Tag: moths

dreams, drinking, food, love, myth, nature, philosophy, photography, psychology

Factoid of 10

Posted on by littleREDelf

so . . . i was tagged. more, i was asked to write a blog with 10 random things, facts, goals, or habits about mys(elf).

this longish little labor of love is dedicated to Virtual Angel and Laura, (thanks for waiting pretty ladies) though i will break the trend by NOT tagging anyone directly for obligatory response and instead invite anyone to tell me one random thing, fact or goal about themselves here as an optional comment.

i will start big and descriptive and then i will try to scale down to some simple trivia.

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1 i am a nature nut. I have a profound respect for all things furry, things with leaves, scales, fins, feather and especially wings. And not just the pretty things like moths and butterflies, but birds and even bats. I have picked up butterflies dashed by car radiators flapping at the roadside. i’ve hand fed a dazed hummingbird after thudding pitifully into a window and was amazed to have it fly directly out of my hand. i have carefully pulled a baby mouse from a glue trap. Out of sheer interest, i took great pride in planting and cultivating a small but beautiful garden and i raised giant silkmoths (Saturniidae) for a year. i have photo documented nearly all of the above in great detail.

This all adds up to the fact that i wish i were a National Geographic level photographer (though i did finish in the 3rd annual Smithsonian contest in the category of Altered Images for a photo of a red tree.) my photos have also been featured in a Maryland Department of Natural Resources Calendar and on a species sign at the Calgary Zoo (for a HUGE bat called a Malayan Flying Fox.)

To remind me of the fragility of the natural worlds (humans included) i keep a little wooden box on my bookshelf. Some would consider it a bug sarcophagus but it has several wings, some full bodies of, and some single panels of glittering, scaly, colorful butterflies, moths and a fully intact dragonfly. I’m not a pinner and framer or a freezer or a killer. None of this Silence of The Lambs nonsense . . . i would just find these and collect them in the field as is. Creepy to you maybe, but delicate treasures to me.

2 i move slow on Sundays. Meditatively so. Or more at, sometimes, i don’t like getting up in the morning. Correction. i do NOT get up in the morning, i typically rise in the early afternoon. Morning for me is 10am to 11am. 9am is really pushing it. Anything prior to that and i am either sleeping, or some kind soul is cooking up a mean breakfast in the kitchen that has roused me and my hunger. Or –  i wake voracious and i am found making a tall stack of pancakes, towering like fluffy beige clouds or a big mess of cheesy scrambled eggs. My Sunday ritual is this . . . Rise late. Drink tea. Eat breakfast for lunch. Stay comfortable. Snuggle with Joe. Read or write of fill my mind and heart with music and art. I am not religious (unless you count nature) but i understand why people go to church, why they don’t want to work, why they choose forced respite on Sunday. as midnight approaches on a Saturday, bringing to close a full day, a full week lived and loved, greeted and embraced, photographed and written about, drunk down and eaten full, documented, cherished and learned from, i see the world as my church and the amazing places, people and things in it, all beautiful, meaningful and deserving of reverence in their own godlike ways. So i need time to digest my universe. And i refuse to work on Sundays. For at least the past 10 years . . . ultimately, i try to live my life as if it were a string of neverending Sundays: i eat when i am hungry, i sleep when i am tired, i work when i need the money, i rest when my mind or my body calls for it.

3 i am guilty of magical thinking. This is because i believe i lead a charmed life. Truly. In a world of random bullshit and utter chaos, i find myself wildly lucky. this works for me in a positive way not a paranoiac way. Many, many positive things, people and opportunities have filled my life. The places i’ve traveled to and seen, the wine i’ve consumed, the food i’ve eaten, the music i’ve absorbed, the people i’ve met, the true friends and the necessary lovers over the years and now, the perfect husband i now cherish. Where does the magic come in? i believe these things have been delivered to me from sheer wishing, from dreams, from asking the universe out right, from applying my mind and my will to them and invariably, from making the good decisions that put me in the places where the magic indeed happens. Oh yeah – and i think faerie folklore has a good bit of truth and i don’t care what you think that means. The boon of art and writing inspired is plenty. i look for signs in everything from placement in time and numbers on coins, to colors worn for effect, from license plates to billboards, from overheard conversations to the small, pinched flower mouths of children. Myths are made daily. i live like that . . .

4 i prefer to eat with my hands. I can even been seen eating a salad like this. Sure – i’ve worked in fine dining for the better part of 16 years and i know how to set a proper table. Even so, i use my right hand like a little claw or a prong, gathering three fingers and a thumb into a quadrant, leaving the pinkie out. i like gently tearing off hunks of cake or gathering a bundle of French fries and bringing the whole of it to pursed lips. i often taste sauces on plates with my fingers first before going in. it doesn’t matter how fancy or how low country the food is, though i will often employ the proper tool at the proper time, i still prefer the direct tactile sensation of bringing food to my mouth with my hands. and as for beverages, i’ll drink wine out of anything, including a bowl.

5 i’ve tried my hand at every artistic arena minus sports. i’ve attacked and completed most ventures with moderate success and still continue to grow in the ones i’ve decided to hold onto. No one told me i couldn’t or explained that i might fail so i tried everything to see what i was good at with joyful abandon. i play acoustic guitar and a smattering of piano, i even tried flute and saxophone. i sing mostly as i discovered it was my best instrument and used it to front a band. i’ve been recorded. i’ve sketched, painted and sculpted. i took jazz for a few months and performed in precisely one dance recital in a hideous pink and black polka-dotted bodysuit with crinoline skirt when i was 15. i still write quite a bit and have been published in small collections that i have entered and/or was editor-in-chief for and won minor educational scholarship contests for writing when i began my college career. Then there’s the photography bit too . . . as previously mentioned.

6 secretly – or maybe not so secretly, i want to sift through my writing and author a book. Poetic prose, nothing too confessional, something probably more at short-story/essay-type of writing. If there were a way to amalgamize the astute natural observation of Annie Dillard, the humor of David Sedaris, Douglas Adams or Christopher Moore, and the delightfully dense prose of Tom Robbins, fluid and delivered in equal parts, then this is the book i want to write. i mean – aren’t we all very busy writing the Great American Novel?

7 Socks. i love them. Especially knee-highs. The longer, more silly, more sexy, more striped, more full of cats and flowers and polka-dots and eyeballs and stars, the better.

8 Being naked. This is my preferred state. And i don’t say that to be provocative. i like senseless nudity. Like, i prefer to be naked cleaning the tub and bathroom tiles (so i can shower after!) or fresh out of the shower composing email naked in front of the computer with a towel on my head. i like doing the dishes naked or dusting the bookshelves on a chair naked or my favorite, stripping down in front of the washer and loading the clothes into the basin naked. Also combine this with 7 and you get naked plus socks – another common state of mine.  Because i dress according to mood and function, it takes me awhile to decide what i’m wearing for the day so if i don’t have to go anywhere on the immediate, i’ll just wander the house naked until i get inspired.

9 Oregon. This is where i want to live. I want to see mountains and water, to hike to camp, to breathe and eat healthy and sleep soundly to the rain. All of this with my husband Joe, in a home with a fireplace and a wall stuffed with books (or a proper library), with a couple (or few cats) and a big porch to watch the birds from, a backyard without a fence to hold back the garden of flowers, herbs, vegetables and lavender, a few comfortable chairs, a bright window to look out while i write and read, and a nicely stocked kitchen and pantry with plenty of cupboard space for us to feed ourselves and entertain the people we adore. There is a plan in place for this eventual utopian move . . .

And last for 10 i give you . . ..

10  My Top 10 List of Tiny Zen

  1. the top of my cat’s head (where smooches go)
  2. Mango flesh – if you want to learn to kiss, eat one, with both hands
  3. the smell of onions frying in butter
  4. the crisp of autumn experienced through an open window
  5. blood orange hot tea
  6. an afternoon nap in a cool, dark place
  7. lavender – in any form, mixture, balm or concoction
  8. a sexy, luscious, viscous red wine
  9. Jasmine Rice steaming
  10. cold champagne in a hot bath

and the invitation is now yours, should you choose . . .

nature

Curioser Still . . . Where Do The Butterflies Go When It Rains?

Posted on by littleREDelf

Rain.

Floridian backlash from the hurricane sent plenty of it this way. Pattering on and off for days. Competing with our conversations and sometimes, believe it or not, our sleep.

Moths clung to the eaves and fluttered like wet leaves against the windows, looking for shelter.

But my most unusual find was a butterfly at nite, flapping weakly at the base of my front door, bedraggled in a spider web, its one antennae twisted, sticky and fused to a front leg until it became one, sending it wheeling in helpless, directionless, flightless circles.

i’ve seen this dark butterfly in the day – first time this season and one i haven’t been able to identify yet. Smoky, scalloped wings with irridescent green-blue powder. When the wings are closed they present bright orange dots.

i took it into the house and it was so tired it sat in my palm as i took a small pair of razor sharp tweezers and separated the leg from the antennae. it sat quite still, opening and closing its wings slowly like a breath, a slow pulse, a heartbeat. Then it waggled its antennae together, angling out as if communicating or tuning in and discovered it could fly.

. . . in my house.

the cats watched it beat towards the bright torchiere lamp in the living room and i quietly dicsouraged their chase. i caught it and went out side where it sat still in my hand for a few minutes and took flight again, resting against a high window until morning. As soon as the sun warmed things – it was off again to meet the day.

i always wondered where such delicate things could hide while the rain and wind tore through the flowers and trees. They hide under things – leaves and awnings with their wings clapped up tightly, waiting it out. Sometimes they are tattered to bits of confetti like all those tiny dances of death i see in the road beating furiously across stretches of two-lane country roads only to be tossed into the updrafts of passing trucks and cars, creased into radiator grills, dashed against hot pavement. You wouldn’t believe how many of them i see. How easily i pick them out from fallen leaves, newspaper, fast food bags, litter.

How many scraps of wings i find and save . . .

Today Zoey and i were driving to take in some lunch and photos in Annapolis. We stopped the car 20 yards out of the driveway and rescued an Eastern Painted turtle crawling directly in the path of the road. i held it gently by the midsection of its shell and began carrying it to a safe field. It quickly struggled and kicked against me as if to swim away, scratching the palms of my hands with meaty claws – cool and strong. But we saved it from the possible cars or the wash of storm quickly approaching.

Funny how the creatures most flitting, fast and delicate and even those lumbering, slow and sturdy in seemingly impenetrable shells – each are fragile in their own way.

There is always something larger than yourself, different and differently abled.

And we all need a safe place to rest out of the storm . . .

books, health, nature, photography, writing

Curioser Still . . .

Posted on by littleREDelf

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“Maybe there really are girls the size of pinkies
with hair the color of the darkest red oleander blossoms
and skin like the greenish-white underbellies of calla lilies….”

from I Was a Teenage Fairy by Francesca Lia Block

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i have spent a lot of time in diminutive states this Summer. i have been smallish and pale and worried and heartbroken and dragged through frightening dreams.

i have been “burning branches of synaptic fire, surf(ed) the serotonin swells, while the dark heart is dawning, and cuts the wound that nothing quells” as one of my favorite songs goes . . .

i have begun things and ended them and reconsidered them and rebuilt them after tearing them down hair and skin and nail and bone. i took some teeth from them too because they scratched at the blades of my back, looking for the places where the wings protrude.

my delicate green luna caterpillars caught some strange withering illness and died before they slept in their own blankets. still – i have several coccoons from the others. strange, tattered, dark scraps of curled leaf and fur and silk. not much for photographing. not until they hatch in May.

i am coming around again. i have recovered something and have begun writing and taking pictures again.

but i’ve been down the rabbit hole and into the pool of tears, you see.

and i have also, been taking advice from caterpillars, as the story goes . . .

“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I–I hardly know, sir, just at present– at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that? ” said the Caterpillar sternly.“Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain MYSELF, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis–you will some day, you know–and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice; “all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.”

“What size do you want to be?” it asked.

“Oh, I’m not particular as to size,” Alice hastily replied; “only one doesn’t like changing so often, you know.”

“I don’t know,” said the Caterpillar.

Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.

“Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Alice: “three inches is such a wretched height to be.”

“It is a very good height indeed!” said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

“But I’m not used to it!” pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of herself, `I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!’

“You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

nature, weather

wings and things

Posted on by littleREDelf

ahhh what a gorgeous day.
77 degrees, no humidity, a cloudless sky
four hours of sleep the previous nite
high on adrenaline and life,
and a field of moths and butterflies . . .