In the words of Gaston Bachelard: Everything comes alive when contradictions accumulate. And to be fully alive—that is to say galvanized by Eros and its boundless incarnations—is to dwell within the living heart of surrealism, that place of arousing, ambiguous, and above all marvelous encounters. This fervent receptiveness characterizes the human child whose embodied recollections of having been, not long before, nearly indistinguishable from a larval lizard, assures direct access to the wonders of the phenomenal world, its mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms which are, as is the child, in constant mutation. In sympathy with all this, she recognizes and intuits her place within the vast, unwieldy network of terrestrial forms and, further, enters the world with residual genes that spontaneously offer variant readings of what it means to be human.... 

Everything from galaxies to slime mold is a shapeshifter, and the imagination’s irrepressible artifacts reflect this intimate and innately subversive reality. The mind, too, is restless. And here one must specify terrestrial mind. Examples abound from chameleons to the most astonishing: Octopus vulgaris, who in the blink of an eye can vanish from sight as she imitates exactly in color and texture absolutely everything around her. Her cousin Thaumoctopus mimicus impersonates other species—everything from snakes to fish.  

--from Metamorphosis and the Surreal; Rikki Ducornet

[via web conjunctions]