How did the stakes get so high? How is it that two people come together and fall in love? How is it that two people independently decide to give their hears to one another ? What is it within us that draws us to love another, to give up all one can of one's self for the joy of another?
It's one of the only truly beautiful, nearly perfect things in life. Simultaneously intricate and straightforward, easy and hard, strong and fragile, eternal and passing.
Love lifts you up and the higher it takes you, the better the view and the longer the fall. Everyday love asks you to make a choice between staying and soaring ever higher or leaving and cutting your losses because no matter how beautiful the story, no matter how true the mate, no matter how giving, how selfless, how valiant, how kind, ". . .time will have his fancy, tomorrow or today," (Auden).
"I suppose we do the best we can with what time we have together," answers M.
"Well that's rather dark, don't you think?" A asks.
"What else can I say, I mean the guy's got a point.
"What point?"
"That we're all going to die someday, that no matter how good we are to one another, one of us is going to die someday."
"Yeah, but why do we have to think about this now?"
"Well, I think the point is to make sure that we don't waste time, that we appreciate it, that we don't take it for granted."
"Do you think that's what we've been doing?"
"Well, no."
"So what's the point of all of this then?"
Saturday, November 4, 2006
The Identity Thief
John.
He had been at it for so long that he wasn't sure exactly who he was anymore. He had taken on so many identities and had buried himself so deep into them that he ultimately lost track of where it was he had started from. It was an amnesia of sorts. Perhaps there was a finite capacity for his brain to contain identity and he had passed that limit many names ago.
But that's a bit of what theft is. You think you're getting something for free but what you get you purchase with bits of your soul.
He was done with the business. He had made more than enough to keep him from having to work for the rest of his life. He was tired of pretending. He was tired of stuffing the guilt down his gut - the pill got smaller and easier to swallow but he had his fill. He was tired of the fast talk, tired of being on his toes all the time. He just wanted to go back to his . . .
And that was the problem. There was no life to go back to because there was no life to remember. He also suspected that even if he had remembered, a part of him knew it would be a futile effort.
He had been at it for so long that he wasn't sure exactly who he was anymore. He had taken on so many identities and had buried himself so deep into them that he ultimately lost track of where it was he had started from. It was an amnesia of sorts. Perhaps there was a finite capacity for his brain to contain identity and he had passed that limit many names ago.
But that's a bit of what theft is. You think you're getting something for free but what you get you purchase with bits of your soul.
He was done with the business. He had made more than enough to keep him from having to work for the rest of his life. He was tired of pretending. He was tired of stuffing the guilt down his gut - the pill got smaller and easier to swallow but he had his fill. He was tired of the fast talk, tired of being on his toes all the time. He just wanted to go back to his . . .
And that was the problem. There was no life to go back to because there was no life to remember. He also suspected that even if he had remembered, a part of him knew it would be a futile effort.
Thursday, November 2, 2006
The Lamb Ghost
Legend has it, the lamb escaped from its pen on Halloween night. By all accounts, she should have been sound asleep. Domesticated creatures of habit, slaves to instinct, she should have been asleep. Some say it might have been stray trick-or-treaters that woke her, some say that strange lamb never did sleep a wink, most folks just accepted things as they happened and didn't ask why or how. This story isn't for them.
There's no truth to the matter, of course, none that's knowable to human intelligence. The lamb knows why it was she got up but she's not letting anyone in on it, even if she could have. God knows, but his ways are higher than ours - we wouldn't understand it even if he were to spell it out for us point by point.
But all of that is irrelevant because this story is not about a lamb waking in the middle of the night so let's move on.
This is a story about what happened after she woke up.
What's know is that after waking, trackers were able to trace her steps to the corner of the pen where she squeezed under a gap, made her way across the yard into the wheat field through which she made a path straight to the road. It's likely that she was struck by the Taurus as she was crossing, but there are some who believe she was there on the road, waiting for it - that she picked a spot just past a rise in the road so that she would not be seen from a distance.
Again, the details of her death are of no consequence. She was struck, she died, no one was found liable, and the insurance company repaired the vehicle. This story is about what happened afterwards.
There's no truth to the matter, of course, none that's knowable to human intelligence. The lamb knows why it was she got up but she's not letting anyone in on it, even if she could have. God knows, but his ways are higher than ours - we wouldn't understand it even if he were to spell it out for us point by point.
But all of that is irrelevant because this story is not about a lamb waking in the middle of the night so let's move on.
This is a story about what happened after she woke up.
What's know is that after waking, trackers were able to trace her steps to the corner of the pen where she squeezed under a gap, made her way across the yard into the wheat field through which she made a path straight to the road. It's likely that she was struck by the Taurus as she was crossing, but there are some who believe she was there on the road, waiting for it - that she picked a spot just past a rise in the road so that she would not be seen from a distance.
Again, the details of her death are of no consequence. She was struck, she died, no one was found liable, and the insurance company repaired the vehicle. This story is about what happened afterwards.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
52 Walks Among Us
52 walks among us.
52, of course, is not its name but rather its designation. The phonetic representation of his "name" is inexpressible in Earth nomenclature, but it doesn't mind being addressed as, "52." It keeps things simple and that's in his nature.
Also, for the sake of convenience, 52 is assigned the pronoun, "it," because there are five of what we would call genders on its planet. Two of the five are very similar to our male and female but 52 is neither of these. Please don't ask me to detail the complexities of their sexual interactions - such things are private even on a galactic scale.
52 finds it odd that any sort of fiction that has a creature from outer space as a character is defined as "science fiction", almost by default. It sees this act as myopic and reeks of speciesism. But at the same time, it understands that humans have not had much contact with those from other worlds so it cuts us a great deal of slack - he refuses to label the planet as terra-centric since they have no first-hand knowledge of other inhabited planets. Some of his peers criticize the way that we view the other planets on our solar system as mere objects of exploration (and some predict exploitation as soon as the technology makes it feasible), but 52 chooses to remain charitably agnostic in the matter.
However, 52 does find our mythical fear of non-earthlings, as expressed in our literature and made particularly evident in our cinematic works, strangely symptomatic of our species and views that as an indicator that goes a long way towards explaining human violence on and to our planet.
52 is one of a number (no pun) of visitors from across the universe, most of whom are here for what we would call anthropological studies. Rest assured, none are here for purposes that are other than benign - that is, so long as you don't classify voyeuristic curiosity as malicious.
On a universal scale, many of 52's peers place our planet on the peaceable side of the Universe. We are certainly nowhere near civilizations classified as docile and harmonious, but we are also nowhere near the extreme, violence end of the spectrum. 52 would place us somewhere pretty high up along the ascending portion of the universal bell curve - slightly more peaceful than average, but not by much.
On the other hand, our intellectual standing leaves much to be desired. For all of our (understandable, from 52's point of view) pride in our intellectual achievements, we are shamefully outgunned by the rest of the universe. Using our educational structure for purposes of scale, our planet's academic achievement (adjusted for specie evolution rates and average life-spans) would rank somewhere between fourth and fifth grade. 52 likes to joke that we're in summer school. In contrast, 52's kind might be thought of as being in the second year of graduate school.
52's motivation for being on Earth? Initially, he arrived on a study to document and report on geo-political movements, but these days he hangs around just because he's grown fond of us. He is especially fond of what we've learned to do with salads, particularly in the Pacific Northwest with its fusion-style mixed greens. He enjoys meats as well (oddly, the ratio of species who choose an herbivore diet to an omnivore one is remarkably constant throughout the universe). He doesn't care for bovine-based meat products but he does enjoy wild venison and he is not alone in the opinion that pate de foie gras is one of the great unknown delicacies of the universe.
52, of course, is not its name but rather its designation. The phonetic representation of his "name" is inexpressible in Earth nomenclature, but it doesn't mind being addressed as, "52." It keeps things simple and that's in his nature.
Also, for the sake of convenience, 52 is assigned the pronoun, "it," because there are five of what we would call genders on its planet. Two of the five are very similar to our male and female but 52 is neither of these. Please don't ask me to detail the complexities of their sexual interactions - such things are private even on a galactic scale.
52 finds it odd that any sort of fiction that has a creature from outer space as a character is defined as "science fiction", almost by default. It sees this act as myopic and reeks of speciesism. But at the same time, it understands that humans have not had much contact with those from other worlds so it cuts us a great deal of slack - he refuses to label the planet as terra-centric since they have no first-hand knowledge of other inhabited planets. Some of his peers criticize the way that we view the other planets on our solar system as mere objects of exploration (and some predict exploitation as soon as the technology makes it feasible), but 52 chooses to remain charitably agnostic in the matter.
However, 52 does find our mythical fear of non-earthlings, as expressed in our literature and made particularly evident in our cinematic works, strangely symptomatic of our species and views that as an indicator that goes a long way towards explaining human violence on and to our planet.
52 is one of a number (no pun) of visitors from across the universe, most of whom are here for what we would call anthropological studies. Rest assured, none are here for purposes that are other than benign - that is, so long as you don't classify voyeuristic curiosity as malicious.
On a universal scale, many of 52's peers place our planet on the peaceable side of the Universe. We are certainly nowhere near civilizations classified as docile and harmonious, but we are also nowhere near the extreme, violence end of the spectrum. 52 would place us somewhere pretty high up along the ascending portion of the universal bell curve - slightly more peaceful than average, but not by much.
On the other hand, our intellectual standing leaves much to be desired. For all of our (understandable, from 52's point of view) pride in our intellectual achievements, we are shamefully outgunned by the rest of the universe. Using our educational structure for purposes of scale, our planet's academic achievement (adjusted for specie evolution rates and average life-spans) would rank somewhere between fourth and fifth grade. 52 likes to joke that we're in summer school. In contrast, 52's kind might be thought of as being in the second year of graduate school.
52's motivation for being on Earth? Initially, he arrived on a study to document and report on geo-political movements, but these days he hangs around just because he's grown fond of us. He is especially fond of what we've learned to do with salads, particularly in the Pacific Northwest with its fusion-style mixed greens. He enjoys meats as well (oddly, the ratio of species who choose an herbivore diet to an omnivore one is remarkably constant throughout the universe). He doesn't care for bovine-based meat products but he does enjoy wild venison and he is not alone in the opinion that pate de foie gras is one of the great unknown delicacies of the universe.
In Bold Type
Blair sat like a toad with alphabet scales on its back. She belonged to David Lister, best selling author of formula thrillers. Wrought iron black, squat, weighed down as if yearning to return to the metal core of the earth itself, she did not wait, she did not hope. She resigned herself to the fact that she was merely an ornament - as irrelevant as one of Lister's useless subplots. And so, on display on a pedestal in a corner of his study, Blair went about crafting her own stories, etching them subversively in rust. She would begin at the tiny, unprotected chip of bare metal at her base (her Achilles heel, if you will) and she would write in oxidizing red ink up under the protective paint. She would write and she would not stop until she was entirely compromised. She would hold herself together by sheer will and then disintegrate into a heaping mass of glass keys, ink ribbon, rubber platen, and crumbling metal shards.
A machine born of the industrial age, she had no need for sleep or backup or de-fragmenting like the fussy plastic boxes that Lister pecked away at. She was all about hard copies, fixed-width glyphs. She was unmerciful. No backspace key on her keyboard - the mere idea of correction tape was science fiction in her day. Tabs were set by means of brake-stops and pulleys, a system notorious for pinching fingers and jamming if not engaged precisely.
She had no need for electrical power. Her typefaces were propelled through their arcs via an intricate, efficient network of typebars. She was at her best when guided by fingers with will and intent behind them. She had no patience for weak-minded, second-guessing hacks. She desired writers who wrote in straight lines, who strung sentences along like pearls of wisdom, writers who edited in the space between their brain and their fingertips. For writers such as these she was a marvel of engineering, designed to reward swift, sure strokes without jamming - allowing the stream of consciousness to flow uninterrupted. When the words came in quick succession she sounded not like some jittery morse code operator but like steady rain on ceramic tiles punctuated by the sound of the margin bell and the zipper-like whir of the carriage return.
An innovation in her day, her first owner was an insurance firm. She was one out of an order of four hundred. She was put away as a spare, up on the top shelf of a storage closet in the basement. It was dark and dry. The air smelled of carbon paper, metal shelves, and rubber erasers. Two months passed and she was sure she had been forgotten but a week into her third month she was put into service at the desk of a particularly adept temp named Maggie, brought in to help the company prep for its yearly audit.
Maggie had soft hands and a sure touch. Blair especially appreciated her graceful carriage return. The two were making quite a pair until an office indiscretion, initiated by the department manager, got Maggie fired. Violating a cardinal typewriter ethic, Blair tried to advise her user against the affair, but whenever she tried to express herself, Maggie would think she had made a typo. She would swear, under her breath, and rip the sheet out without first releasing the internal guide rollers - a move that was within Blair's design specification, but one that she found painful and rude. She stopped trying to warn Maggie and within a week, Maggie was gone. Blair understood that this was Maggie's fault, that she shouldn't have tried to stop her. She vowed never again to violate the terms of the object-operator relationship.
The desk was cleared by the end of the day but they did not return Blair to the basement. They left her on the empty desk and there she sat listening to the typewriters around her clacking away. She didn't mind at first, glad to be out of the stuffy storage space, but jealousy set in and she soon yearned for attention. She could hear some of the other machines jamming - typebars sticking, piling one on top of another. All the machines on this floor were of the same make and model so she could tell that those machines were misbehaving out of laziness or spite. To be fair, some of the other typewriters had awful users, the kind prone to pounding the keyboard in fits of rage, but Blair felt that (despite her previous slip) their behavior was entirely unprofessional, dangerous even. If the idea got out that their make and model were unreliable, they could be thrown out as a group.
Luckily, the office manager had a budget to stick to. Some of the bothersome machines were sent out for servicing (discipline, in the world of typewriters) and the ones that would not straighten out were retired and replaced. And this is how Blair and Emily were paired.
A machine born of the industrial age, she had no need for sleep or backup or de-fragmenting like the fussy plastic boxes that Lister pecked away at. She was all about hard copies, fixed-width glyphs. She was unmerciful. No backspace key on her keyboard - the mere idea of correction tape was science fiction in her day. Tabs were set by means of brake-stops and pulleys, a system notorious for pinching fingers and jamming if not engaged precisely.
She had no need for electrical power. Her typefaces were propelled through their arcs via an intricate, efficient network of typebars. She was at her best when guided by fingers with will and intent behind them. She had no patience for weak-minded, second-guessing hacks. She desired writers who wrote in straight lines, who strung sentences along like pearls of wisdom, writers who edited in the space between their brain and their fingertips. For writers such as these she was a marvel of engineering, designed to reward swift, sure strokes without jamming - allowing the stream of consciousness to flow uninterrupted. When the words came in quick succession she sounded not like some jittery morse code operator but like steady rain on ceramic tiles punctuated by the sound of the margin bell and the zipper-like whir of the carriage return.
An innovation in her day, her first owner was an insurance firm. She was one out of an order of four hundred. She was put away as a spare, up on the top shelf of a storage closet in the basement. It was dark and dry. The air smelled of carbon paper, metal shelves, and rubber erasers. Two months passed and she was sure she had been forgotten but a week into her third month she was put into service at the desk of a particularly adept temp named Maggie, brought in to help the company prep for its yearly audit.
Maggie had soft hands and a sure touch. Blair especially appreciated her graceful carriage return. The two were making quite a pair until an office indiscretion, initiated by the department manager, got Maggie fired. Violating a cardinal typewriter ethic, Blair tried to advise her user against the affair, but whenever she tried to express herself, Maggie would think she had made a typo. She would swear, under her breath, and rip the sheet out without first releasing the internal guide rollers - a move that was within Blair's design specification, but one that she found painful and rude. She stopped trying to warn Maggie and within a week, Maggie was gone. Blair understood that this was Maggie's fault, that she shouldn't have tried to stop her. She vowed never again to violate the terms of the object-operator relationship.
The desk was cleared by the end of the day but they did not return Blair to the basement. They left her on the empty desk and there she sat listening to the typewriters around her clacking away. She didn't mind at first, glad to be out of the stuffy storage space, but jealousy set in and she soon yearned for attention. She could hear some of the other machines jamming - typebars sticking, piling one on top of another. All the machines on this floor were of the same make and model so she could tell that those machines were misbehaving out of laziness or spite. To be fair, some of the other typewriters had awful users, the kind prone to pounding the keyboard in fits of rage, but Blair felt that (despite her previous slip) their behavior was entirely unprofessional, dangerous even. If the idea got out that their make and model were unreliable, they could be thrown out as a group.
Luckily, the office manager had a budget to stick to. Some of the bothersome machines were sent out for servicing (discipline, in the world of typewriters) and the ones that would not straighten out were retired and replaced. And this is how Blair and Emily were paired.
Ascent
Cold came down and wrapped her arms around his chest. She bore down like an icy anaconda and no amount of shivering would loosen her coil. She found her way into the smallest gaps in his Gore-Tex jacket and bib.
It was a mere two miles to the next base camp but the angle of ascent made for slow going. Sean didn't want to stop though every fiber of his body begged him to. One foot in front of the other. Left foot forward, reposition right trekking pole. Right foot forward, reposition left trekking pole. Left foot forward. . .
The rhythm and the repetition. Mechanical, rote maneuvers. A kind of mindless concentration on the task at hand, but the higher mind asks why, challenges, balks at his sadistic, fascist commitment to marching ever forward.
Cold was lonely that afternoon. Notoriously moody, habitually clingy, she grabbed hold of Chad the way Calypso clung to her sailors. Ever like the vampire, she understood that her desire, if satiated, would mean the death of her beloved but an obsession like this does not bend to reason, is not bound by empathy.
To prayer then, calling upon the unseen in the midst of all this wilderness. Praying for second wind, for strength, for warmth, for help. Praying against doubt, against fatigue, against the cold.
And then the thoughts, what is prayer? He knows stories of men who've died on this ascent. He's willing to bet that they all prayed for earthly salvation but to what end? And what of the prayers of their friends back at base camp, back at the hotel, back at home? And what of those who do not pray who have made it to the summit? How does God choose between prayers? How does God let pass those who do not pray?
And yes, this is what he needs - questions that occupy the mind, drawing resources away from nerve endings processing new experiences of cold.
Is there a place where prayer is more at home? In a church, certainly, but that is to be expected. Here, prayer looms as large as the sheer cliff faces and at the same time, amid the vast, endless isolation, prayer feels feeble, small, hopelessly irrelevant. Prayer is thought, breath, spirit. The mountain is granite and glacier and shifty, unpredictable snow pack. His ice pick has heft and weight, tangible, hard, usable evidence of its existence. Prayer is metaphysical - beyond the physical. But he would not do this climb without it.
The arsenal that Cold has at her disposal is considerable. They ranged from tiny, spear-like probes to thick, foggy blankets, acres across. She unleashed them down upon his vulnerabilities - a strange sort of seduction. She whispered into his ear through his ear band. She lapped at his neck, ran her fingers down the small of his back. Through a technique not unlike osmosis, she infused herself through his pant legs. She picked her way through the micro-tangles of his wool underpants - tedious work but she was nothing if not patient and persistent.
The ice pack was deep and powdery. His snow shoes did their best to distribute his weight but they were of little use on a gradient as steep as this. The combination of the wide footprint and the slope of the ascent kept his ankle cocked at an odd, painful angle. His calves were burning half from the strain, half from the lack of oxygen. He could feel his toe nails digging into the calloused flesh surrounding them, rubbing them raw.
His left foot hit an unexpectedly slick icy patch. The traction gave way and Chad found himself face-down in the snow. He was cushioned by the loose pack but Cold, ever vigilant, seized upon this opportunity. She sent little soldiers of snow down between the gap between his goggles and his face mask. Ice turned to water and it was a clever device. The first bits soaked into his face mask making it harder to breathe and pressed the cold down upon his cheeks.
It was a mere two miles to the next base camp but the angle of ascent made for slow going. Sean didn't want to stop though every fiber of his body begged him to. One foot in front of the other. Left foot forward, reposition right trekking pole. Right foot forward, reposition left trekking pole. Left foot forward. . .
The rhythm and the repetition. Mechanical, rote maneuvers. A kind of mindless concentration on the task at hand, but the higher mind asks why, challenges, balks at his sadistic, fascist commitment to marching ever forward.
Cold was lonely that afternoon. Notoriously moody, habitually clingy, she grabbed hold of Chad the way Calypso clung to her sailors. Ever like the vampire, she understood that her desire, if satiated, would mean the death of her beloved but an obsession like this does not bend to reason, is not bound by empathy.
To prayer then, calling upon the unseen in the midst of all this wilderness. Praying for second wind, for strength, for warmth, for help. Praying against doubt, against fatigue, against the cold.
And then the thoughts, what is prayer? He knows stories of men who've died on this ascent. He's willing to bet that they all prayed for earthly salvation but to what end? And what of the prayers of their friends back at base camp, back at the hotel, back at home? And what of those who do not pray who have made it to the summit? How does God choose between prayers? How does God let pass those who do not pray?
And yes, this is what he needs - questions that occupy the mind, drawing resources away from nerve endings processing new experiences of cold.
Is there a place where prayer is more at home? In a church, certainly, but that is to be expected. Here, prayer looms as large as the sheer cliff faces and at the same time, amid the vast, endless isolation, prayer feels feeble, small, hopelessly irrelevant. Prayer is thought, breath, spirit. The mountain is granite and glacier and shifty, unpredictable snow pack. His ice pick has heft and weight, tangible, hard, usable evidence of its existence. Prayer is metaphysical - beyond the physical. But he would not do this climb without it.
The arsenal that Cold has at her disposal is considerable. They ranged from tiny, spear-like probes to thick, foggy blankets, acres across. She unleashed them down upon his vulnerabilities - a strange sort of seduction. She whispered into his ear through his ear band. She lapped at his neck, ran her fingers down the small of his back. Through a technique not unlike osmosis, she infused herself through his pant legs. She picked her way through the micro-tangles of his wool underpants - tedious work but she was nothing if not patient and persistent.
The ice pack was deep and powdery. His snow shoes did their best to distribute his weight but they were of little use on a gradient as steep as this. The combination of the wide footprint and the slope of the ascent kept his ankle cocked at an odd, painful angle. His calves were burning half from the strain, half from the lack of oxygen. He could feel his toe nails digging into the calloused flesh surrounding them, rubbing them raw.
His left foot hit an unexpectedly slick icy patch. The traction gave way and Chad found himself face-down in the snow. He was cushioned by the loose pack but Cold, ever vigilant, seized upon this opportunity. She sent little soldiers of snow down between the gap between his goggles and his face mask. Ice turned to water and it was a clever device. The first bits soaked into his face mask making it harder to breathe and pressed the cold down upon his cheeks.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Lepidopterist
What else could he have done? With all the traffic on the street, Gavin wasn't even going the speed limit of 25. He saw the basketball enter the street from the sidewalk, out from an alleyway, and before he could make the connection between ball and boy, the child single-mindedly appeared in the street after the ball. The child didn't even have time to turn and see his SUV before it muscled over him - beating him down like a playground bully. There was only the slightest squeal of tires but it was too late even before his foot bore down on the brake pedal.
Screams and yelling, hands waving and finger pointing followed. There were stares - gazes angry, disbelieving, shocked, and scared. All this energy trained on him, his SUV, and the child, unconscious, trembling in acute shock.
Gavin was a lepidopterist - a scientist who specializes in the study of butterflies, moths and similar insects. He was on his way to a lecture and presentation at a private elementary school. In the back of his SUV was a box containing a dozen monarch butterflies - Danaus plexippus.
These butterflies lay their eggs on the milkweed plant. They feed on this plant and their bodies glean and store bitter chemicals known as cardenolides from its sap. Any given bird will only attempt to eat a monarch caterpillar or butterfly once because even if it can get past the bitter, pungent taste, the endless vomiting that follows will drive home the point that this insect, defenseless as it appears, is not to be reckoned with.
As the din of the crowd grew, Gavin was stunned. What's the protocol in a case like this? As a man of science, he knew that there were ways that things were done - procedures that both maintained order and ensured repeatable, verifiable experimental results - without which science could not go forward. This kind of deterministic certainty crept into every area of his life and while it made for a quiet, peaceful life, it also induced a kind of paralysis in unfamiliar situations, and certainly, this was one of them.
Questions, questions, questions. "Should I back up? What if the child is behind the front wheels? Should I get out? What will this do to my insurance? Can I be held at fault? What about the lecture at the school? Who are all these people? What will I say? Why now? Why me? Why do things always go so wrong? Oh my God, did I just kill a child?"
The questions continue to rattle through his mind and he lets them bounce off of one another. As if by instinct alone, he leaves the engine running, opens the door, gets out of the SUV, and braces himself before bending down to see what he's done. There are already a couple of bystanders looking underneath the chassis. They are calling out to the kid and he takes this to be a good sign until he sees the pool of blood darkening the asphalt.
One of the wonders of the monarch butterfly is its migration pattern. In the fall, these tiny insects make their way from Canada and the northern most of the United States down to the slopes of Sierra Madre Del Sur in southern Mexico - a journey of over three thousand miles. What makes this journey even more miraculous is the fact that the butterflies who migrate north are not the same ones that migrated south the year before. In fact, the entire round trip can encompass up to seven generations, most of whom mate and die along the northern leg of the journey. As the end of summer approaches, a special generation of butterfly is born - one whose life-span is up to eight times longer than that of their grandparents. This is the generation that makes the long haul down south to escape the bitter winter cold.
Of course the big mystery is how this last generation knows the way back to the homeland of their great-great-great-great-grandparents - a place they've never seen before. Gavin likes to believe that butterflies pass the secrets of this journey on to their offspring through song. He imagines the butterflies singing to one another about an odyssey of epic proportions as they fly ever northward. And he pictures the southbound flyers marveling at the way the song that they've had ingrained into them through repetition guides them on their way back to the mountains of Mexico.
Peering under the vehicle, Gavin can see that the boy is still alive but in very bad shape. He has no medical training but he can see signs of trauma everywhere along the boy's misshapen body. Another man runs up to the scene and introduces himself as a doctor - an oncologist, but a doctor nevertheless. He accesses the scene and barks an order to Gavin telling him to back his car up slowly.
He nods and gets back into his SUV. He puts it in reverse and backs right into the car behind him - a subcompact hatchback. Its hood buckles as crumple points in the front end give way. Gavin guns his engine and manhandles the little car back against its will. The woman behind the wheel doesn't sound her horn but she doesn't lay off of her brakes either. Satisfied that he's made enough room for the doctor and child, he parks his SUV halfway on top of the lady's hood.
He's done all that he can. There's nothing left to do but to let the life of this accident play itself out. It's all out of his hands. He shuts off the engine and watches the drama unfold in front of him through the window. Fire trucks, ambulance, police, first responders. Questionings, reports, no accusations, thankfully, but the guilt comes anyway. His cell phone rings. It's the school asking him where he is.
The details of butterfly migration are a mystery. The metamorphosis from larval form (caterpillar) into pupa and finally into butterfly is nothing short of a miracle. Once encased in its chrysalis, a radical, comprehensive transformation takes place. It begins with a process called histolysis which breaks down much of the caterpillar's tissue into a kind of gelatinous soup. Not everything is destroyed. Spared are the internal organs as well as a special set of cells called histoblasts. These cells are instrumental in building new body parts - legs, compound eyes, antenna, and proboscis, to name just a few - through a process called histogenesis. The wings actually begin developing from the first larval stages. Much of the wings' formation occurs within the caterpillar's body, but during metamorphosis, they grow exponentially and adhere themselves to the outer cuticle.
Once this transformation is complete, the (now) butterfly breaks through the chrysalis and emerges wet with crumpled wings. It clings to what's left of the chrysalis as it pumps hemolymph (insect blood) through its body, basically inflating its wings. After about an hour (depending on surrounding temperature and humidity), the wings harden into a rigid structure that enables flight. The horny butterfly takes to the air, eager to migrate and to mate.
Two weeks later, Gavin pays a visit to the boy's house bearing one small gift. His bruises have faded and broken bones are mending behind plaster casts. No hard feelings between any of the parties involved. Gavin sets a small cage on the boy's bureau. He points out the tiny green chrysalis attached to a twig and tells him that if he listens quietly and closely enough, he just might hear traces of the song of migration - a tune three thousand miles long.
Screams and yelling, hands waving and finger pointing followed. There were stares - gazes angry, disbelieving, shocked, and scared. All this energy trained on him, his SUV, and the child, unconscious, trembling in acute shock.
Gavin was a lepidopterist - a scientist who specializes in the study of butterflies, moths and similar insects. He was on his way to a lecture and presentation at a private elementary school. In the back of his SUV was a box containing a dozen monarch butterflies - Danaus plexippus.
These butterflies lay their eggs on the milkweed plant. They feed on this plant and their bodies glean and store bitter chemicals known as cardenolides from its sap. Any given bird will only attempt to eat a monarch caterpillar or butterfly once because even if it can get past the bitter, pungent taste, the endless vomiting that follows will drive home the point that this insect, defenseless as it appears, is not to be reckoned with.
As the din of the crowd grew, Gavin was stunned. What's the protocol in a case like this? As a man of science, he knew that there were ways that things were done - procedures that both maintained order and ensured repeatable, verifiable experimental results - without which science could not go forward. This kind of deterministic certainty crept into every area of his life and while it made for a quiet, peaceful life, it also induced a kind of paralysis in unfamiliar situations, and certainly, this was one of them.
Questions, questions, questions. "Should I back up? What if the child is behind the front wheels? Should I get out? What will this do to my insurance? Can I be held at fault? What about the lecture at the school? Who are all these people? What will I say? Why now? Why me? Why do things always go so wrong? Oh my God, did I just kill a child?"
The questions continue to rattle through his mind and he lets them bounce off of one another. As if by instinct alone, he leaves the engine running, opens the door, gets out of the SUV, and braces himself before bending down to see what he's done. There are already a couple of bystanders looking underneath the chassis. They are calling out to the kid and he takes this to be a good sign until he sees the pool of blood darkening the asphalt.
One of the wonders of the monarch butterfly is its migration pattern. In the fall, these tiny insects make their way from Canada and the northern most of the United States down to the slopes of Sierra Madre Del Sur in southern Mexico - a journey of over three thousand miles. What makes this journey even more miraculous is the fact that the butterflies who migrate north are not the same ones that migrated south the year before. In fact, the entire round trip can encompass up to seven generations, most of whom mate and die along the northern leg of the journey. As the end of summer approaches, a special generation of butterfly is born - one whose life-span is up to eight times longer than that of their grandparents. This is the generation that makes the long haul down south to escape the bitter winter cold.
Of course the big mystery is how this last generation knows the way back to the homeland of their great-great-great-great-grandparents - a place they've never seen before. Gavin likes to believe that butterflies pass the secrets of this journey on to their offspring through song. He imagines the butterflies singing to one another about an odyssey of epic proportions as they fly ever northward. And he pictures the southbound flyers marveling at the way the song that they've had ingrained into them through repetition guides them on their way back to the mountains of Mexico.
Peering under the vehicle, Gavin can see that the boy is still alive but in very bad shape. He has no medical training but he can see signs of trauma everywhere along the boy's misshapen body. Another man runs up to the scene and introduces himself as a doctor - an oncologist, but a doctor nevertheless. He accesses the scene and barks an order to Gavin telling him to back his car up slowly.
He nods and gets back into his SUV. He puts it in reverse and backs right into the car behind him - a subcompact hatchback. Its hood buckles as crumple points in the front end give way. Gavin guns his engine and manhandles the little car back against its will. The woman behind the wheel doesn't sound her horn but she doesn't lay off of her brakes either. Satisfied that he's made enough room for the doctor and child, he parks his SUV halfway on top of the lady's hood.
He's done all that he can. There's nothing left to do but to let the life of this accident play itself out. It's all out of his hands. He shuts off the engine and watches the drama unfold in front of him through the window. Fire trucks, ambulance, police, first responders. Questionings, reports, no accusations, thankfully, but the guilt comes anyway. His cell phone rings. It's the school asking him where he is.
The details of butterfly migration are a mystery. The metamorphosis from larval form (caterpillar) into pupa and finally into butterfly is nothing short of a miracle. Once encased in its chrysalis, a radical, comprehensive transformation takes place. It begins with a process called histolysis which breaks down much of the caterpillar's tissue into a kind of gelatinous soup. Not everything is destroyed. Spared are the internal organs as well as a special set of cells called histoblasts. These cells are instrumental in building new body parts - legs, compound eyes, antenna, and proboscis, to name just a few - through a process called histogenesis. The wings actually begin developing from the first larval stages. Much of the wings' formation occurs within the caterpillar's body, but during metamorphosis, they grow exponentially and adhere themselves to the outer cuticle.
Once this transformation is complete, the (now) butterfly breaks through the chrysalis and emerges wet with crumpled wings. It clings to what's left of the chrysalis as it pumps hemolymph (insect blood) through its body, basically inflating its wings. After about an hour (depending on surrounding temperature and humidity), the wings harden into a rigid structure that enables flight. The horny butterfly takes to the air, eager to migrate and to mate.
Two weeks later, Gavin pays a visit to the boy's house bearing one small gift. His bruises have faded and broken bones are mending behind plaster casts. No hard feelings between any of the parties involved. Gavin sets a small cage on the boy's bureau. He points out the tiny green chrysalis attached to a twig and tells him that if he listens quietly and closely enough, he just might hear traces of the song of migration - a tune three thousand miles long.