Natural History of Imaginary Species

CATFISH

I remember the first time I saw a recently caught black catfish swimming in our kitchen sink.

I was six years old and fascinated by the whiskers.

The fish seemed angry, circling endlessly through the shallow water, but the whiskers moved with a purpose all their own. I knew better than to touch them. I had already been warned about the sting. Even so, they were hypnotic.

The word now made sense. A catfish.

Not because it looked like a cat, but because the whiskers seemed every bit as important as the fins.

 

Word Transformation began in that sink, not as a book, not even as an idea, more as a habit of wondering how the world described itself and reality.

 

CATERPILLER

As a child, I loved caterpillars. The large woolly ones were my favorites. I would let them crawl across my hands, watching them curl into themselves and then slowly uncurl once they decided I wasn’t a threat.

What fascinated me most was their determination. Every caterpillar was going somewhere. No matter where I placed one, it had a destination in mind. It would pause briefly and then resume its journey with complete confidence. The word caterpillar never quite fit.

A pillar is stationary.

A caterpillar is anything but.

The soft hairs that responded to my touch seemed closer to a cat’s tail than a pillar of stone. Yet somehow the name endured.

 

JAY WALKING

Blue jays offered a different lesson.

I have lived around blue jays most of my life. They are beautiful birds and they know it.

Loud, opinionated, demanding, mischievous, and entirely unconcerned with the wishes of others, they seem to move through the world as though rules are suggestions intended for lesser creatures.

The first time I considered the word jaywalker, the image felt perfectly natural.

Of course, a blue jay would jaywalk.

What other way would it cross a street?

 

FOXGLOVES

Foxgloves belonged to another category entirely.

As a child, they were flowers I admired but was not allowed to pick. They were treasured by the owner of the property and existed slightly beyond my reach.

I remember staring into the blossoms and wondering whether a fox could actually place its paw inside one.

The name encouraged the question.

The flower invited it.

Years later, creating a literal foxglove felt less like invention than explanation.

 

LADYBUGS

Ladybugs occupied a special place in childhood.

I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t delighted by them.

They carried themselves like tiny, armored visitors from another world. Their polished shields concealed astonishing wings that appeared only when absolutely necessary. They arrived without invitation and departed without permission.

No one owns a ladybug.

They come and go entirely on their own terms. And yet the name always seemed right.There was something about them that felt civilized. Courteous even.As though on whatever distant world they originated from, manners mattered.

 

Most children learn to separate words from things. The word becomes a label and the imagination retires. But some words resist the process: Catfish. Ladybug. Dragonfly. Seahorse. Jaywalker. Foxglove.

Even after learning what these things are, part of me continued to see what they might also be. Word Transformation emerged from that lingering possibility. The creatures in these pages are not entirely invented. Their origins already existed inside language. They were waiting there, hidden in plain sight.

Perhaps imagination is not the act of creating something new.

Perhaps it is also the act of preserving a way of seeing that is easily left behind.

Word Transformation is my field guide to some of the species I have found there.

By Paula Phelan

PiP Art Studio