As I lie here on the floor, the image comes of an Egyptian mummy: the body bound in linen wrappings and laid inside a coffin deep beneath the sands. Then the image morphs into a closed tap, shut so tight that it cannot be opened. I stay with each image, acknowledging them just as they are . . . suddenly the mummy starts to move! It’s been buried alive! I’VE been buried alive! The tap starts to turn, slowly at first, creaking through years of stiffness and resistance so that only a few drops can make it through; then it turns faster and faster until the tap head spins right off! A torrent of water now fills the scene; my arms open out to receive the baptism, washing me clean of any resistance; then they stretch out to the sides and begin rotating in wide circles. They feel so long! My right hand brushes against the sofa, I move to the left. My left hand brushes the table. I move the table. That’s it Jim, you’re gonna have to move things around; more space is needed now. And then I see it: these are my wings! The mummy was the larva, the coffin the chrysalis, the water the lifeblood of metamorphosis, and now a butterfly is born.
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