The Butterfly - Waking Life

Today I found a dead butterly - a yellow monarch. It was so in tact I wasn't sure it was dead. I picked it up by the wing. Its entrails grasped to a single blade of grass as if I was ripping it further away from life. They sprang back to its body, retreating to an illusion of wholeness. For one horrific moment I had still thought it was alive. Examining its wounds, it had seemed that someone, out of love or play, a cat maybe, or perhaps a bird expressing failed predatory intention, had pressed it gently in the center, so that it had burst at both ends of its fragile body. Every part of it was beautiful even in death.

My first thought was to pluck its wings from the body. And then a sense of horror came over me. How could I have even thought to benefit so superficially by such a small and exquisite death? Something from within screamed, NO, listen. And I could not bring myself to rip its wings from its body. It seemed an atrocity worse than murder. I dug a hole on the sidewalk turf, and I buried it so that it may be one with the earth.

A few weeks prior to this find I had dreamt of a very large caterpillar, in which I had cut off the head with a scissors and immediately felt sad, and appalled at myself for doing so. For I had ruined its sole purpose in life, to become a butterfly.

*About a month later I came across an injured monarch. What these encounters (or the simple fact that I am unconsciously noticing these things), mean, are essentially what they mean to me in the interconnectivity of the Universe. For example, this butterfly, whether encountered in reality or dreamt about represents whatever meaning I *choose* to place on it, in the same way the Egyptians made a symbol out of the Scarab, or the Dung Beetle. Forming this connection strengthens the personal archetype I've created and imposes the power of myth upon this creature (the butterfly) and through this connection and belief, the meaning of the butterfly becomes more real, so to speak.