(via luftschloss)
Just as we were about to step out the door to head off on our trip, a butterfly flew past the living room window. I’d never seen one up here on the 22nd floor—until that moment, I hadn’t known they could fly so high.
“Look!” we both said at the same time.
It turned out there were butterflies throughout the trip. That first one seemed to be announcing the appearance of his upstate brothers and sisters. White, yellow and orange ones flitting about by the waterfall. There was a gigantic blue one in a glass frame overseeing the activities of the busy kitchen, and a small framed painting of one leaning against the mantle in the sitting room upstairs, where Charles Eisenstein gave a talk about gift economies and the ability to create our own realities…
They never came close—swooping over our heads and then going back to flying around the periphery—I saw them out of the corner of my eye as we sat on long flat rocks or in a field of grass.
There was a butterfly design on a child’s t-shirt as the play fighting between he and his older brother turned rough.
But only for a few seconds or less.
The appearance of the butterflies seemed to announce times I should stop and pay attention:
observations, the view of what was around me, the smells, sights, sounds and tastes of it
And slowly I started to know—
Not through understanding but by gathering things together—
A turn, a flicker—a lightning strike…a gutted carcass by the side of the trail
Our death and rebirth—sickness and regret, sadness and hope…
No matter how wonderful or awful an act may be, no matter how blood thirsty or charged by flames and hunger one finds oneself becoming…
(Filled with disease—molting from deep inside like fat white worms).
None of it ever stops being LOVE.
