Vermiform friend, frying on the sidewalk at a hot night’s beginning, swimming in air when the ground soaks, tunnelling blindly and transforming the world in its wake. The worm. A metaphor for the vulnerable, the peon, the untouchably low. Crawling as an act of humility in pilgrimage state, an act of obeisance to a greater force. A metaphor for a penis detached, the most unimaginable state of existence for that appendage which has a mind and life of its own in lore. An eye with a mind of its own. Who could stand a penis that had fallen off? Who could tolerate its independence, wiggling around out there? A finger, too, with no nail. A machine that endlessly swallows and processes the world around itself, blindly fertilizing as it helpfully aerates. Unthinkable and necessary. The story of the world is a story of dirt and water and the worm is right there, wedging itself seamlessly, silently, asking nothing of the world but some oxygen in the soil, churning forwards. When the worm is large, it is unspeakably awful: a maneater in Tremors, a beneficial but fearsome monolith in Dune, and both films slightly ridiculous in their pretense of oversized vermitude and both films lasting in their horrors as the images ripple through our consciousness.