Another Day, Another Worm

I am speaking to you from above the clouds within which I recently had a run in with a marble faced archangel in a business suit.
"Going up or down?", He asked me.
I said that I hadn’t made up my mind yet.
"Listen", he said, "I have just the thing for you." and from out his briefcase he drew this spectacular golden feather.
"Here, tuck that behind your ear." he suggested. "I happen to know that this works wonders."
"How’s that?" I asked him.
"I have an intern that’s an elephant, it keeps him flying right."
I contemplated that a bit, looking over the feather. It was rather long and billowy.
"Now, of course," he said, "The feather doesn’t really cause him to be able to fly, but it is symbolic of his wish to fly. The first thing that you have to do is make up your mind. If you wish to go up, tuck the feather behind your ear. If you wish to go down, drop it and see which falls faster, you or it."
I was hesitating still when the heretofore amicable archangel’s countenance changed dramatically. His eyes were filled with storm clouds as he bellowed fiercely,
"Now! Choose now!" Whilst I trembled he drew a flaming sword, "I’m going to make this easy for you, choose now!" he cried and swung his sword ferociously. I tucked the feather behind my ear and ascended hastily.

No matter how tough you think you are on yourself, there’s always someone waiting to be tougher, because you're bound to slip up. We walk a razors edge, the slightest slip of attention and you're off the path. When you forget how dire the matter is you get a little sloppy, just a little. Those that don’t walk this line can weave and bend all to hell. But we can’t afford to blink.

Occasionally a wake up call in necessary. A little reminder that if you think things look bad now, they can get much, much worse. I seek that bottom of bottoms rather unintentionally. How little love this tortured contraption has for itself. It wants to prove that it is the most hideous and unloved mortal bit of rubbish. It wishes to go far past redemption to escape the pain of longing to belong.
They painted monster teeth on planes in world war two. My airplane is the same. I need to get in the cockpit and fly this thing, no matter what it thinks of itself. Monsters are built over tiny innocent kernels of the eternal, sweet and loving and easily bruised. The fiercer the monster the more sensitive it is. Grendel could not bear the shouts and laughter and music of the hall. It grated on him like sand paper over a babies soft skin. That is why Grendel bit off heads and split bodies in two. I have great sympathy for his plight. Yet the monster must be reigned in and trained not to buck against the pain and irritation. If the monster can be held in place under the heat of such extreme discomfort it will be transformed into a creature unimaginable, a new breed of monster, the kind that is king and devil both. The kind that soars over clouds breathing fire.
Welcome to the dragon making factory. We begin with worms, pasty bipedal mammals which wriggle and cry far past infancy in the most despicable way. Even the pretty ones, the clever ones, the kind ones, the successful ones, even they are a sort of undeveloped larvae. They need to be incubated. If they crawl away from the heat because it burns their tender flesh, burrow deeper into the dirt to escape the intensity, then they shall remain worms. If they can be made to endure the heat and friction of the central sun, a process of transformation will be initiated. Worms they will be no more.

Yes the worm dies, but the dragon is born. This is the secret of death and resurrection. What remains after the death of the worm is inconceivable and hideous to the worm. Yet that is the only real option that a worm has. It is quick hot death and transformation, or slow cold death and oblivion. Go up and fly, or down to rot in the clammy womb of the earth. Yes, worm, it is death or death. Die now or later. Pain now or later. But one death gives rise to something magickal and the other results in greener grass to be consumed by Lord Shiva's horse.