When Malia Jensen was little, growing up in the wooded foothills of rural Oregon, an issue of Esquire magazine informed her of a little fact that has stuck with her ever since. Earthworms, her father’s magazine reported, feel pain.
Not an esoteric idea, really, or very hard to grasp, but the kind of little idea that can gently work a very large power, growing from the smallest fraction of importance to a breadth and scope that somehow inflects the entirety of everything. Just think how tiny and spread out all that pain is; it adds up in a way. Imagine all the little blind worms in the world, all their thin pink skin bending and writhing and hurting in tiny segments, and then zoom out to where the earth’s horizon curves away. From underground where the worms hurt, to the dirt they eat, to the trees and leaves and out into the sky, the pain echoes and multiplies until something wavers and warps and it becomes apparent that things are much different than they were just moments before. When leaves shimmer in the sun now, they are pretty and in pain. It is delicious, like a loose tooth rubbing against a cluster of nerves.
