From Caterpillar to Butterfly
Part 2 of the story behind my book's metamorphosis
Oops I almost forgot I promised to finish tell the story of my book’s metamorphosis! Ok here’s my best attempt to organize my thoughts about this very strange process…
To refresh your memory, these are the different life stages my book (or more accurately, the current version of what has really been three totally distinct books) has taken over the last ~year:
Egg: RIP 🪦 book about fun that was totally boring [Japan / Sept + Oct 2023]
Caterpillar: RIP 🪦 choose your own adventure book [Thailand / Nov + Dec 2023]
Pupa: emergence of a book about pollinators [Vietnam / Jan, Feb, Mar 2024]
Butterfly: you’ll have to read on to see!
Now back to where that last post left off….
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.” - Buckminster Fuller
🇻🇳 Stage 3: Pupa [Vietnam: Jan, Feb, Mar 2024] 🇻🇳
As the above quote suggests, the transformation that occurred in this “cocoon” phase of my book was extraordinary and dare I say, totally unpredictable.
While taking a break from writing to transition from Thailand to Vietnam, I was able to see that while v2 of my book certainly embodied “fun,” there were a few seeds in it that could really grow into something beautiful if I committed to watering them.
Given all the metaphors I’ve been using so far, it may come as no surprise that I wanted to further explore what nature can teach us about how to navigate life and work (I’ll spare you the details on how this connects to “fun,” at least for now, but trust me, it does!).
I salvaged what writing I could from my time in Japan and Thailand and drafted book #3. In it, I tried to make the case that the interconnectedness we find in nature proves that every living being is inherently worthy, despite what our capitalist system may lead us to believe.
It was only after completing nearly an entire first draft of book #3 that I realized I was arguing for the very same thing that my dad had been arguing for my entire life: equality and dignity, irregardless of wealth or economic output. And yet, there wasn’t a single mention of him across ~200 pages. 🤯
That’s when this book, the one I am determined to polish and publish, finally started to metamorphose into something that resembled a memoir about pollinators.
Now, I must point out that of all the possible paths I could imagine my book taking, none included a memoir (I still cringe to call it that!) or a close examination of insects (doubly cringe!). In fact, most of my thinking and writing up until this point, had been through the lens of trees (!!), not pollinators.
But the more I wrote, the more trees—as much as I love them—came to feel too sedentary to illustrate my twisty-turny life. Pollinators on the other hand offered such rich imagery (metamorphoses, migrations, butterfly effects, etc). I love how pollination happens entirely inadvertently! I love how it’s the result of a pollinator simply following its gut! I love how we still know so little about such vital creatures! Pollinators are our planet’s essential workers, and just like human essential workers, they are terribly undervalued (and often even vilified).
Check out my attempt to describe the beginning of this shift (from writing about a “jungle” to writing about “home”) in the rough intro to what we’ll call Book3.Draft2:
This book is a painting of my world.
Faced with a blank canvas, I initially set out to paint a thriving jungle powered by a kaleidoscope of jobs. I spun and spun this kaleidoscope looking for the perfect combination of vibrancy and mirrors that would prove every single job in this jungle was essential. What I was really trying to do with this kaleidoscope trick was prove to myself that my work mattered. That I mattered. I figured if I could prove that to myself, maybe it would help others convince themselves they matter too.
The painter Bob Ross was famous for incorporating something undesirable into his pristine landscapes. “Ever make mistakes in life? Let’s make them birds. Yeah, they’re birds now.” I was determined to paint over all of my “mistakes” until my jungle looked pristine; full of hummingbirds and free of pesky mosquitos.
But as I kept spinning my kaleidoscope, instead of a thriving jungle coming into view, a familiar pattern took shape. I soon realized I wasn’t looking through a kaleidoscope at all, but a telescope directed at a smattering of stars with only one constellation shining bright as a neon light: Ursa Major—the Big Dipper. It’s the only constellation I can ever reliably find. If I’m lost, it’s also the one that points me all the way to the North Star; home.
Home is Winnipeg, Manitoba, a medium-sized city north of North Dakota. Colder than cold. If I were to direct a sequel to Guy Maddin’s cult classic My Winnipeg!, bugs would be the main characters. Manitobans are notoriously easy going and accommodating (the licence plate slogan is Friendly Manitoba after all). Not so of Manitoban bugs. They have big city energy. They demand your attention, get in your way, and aren’t ashamed to keep you up at night. I’ve avoided my home town and all its insects since I was old enough to leave it.
Home is also feeling I lost when my mom died, soon after I left Winnipeg.
As I brought my home into focus, it quickly became clear that there were simply too many things to try to turn into birds. Bugs and winters, but also grief, remorse, and in particular, my dad. Home may be where my heart is, but it’s also where all my skeletons are.
Bugs were the last thing I thought I would deliberately bring into a piece of art I had any control over. But I knew that if I was to succeed in bringing my vision of a thriving jungle to life, I couldn’t just paint pretty hummingbirds, I’d have to incorporate the metaphorical (and actual!) moths and mosquitos I was running away from. There are no hummingbirds or trees without them. Which also meant I would have to at least try to paint my dad, before it was too late.
As my writing continued to pull me home, I kept returning to another Bob Ross quote: "Beauty is everywhere—you only have to look to see it."
I’m so grateful I started looking at the lives and experiences I once ignored, even hid from. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, but somehow I found it while writing this book. I hope my looking may inspire you to look too.
Though the only paragraph I have kept from this intro is the one about Manitoba’s bugs having big city energy (I will forever maintain that Manitoba should be crowned the Insect Capital of the World), that phrase in the third last paragraph—”before it was too late”—proved to be an intuitively important one. But I’ll come back to this.
So why focus on pollinators specifically?
There’s a lot to unpack here (an entire book’s worth, you could say 😆).
The simplest answer is that I just followed my gut (which is exactly how pollination happens! It is also FUN).
An example of what following my gut looked like:
One morning when I sat down to write, I just so happened to feel like writing about a job I once had at a call center. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was calling farmers to ask them about their pesticide use. I was thinking about the crush I had on my Filipino supervisor. I don’t know why, I hadn’t thought about him, let alone that tedious job, in a good decade. Maybe I caught a whiff of Swiss Army—the cologne he used to douse himself in? Whatever the reason, that morning, that job came to mind.
So I started writing about Dimark Research, which then made me reflect on the task of calling farmers across North America, which led me to research pesticides, which led me right back to Winnipeg (as, I regrettably came to learn, most pesticide research will). That’s just one example of the ‘kaleidoscope becoming more like a telescope pointing home’ feeling that I described in the above intro.
Anyway, this is when my interest in moths was piqued. I had no idea that the “canker worms” which occasionally infested Winnipeg were in fact several different species of “tree caterpillars,” all destined to become pollinating moths.
Loooong story short, I didn’t start writing that chapter thinking it would send me down a moth hole, but it did. And the more I learned about moths, the more I realized they weren’t a butterfly’s homely cousin. They were more like a butterfly’s wise neighbour.
For example, emerging research suggests that moths are as important pollinators as bees. A 2019 study which examined pollen on moths and bees in community gardens in England found that while bees were more drawn to plants like cabbage and maple trees, moths visited plants like tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, and stone fruit. Researchers also found that moths carried more diverse pollen than bees by the middle of summer.
Moths are widely considered to be an “indicator species.” Because they are so widespread, but also so sensitive to changes, their presence (or lack thereof) reflects the overall health of their ecosystems. Our well being depends on theirs. Their drastic decline should be an alarming wake-up call, but instead, we continue to invest in mass moth extermination efforts.
In How to Read Nature, Tristan Gooley writes that “we emerged from a habitat and we will return to a habitat. Our experience in the short time between these two moments will be in some part determined by the interest we take in our habitat. It’s hard to lead a poorer life by noticing more.” In writing about my job as a telemarketer, I couldn’t help but feel as though moths were begging me to notice them, before it was too late.
My interest in moths led me to realize just how much pollinators had defined the first 25 years of my life, which led me to reflect more on mosquitos, which led me to flies, then wasps, then ants. Before I knew it, I found myself feeling like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing: writing an ode to pollinators.
Once I connected the dots between Varroa mites and my dad’s decades of full-time, unpaid, anti-poverty advocacy (you’ll just have to read the book for this to make sense!), I knew my book was ready to break out of its cocoon and take flight.
“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” - Buckminster Fuller
🦋 Stage 4: Butterfly [Vietnam: Apr & May 2024] 🦋
Well once again…this ended up being (and taking) much longer than I intended, so guess what, there will be a part 3 now! Maybe in your inbox next week 😁