small. I am smaller than you can truly understand when you see my photos. I am slow, fat, and my limbs are puffy, unwieldy, ending in hooks.

But you cannot destroy me.

Many have tried. Radiation, vacuum, heat and cold. All have failed. You aren’t worth the least of these. If they have failed to make me yield, what hope do you have?

I do not feel the burns, and the arrows bounce off my soft flesh, impenetrable and gelatinous. And when the bombs drop, I will remain, ungainly but unconquered.

A life is full of damage to bear. Accepting the wounds will see you brought low. But if you can harden yourself and become impervious until you can heal, it can be enough. This has its own risks, but nothing in life is without them.

[altered]

I am small. I am covered in parasites. I live in darkness. I fly high above the others. My home is slick with filth.

I am never alone.

This is not the strength one finds in numbers, or the power of love. This is a support network. A crowd to return to day after day, complain to, find comfort in.

When they come for us, we scatter. We scatter so that all of us have a greater chance than any single one of us alone.

When we hunt, we fly near each other. We illuminate the landscape for each other. We warn each other. Sometimes, we get each other sick, and we die in our thousands.

But we are never alone.

Something small and fragile may find safety in disgust. But being an object of ridicule wears one down like the ocean eats at the shores. Having a community that appreciates you can be enough.

Failing that, there is a small but warm comfort in not dying alone. That should never be enough, but sometimes there is nothing else.

[altered]

I shopped these around to some coworkers and realized they do need some context.

These aren’t general life advice. These are “oh god what do I do oh shit oh fuck” life advice.

If you’re in a corner and you aren’t certain, these are snippets to fall back on.

They should NEVER be goals to try to attain.

There will be some for that, but they are for much much later. For now, these are best-case failure modes. Back to the wall, confused and lost, these are pillars to cling to.

When the earth calms, try walking on your own two legs instead.

[Doktor Howl]

You are your own pillar, until you decide someone else is.

That's usually a HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE, unless that person means more to you than YOU do, and - and this is the crucial bit - that person feels the same way.  Then it's fucking awesome.

But there's no way to know unless you try it with said person.  KNOWING that 9/10 it's going to be a horrible train wreck.  But that's OKAY, because when you DO find it, it is in fact worth the 3rd degree burns you got finding that person (or persons).  This does not have to be, but usually is, a romantic interest.

And the simple fact of the matter is, without an external anchor, you're always going to bounce along in the rapids, so to speak.  No matter what your financial and/or security status is. 

Humans can't be sane without human involvement.  It's a design flaw.

[altered]

That’s why these are emergency situations only and should not be relied on for any length of time.

I have things for that in the works, but again, they’re much further away. Right now there’s a thing I’m building, and it’s for when there is nothing left to hold onto and you don’t know what to do.

It’s a mnemonic of sorts. What animal thrives here? What animal does what I NEED?

If you are worried about being manipulated by those who give you gifts and help, perhaps consider the pig. If you need to get that fucking weird guy the fuck away from your house, the centipede may be worth emulating. A young queer in hostile territory who can’t hide might follow the example of the worm or the fish in tense moments, depending on context.

But long term, they are ALL failure modes.

There’s a reason I chose animals. I believe you said before: animal survival isn’t survival.

[Doktor Howl]

What animal does what I NEED?

Bug-eyed aliens.

Failing that, then "stupid hairless primates."

[altered]

And they’re coming. I have rather different terms I’m using for those parts, to stay in theme, but they are not animals and their situations aren’t animal situations.

The animals are for animal situations, which are necessarily immediate situations.

Tomorrow isn’t even the timespan I’m working on right now. Between five and forty five minutes is about where these apply. You have enough time to get individual thoughts together but not enough time for adrenaline and other stress hormones to stop ringing the alarm. Simple concepts and a repeated cadence make these easy to recall. The extra three to forty three minutes are time to plan and act accordingly, which involves necessarily more wiggle room than normal due to a lack of focus.

When I get to the next tier of animals, so to speak, I’m looking at a day’s span. After that, it’s at a more human level, and the symbols aren’t animals anymore.

[Doktor Howl]

And they’re coming. I have rather different terms I’m using for those parts, to stay in theme, but they are not animals and their situations aren’t animal situations.

The animals are for animal situations, which are necessarily immediate situations.

Tomorrow isn’t even the timespan I’m working on right now. Between five and forty five minutes is about where these apply. You have enough time to get individual thoughts together but not enough time for adrenaline and other stress hormones to stop ringing the alarm. Simple concepts and a repeated cadence make these easy to recall. The extra three to forty three minutes are time to plan and act accordingly, which involves necessarily more wiggle room than normal due to a lack of focus.

When I get to the next tier of animals, so to speak, I’m looking at a day’s span. After that, it’s at a more human level, and the symbols aren’t animals anymore.

The more I think about it, the more what you're saying seems to be a reasonable response to the 21st century.

It is not a good time to be trying for the very top of Maslow's pyramid.  No.  This is a time for backing the car over the neighbor while listening to Blondie covers by In This Moment or throwing up in the shower.

The second half of this decade has been less than pleasant for me on many levels, and I find myself being bored by the impeachment of a president.  I am also spending less time brooding over old grudges, which concerns me.  Therapy has been suggested and the only thing that crossed my mind was "so my insurance carrier won't cover a bag of necessary procedures, but will pay for me to startle a mental health professional.  OH, GOOD."