Carried: Calf Problems (I)

Forward motion is refused on the grounds that any action will trigger something worse, and the refusal is defended as prudence. Two loads sit underneath: doubt about being able to sustain oneself at all, and a large reserve of anger about the situation that is guarded carefully, because releasing it is imagined as catastrophic. The calves are the muscles of propulsion, and here they are held. It comes from a family culture of the same caution, or from one that attacked any move toward growth. What the shape asks for is the smallest possible step taken deliberately, to test the predicted consequence.

Leave it alone. It's bad enough without me making it worse by moving.

Fafnir, curled over a hoard until the guarding hardened him into something that could no longer leave it. The form implies a task: to move away from the pile far enough to see what else is there.