Word Sketch, April 15: Snippets from the Butterfly Garden (The Weekend of April 13, 2013)

1

Movement and death and fathers. The theme arises again and again and again. A butterfly flits past. It is the father image, D has told me. It is the father. She sees her father in the winged beauty. "Life is a bitch," says the French, melancholic existentialist with a dripping "Rock'n'Roll" tattoo heart on his chest. "C'est la vie," reads his arm, and he tells us of the moment he awoke to dreams of his father and rushed to the parlor to make permanent his acceptance, to solidify his words before he had to leave that home on the next boat to his next home. Another backpacker with thick softball-player arms speaks of dancing with her father. Luther Vandross drifts up in the back of my mind. She misses him. She misses him. Movement and death and fathers.

2
We walk through a butterfly garden. Colorful wings flit around, spots in the corner of my eye. I focus on one, stop, breathe, keep my legs still beneath me and my breath focused on the black mottled with white spots, the antennae that are the only body part moving, swaying like it feels a breeze I cannot sense.

1
Our French friend tells us of his archival project, his compilation of stories and images and thoughts on his father's life. It echoes my own. I see the mirror arise and feel his words within my chest. I hear his words like a wire through a complex, multi-layered garden of images and sensations and concepts, his side and mine separated by a thin bubble wall, and the wire pierces through to my heart and ear which are, here, inseparable, which are, here, one. I see him from across the water of experience and feel him, this stranger aching in a shared room. He takes my number and email. "Maybe I can come visit you. We will cook and speak of our fathers. We can share our books." I simply nod. I simply feel the want to nod. I feel back deep within and the surface sensation is a nod. Eye contact and a nod. For a split second, we see each other.

2
I walk. Another at my toes, now. I bend down. It is black, with a surface whose texture looks like velvet. I do not dare to touch its delicate wings. A green flush runs its upper edge, spots of blue, small and delicate, emerging after concentrated attention, after a slow sweep of the eyes takes in its full wingspan. It is the length of my hand, middle finger to bottom curve of palm. A red and gray depth is visible along the right edge of its bumpy caterpillar body, and I can see it is dead, crushed beneath the toes of some imprecise foot that did not follow through but pulled away, quick, when the owner had seen its error, or perhaps instead by the full, tiny foot of a quick-legged toddler. An ant approaches, slowly, breaking away from the mess of others navigating the floor. It places its front legs on those of the butterfly, and I watch its antennae reach up, wave back and forth. Its body curls back. A fifteen-second interaction, and then it is off, away, back into the crowd of others where I lose sight of its individual lines, seeing only the mass of crawling bodies. The butterfly's antennae stay, still.

1
I remember aged young in the front yard of my father's house, a butterfly landing on his arm.

2
A Malaysian Mottled Emigrant, thick-veined and powdery green, flies past my right ear.  I stop and breathe, watching as it careens through the hot, tropical air.