I was thinking today about the year so far, and how different life looks right now than it did at the New Year. I was wondering how different it will look in January of 2005, and thinking about how my future is veiled to me right now, and how that feels.
It feels kind of vulnerable, to tell you the truth. I've shed my skin and I don't know what my new life is going to look like yet.
It made me think about lobsters and how they grow by molting, busting out of their own shells just when the old shell is strongest and hardest and fits the most tightly. After molting the lobster is soft and vulnerable with nothing on the outside to protect her from the big world. Lobsters eat their old shells, apparently, to give themselves calcium to build the next one. "At each molt, the lobster's entire neuromusculatory system undergoes remodeling." They hang out behind rocks for a while until their new shell is formed, but even then it is soft and big and baggy and flexible -- they haven't grown into it yet, and it hasn't become rigid. The price for soft shell lobsters is lower because the apparent size of the shells and the weight don't represent the actual size of the lobster inside -- there's a lot of water in there. They're easier to eat, because you don't need crackers or implements to tear open the shell and get at the soft meat inside.
I don't want my old skin back -- it wouldn't fit now, and besides, I think I've eaten it up. But I'm ready for my new one, knowing that at first, it's going to feel loose and strange. Meanwhile I'll just hide out here in these rocks, waiting.