Planets, Butterflies, And Bullshit

A few years ago I started doing a childlike thing which is not childlike at all. Annually, I gather up a Monarch caterpillar (or several). I’ll keep the critter(s) in a jar (supplied with tasty milkweed of course) and watch it/them grow. Caterpillar to chrysalis, chrysalis to butterfly. As soon as it emerges from the chrysalis it flies away; carrying with it my best wishes. Every step of the metamorphosis is as complex as a symphony, as beautiful as the night sky.

There is nothing anywhere more optimistic than a butterfly’s first flight.

Reality is good for you. Turn your head from the manipulation machine in your pocket and allow yourself to experience it. The two dimensional simulacrum is a trap; a hollow and bleak shadow of actual life.

That’s a long introduction to what I was doing the other day. I had breakfast with my butterfly.

I woke to find this year’s caterpillar, named “Constantine”, missing. Mrs. Curmudgeon had seen it breaking free of its chrysalis and had gently moved it from its jar to a perch outside.

The transition from chrysalis to butterfly is not a fast one. It’s a struggle. I had time to pour myself a cup of coffee. Coffee in hand, I went to join my friend.

I sat in the hot morning sun as its wings unfolded, spread, and dried. I sipped coffee and enjoyed our wonderful planet. I’ve done a shitty job maintaining the landscaping. This means I have a bumper crop of wildflowers. The air was rich with their scent. Perfect for a hungry new butterfly. Also a boon to many other creatures. Bright yellow goldfinches flitted about. Red robins hopped across my feral lawn as if it were trimmed suburban perfection. Honeybees busied themselves on the unkempt weedy edges. A raven was calling in the distance. A tree I’ve been meaning to cut into firewood rattled with the hammering of a woodpecker.

The butterfly, tired from the struggle to emerge, rested. So did I.

The butterfly doesn’t know my name. It doesn’t know anything about humans. I cared for it for three weeks yet I am still irrelevant to it’s life. This is as it should be.

The night before I’d been grumping about yet another piece of propaganda. It bothered me and frustration still percolated through my head.

A recession was once defined as two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. A simple mathematical form. Then, in a pointless irrelevant motion, a new definition emerged. A recession is now defined as only a recession if the regime in charge says it’s a recession. Thus, language drifts further from rationality. A decline that’s first non-existent, then transitory, then caused but the ruler of another nation, then good news, and now not within a new definition freshly hewn from the aether. So too with other words. A “vaccine” is no longer a thing which provides immunity. A “woman” is no longer a thing an infant pairs with the word “mama”. They simply declared that a recession is not a recession if they say it’s not. Why is there always a “they”?

Of course it’s irrelevant. Buy a can of beans and top off your gas tank; you know it’s a recession. Why lie about it?

And indeed why did care about being lied to?

I recall a few years back someone somewhere redefined “planet”. Pluto, the smallest, most remote, and weirdest of the planets no longer fit the definition. This pissed people off.

I have never cared the name of a celestial object. Pluto exists as it is, where it is, more or less beyond our reach, utterly unaffected by the overheated hive mind of monkeys on the third celestial object that was still called… by the monkeys… a “planet”. After some level of angry remonstration, the definition was revisited. The definition was reworked to match what people memorized in third grade… thus making the monkeys happy again.

Why get pissed over the letters attached to the thing slowly orbiting in the far regions of the solar system? The planet neither knows nor cares. I chuckled at such foolishness… yet hadn’t I fumed at the words attached to the economy? They could call it “recession” or they could call it “happy-fun time”. What difference would it make?

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Words written in 1594 by a man smarter than I. The context wasn’t exactly congruous to my own situation, but clearly he was onto something.

I thought about an old story involving overly emotional teenagers. I thought about Pluto, which is or is not a planet and doesn’t give a shit what you call it. I thought about my frustration with a ruling class that confuses words with reality. A map is not the territory it represents. Best to let it go.

Then my butterfly flew away.