etg cover page | to purchase

© Marianne Hanson

Butterfly Love by Lucy Aron What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? Click to read Essay Profile of Author Bio of Author from ETG Essay, Late-breaking Developments Author's Comment on the ETG Experience Updated Bio Click to Purchase Send email to the author (The copyright on this essay is held by the author.  For permission to duplicate: copyright@cunepress.com)

Butterfly Love
The fritillary, a pale orange butterfly with dull black spots, fluttered and flailed in the web outside my window as the spider watched from an upper corner. A moment later, a second fritillary appeared and began darting frantically around the periphery of the web. It charged towards the web, then wheeled off, back towards it, and away again. Its dance of indecision suggested a creature suspended between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and self-sacrifice.

Was the second butterfly the mate of the first? And did the frenzied display reflect concern? Empathy? Love? Butterfly love. An absurd phrase. Entomologists assure us that invertebrates do not love. Their physical bonding is devoid of emotional content. They lack the complex attachments of the more highly evolved species and behave, so we are informed, in strict accordance with the mandates of their genetic code. They have no gene for compassion.

Or do they?

If the behavior of the second butterfly was not a demonstration of caring, why didn’t it simply fly away as soon as it sensed peril? Why did it keep gravitating back towards the captured butterfly, as though wanting to rescue it?

I was torn between my own contradictory impulses. Should I just watch, dismayed yet transfixed by the unfolding drama, or demolish the web and liberate the butterfly? Though I knew the spider was merely fulfilling its biological imperative, I identified with the butterfly as it struggled against the lethal strands. I felt a reflexive empathy—weak against strong, victim against aggressor, prey against predator.

Yet I am a predator. I don’t eat red meat or fowl, but I do eat fish. I don’t actually kill fish, but the act of consumption renders me a co-conspirator in their demise. I destroy snails in my garden. I kill fleas and ticks on my dog, and flies and mosquitoes in the house. I rationalize, with a twinge of discomfort, that these are defensive gestures against potential vectors of disease.

Why, then, was I distressed at the prospect of a butterfly’s death? Was I responding not to death, but to the dying process, a reflection of my own anxieties? Or to the butterfly’s gossamer beauty? And which considerations ought to determine such life and death decisions—here and elsewhere? Aesthetics, evolutionary status, abundance, size, charm, service, or entertainment value?

I don’t know. I’ve sought a philosophy which would teach me how to make peace with life’s contradictions, to accept its relentless shades of gray—to cherish rather than allow them to confuse and bedevil me. A philosophy that resonates with my innermost, if incomplete, vision of truth. Appalled by the arrogance, rapacity, and short sightedness of Western culture, I have chosen an eclectic blend of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American thought. Their cosmologies are disparate, yet I’m inspired by the balance they embody—between head and heart, yin and yang—and by their fierce reverence for life.

Still, facile answers elude me. What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? All inanimate stuff of the planet, according to many non-Western belief systems, is as alive as any finch or daffodil. We must destroy in order to provide food, clothing, shelter. But destroy what, and how much? Which animals? Which plants?

In many Native American traditions, one takes from the earth only with a profound sense of gratitude, and always gives back to it. When picking herbs to use medicinally or ceremonially, the Mohawks never remove the largest or healthiest members—those that are essential to the perpetuation of the plant community. And when possible they sow seeds back into the ground from the parent plant. My existence affects the natural world. I can only hope to affect it as consciously and tenderly.

The second butterfly seemed to understand that there was a critical line. If crossed, there would be no crossing back. Ultimately, the butterfly was unwilling to take that final step. Ultimately, I, too, was unwilling to interfere between the spider and its captive. My role wasn’t to judge their private pax de deux but to acknowledge, with awe, the spider’s dance as vital as the butterfly’s to the universal pageantry.

Despite my biases. Despite my unease about what Whitman called "you bitter hug of mortality." Despite my butterfly love.

Profile
I imagine that a wonderful railroad car was traveling through the world and stopped on the side of a mountain because that was the perfect place. For meditation and thought. For planting an orange grove. For listening to coyotes sing in the canyon and hearing the fish swim in the ocean.

That’s where Lucy Aron lives with her husband and two golden retrievers, a library of books, a hot tub, and a garden of snapdragons and purple sage. She is a pianist and can listen to music for hours at a time. She loves Glenn Gould. She is not totally unlike him.

—Barbara Sachs

Bio
Lucy Aron
Place of residence: Santa Barbara, California.
Education: B.A. in music, University of California at Berkeley.
Anthology: Where the Heart Is: A Celebration of Home.
Serial publications: Cleveland Plain Dealer. Orange Coast Magazine.
Awards: First prize Santa Barbara Arts Fund Individual Artist Awards for Nonfiction (1995). Second place in Dog Obedience Class.
Current project: Book about work and community.
Favorite book: A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle.
Beliefs: Quaker with Buddhist tendencies, aspiring mystic, and devout fool.
Cravings: Pavich jumbo flame seedless raisins.

Click to
Purchase
Return to ETG cover page

Cover | Skills | Essays | Travel |  History | Fiction | Poetry | Reviews | Ordering | Books Online