You just don’t know yet which parts of yourself to value— your spittle or its syrupy smell, your irises or their mothish obsession with light. Even the trap-caught fox knew enough to chew away its leg, delighting (if such a thing can be said) at the relative softness of marrow. Nature rewards this kind of courage— a kingfisher shoots into a pond and comes out with a stickleback. Starving mice will often eat their own tails before ceding to hunger. The lesson: it’s never too late to become a new thing, to rip the fur from your face and dive dimplefirst into the strange.
