How to Eat Butterflies - CH I

"Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd."

-David Lynch, to the Los Angeles Times, (1989)  

This is the first of many chapters to come of my short story. It follows with the unexpected connections between humans and a questionable food source— butterflies.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

 I

Being unnoticed for living is tragic; being noticed for beauty is detrimental. 

We have all been conscious since the dawn of the wind, huffing and puffing her warmth through a cumulus pipe, that filled the surrounding air with a woe of charm. Though you cannot understand our tongue, our whispers have been engraved in the womb of our chrysalis. Even being a caterpillar, wrapped in the paper of our fragile veil, our kind has navigated what it means to be alive and move on as disregarded.

I am alive.

That was the first thought my brain had created, when I broke the dainty film of my cocoon. I was christened in moonlight. The rays of the moon’s haze were the equivalent to my holy water; it was an omen for peculiarity, as we tend to be born in the light of day. Perhaps that was a foreshadowing of what was to come for me and the rest of my kin.

Only now can I remember grasping the underside of the grand willow tree: the one who stood upon the horizon like a brazen soldier on foot. Old Willow was the eyes and ears of our land, for fifty-three years, as he could observe the transformations of the world around him. In my short-lived youth, he would recall the earthly experiences that his livelihood had preserved in the ragged exterior of his crooked bark. Memories stirred and continued to live in the crevices of his hollow trunk. From the nature of human consumption, Old Willow has watched the slow decay towards the world.

1948. Airlifts bustled, interconnectedness of the television boomed, the Cold War was heating up and traditional, yet, obnoxious families ate dinner around the table together. Eat up, Little David! In that fateful year of 1948, a mere seven years before I was born into this world, Willow watched evil take the shape of numerous men and assimilate all of those he had been intertwined with. It is known to us as the Dance of the Trees, as it was a carved devastation that was etched into the blades of grass and only a folktale to the creatures who stirred too close to their graves. 

Before, I used to take flight and race with the others, those who I called my friends back then. We were all childish morsels of insects back then, for our wings were vibrant with curiosity for the world. There was always a dare to fly as close as you could to the fallen trunks, that now were covered in burgeoning ivy. Nevertheless, none of us would ever inch more than five feet from the ancestors of Old Willow, for the fear of crossing such an old man would shake our hearts, forever. 

As pollination had flourished and the sweetness of blossoms lingered, I would be the only visitor that would travel up the meadow to see Old Willow. I was the only one he would open up to, for his hardened state had matured over the death of his family. The traumatic blow, of such an annihilated devastation, had cracked his shell of hope and had completely wiped his ability to converse with any organism that stirred too close to his heart. For what reason did he choose me to share his tales with? I cannot say. All I could say to justify his introverted ways was the undivided attention I had given him; from dawn to dusk, I would listen to his distorted voice stir, as he recounted stories from his youth.

"The beauty of that day was compelling; wildflowers sprung from the depths of the soil and the song-birds bathed in the throes of a springtime sun," He would always begin with. "There was nothing forwardly negative about that day, only utter happiness was posted in a fit of clarity. It was an interval of time where procrastination and total appreciation takes over the spirit; you want to solely soak in the sluggish nature of the world around you."

"Would you have ever guessed that your faith in humanity would be forever changed that day?" I would always question as I fluttered around the aging mane of his feeble branches. 

"No, my dear Josef. It's a misconstrued principle that knowing is always felt. Unpredictability affects us all, humans to a warbling roly-poly, and it will reap in the most untimely manner. What's even more ill-conceived, is belief. If one were to tell me that an abundant group of brutalists were to mutilate my family, by impaling their splintered bodies and stripping them bare of any decency, for the stark reward of building a fire, I would not believe them so. Ignorance is our own form of coping and taming our darkest fears; if we do not feed the flames of them, we believe that it won't come true. We can never know which corner of the Earth is where Time and Death will strike again, for they are the misunderstood twin nature."

Upon hearing such lavish ideas, my head would start to spiral and my limbs would tremble with the idea that I could lose my family to the hands of Death. It’s always influenced by the actions of humans.

We have always been appreciated for our peaceful nature. 

Old Willow would take notice of this and awkwardly snuff in a fit of hush. The empathy that riddled his sage blanket of leaves, would always stir his being to find a higher sense of knowledge that he could pass down onto us. 

“See me now, young Josef. You should be thanking the virtues you were born with, for the beauty that your frame possesses will act as a shield of protection against the tidal waves of violence that intoxicate individuals,” Old Willow reassured.

“But you yourself are beautiful, Mr. Willow. How could anyone stand to threaten such an all-knowing sprout of life?” I questioned as the earthy sweetness of wintergreen infiltrated through my wings. “You have seen the tests of time as the flesh of your bark has aged with bands of grace. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to destroy you.”

For the first time in my life, I noticed the spell of discomfort wave over my elders, as Old Willow seemed to hesitate with any advice. Even for a moment, the awkward cawing of a red-tailed hawk above, seemed to send shivers of disagreeableness within his roots. Only after a long pause, the sorrowful voice of Old Willow trembled. 

“Beauty is subjective, Josef. Perhaps, humans have become too close-minded to recognize the shapes, with which the clay of delicacy and poise are sculpted. What once was appreciated for the fragility of bewitching behaviors and coexistence, is now being destroyed for the benefit of mankind. No matter the scenario, we are living creatures who acknowledge each other for our own gifts that we bless to the environment. And for that, I shall be eternally thankful that Mother Nature has let me thrive in the joyous illumination of sunshine.” He tenderly remarked as his tresses of maturing foliage waltzed and looped between the pockets of the wind’s song. 

That was his final dance. 

A week after I conversed with him, Old Willow was discovered to be a slaughtered trunk that was embedded in the eroded soil; how breath-taking the sunset reflected over his grave that day. Birds lamented for him, in a despondent melody, whilst the bees had fluttered in a symbiotic pattern, as if they were conforming stitches on a quilt. His memory is implanted deep within the pores of the dirt, for Old Willow was a widely celebrated figure of our community. Forever shall he rest. 

This is where it began. Humans started to push the believed-concrete boundaries and massacred the beautiful and the ugly organisms; they killed those who fluttered in the blue sea of the skies and those who burrowed in the muddled soot below their feet. Butterflies were no longer the creatures who pirouetted in the heavens, but now the food that fueled the selfish greed of their own enemies. 

And here I now lay, between the other mangled swallowtails, in the bottom of a scummy, ceramic bowl. I can feel Palmer’s leg shaking like a leaf against the bottom of my left wing. However, none of this bothers me nor will it ever. Only the churning in my intestines seems to spook me. I know that my last memory of the world will be the incoming spear of the ghastly prongs on a silver fork. 

“Order up!”