caterpillar advice

A duo of birthdays at home and matters with friends led me to buy some flowers these past few days. As usual, I went to my standard wholesale florist at Jalan Kayu, but instead of walking out with my usual purchase of geberas or roses, I ended up purchasing some gorgeous- wait for it...- pink chrysanthemum. Of course I know they are merely dyed pink (there was a purple variety which looked too gruesome for human visual consumption so I passed on them) but, still. They were bimbotically pretty, so I bought them. As per usual, each flower was carefully wrapped in paper so when I got home I gleefully unwrapped them, washed them, trimmed their leaves- ok, plucked the leaves- and wrapped them into two, what I consider, not-bad-looking bouquets. Complete with ribbon and all.

That was when the problem began. One one flower, I noticed petals kept falling off. I put it down to normal "nature" wear and tear and left it. A while later, actually, after lunch, I came back to more fallen petals on the floor. I figured I had simply caught a defective flower and cleared the petal debris and went about my way. Later that night, lo and behold, yet more petals fell out. This time, the flower in question was already half bald so I had to remove it from the bundle (you never really appreciate how many petals a chrysanthemum actually has until something like that happens).

Then I saw it. As I was clearing out the petals from the balding flower I saw a utterly fat, icky, gross caterpillar nestled in the heart of the flower steadily nibbling away. At my flower no less. Oh, how content was the fat bugger. How utterly gluttony was the grumptious ickydoodledag. Ah! What satisfaction when I flushed it away.

I suppose life's like that sometimes. Something so beautiful on the outside hides a beast within that slowly, but surely destroys it from within to without. It's hard- harder than anyone can ever tell- to gauge the heart of a man by the face that he shows to the world. But over time, as the petals fall away, as the debris is cleared, as the unpreventable stripping power of time wins out... we see what truly hides inside, what lies beneathe, what there really is.

The caterpillar in Alice in wonderland got the question right: Who are you? Really.