Wed, 27th May, 2026
Oh, to be able to grab and pull at the past like an old beloved blanket and cover yourself with it. Wouldn’t that just be the ultimate comfort? Or would it be a reminder why the old blanket is no longer used in the first place? Something happened in the last 2 years, either suddenly or gradually, that pulled some levers, adjusted some weights in my mind and as a result certain things, activities, hobbies, just don’t ring the same bells anymore. It is a very curious thing, and I notice it whenever I desire one of those usual comforts, like rewatching an old show, or even more abstractly revisiting some old ideas or adopting old attitudes, doesn’t quite work anymore. It’s like trying to put on a pair of shoes I used to wear but they pinch and scratch as if I just happened to stumble upon shoes that belong to a different person with a completely different pair of feet.
I would just attribute this to me getting older, if I weren’t about to turn only 30, or to me being shaken up by a major event of some sort, but I think what really did it was a mixture of different environmental factors and a conscious need for fundamental transformation. I have used moth imagery for my online handles for a while, and in general I have an appreciation for them, and specifically their power of transformation. Many people don’t know this, I think, but when a moth caterpillar goes into the cocoon form, they don’t just hibernate inside and slowly grow wings - they actually completely liquefy into amorphous goo, and effectively get reassembled from scratch through tiny remaining stems based on the instructions from their DNA code, and emerge as a completely different creature. But then, a moth and its preceding caterpillar form are still the same fundamentally, made out of the same material. This is probably a good example of a dialectical relationship but I refuse to study Hegel. So that is one of the main reasons why I associate myself with moths, besides the obvious one of them being cool.
Comic book writer called Grant Morrison is credited with coining the term hypersigilism, which is an idea that a work of art, a piece of writing, a performance, made with focused intention, transcends the fictional realm in which it exists and actually fundamentally affects reality for both the writer and beyond. I was always intuitively aware of this ever since I realised how powerful of an effect writing things down can have. If anything, just for the feeling of getting things out of your head and let it sit in a different form. In one of the pages of the notebook I mentioned, during a particularly isolating period of my life a couple of years ago, that I felt like I was in a sort of a shell, and the image of a moth caterpillar in a cocoon came to mind. I remember imagining myself doing that same transformation and breaking through in a different form, and reforming those fears and uncertainties into something akin to a moth’s wings. Carrying that symbolism with me led to this blog as well, and maybe all of that intention did change something. I do not want to claim any superpowers or that my little blog or journal has the power to bend reality to my will, but I certainly would not underestimate the power of intent put into symbols and writing.
All the esotericism aside, I have managed to go from someone floating down any path that would want me, like a balloon let loose in the wind, allergic to any sort of responsibility and planning, to someone who thrives on laying down the path first and building towards goals, and who goes through days with calendars and checklists. What all of it results in, however, is that the comfort of the past doesn’t exist in the same level as before, and for the first time that I can remember, I find comfort in the now, and hope in the future. This is not something I am yet used to, and it feels scary when I want to reach out to something that I remember as fulfilling and comforting, only to get something that just feels old, battered, and useless. More weight is put on the actions than the memories and I can feel that, however, it also feels like this is something I can easily handle and look forward to, when it used to be something that terrified me. Ironically, when I was a kid, I remember being afraid of moths too.