A Room Called Earth

  “And I’ll stay with you for a bit and then I’ll leave, maybe? That way, you can have time in there to yourself. I’ll come in at the start, so you know that it’s safe. Kind of like in medieval England when both people would drink the wine at dinner just to be sure that the other hadn’t put poison in it or something.”

  “Right.”

  “Ok.”

  “Ok. What do I do with my towel?”

  “Leave it on. Or take it off. Whatever.”

  “Ok. Ok.”

  “Here we go.”

  57.

  The first time I went to the Melbourne Zoo with my parents and they took me into the Butterfly House, I knew that the end was nigh upon us. The unpredictability, and swooping, and flittering about, and transience, and innocence, and slime, and speed, and squirming, and sap—it was all too much for me.

  And I was shocked and appalled by how calm my mother was. Especially given her attitude toward insects in general. She was always asking Dad to kill spiders around the house and spraying insecticide everywhere.

  So I flipped out and chose to wait at the exit for them. The prospect of one of those loose little cretins landing on me, and smacking its body parts against my face, and flitting off at its leisure wasn’t what I had in mind when visiting the zoo.

  I thought that I was going to be placed safely behind railings and outside of lions’ cages. I thought that I’d be able to stand behind immense walls of Perspex in order to look at the fish and the seals. I didn’t expect to be in the thick of it: fending for myself among the people, and the insects, and the animals.

  Because when you’re in the presence of butterflies, you have to keep your body still, and your mind open, and I wasn’t ready for that. I was terrified of killing one of them, or of becoming so excited at the prospect of one of them landing upon my hand, or my arm, that I would clasp at it, and crush it, and harm it irreparably. I couldn’t bear their fragility. I couldn’t trust myself with it.

  58.

  A Ulysses just went straight for his face, and then for his shoulder, and now it’s just sitting there, electric blue and calm. He didn’t even flinch. It’s loving the dirt on his skin. It must be the perfect mix of saltiness and grime.

  I had to get a license to breed the Ulysses and his female counterparts. It wasn’t hard. Scientists and researchers and breeders occasionally come by and visit, and I make them black coffee, without milk, and they take notes, and carry various samples back to different corners of the country in order to help support the butterflies’ native habitats, and their sanctuaries.

  A while ago, there was a fear that the Ulysses was dying out. So I used the opportunity that my grief presented to help create this little world for them. I don’t use herbicides or insecticides, because it harms their growth and disrupts their food sources. There are also a lot of ants. They love the butterflies. They protect their cocoons, and various stages of development, and metamorphosis. Apparently, the butterflies release some sort of sugar, or acid, or whatever, and the ants adore it. They can’t get enough. So I don’t want to harm them.

  The Ulysses is also known as the Blue Mountain Swallowtail, and it can live from a week to up to a year. Larger butterflies live a lot longer than smaller ones. They’re also coldblooded, which means that they can’t regulate their own temperatures. So if the room falls below eighty-two degrees, they won’t be able to fly, or eat, or mate. The ceiling is made of thick glass in order to keep it warm. They like to bask in the sunshine and open up their enormous, four-to-five-inch-wide blue-and-black wings, and hurry about with excitement, or sit motionless, allowing their tiny veins to fill with heat and blood before moving around again.

  Sometimes they just perch on a leaf, and open and close their wings slowly and steadily, as if they’re thinking very deeply. They fly at speeds of up to 12 miles per hour and it can take some time to get used to them, and to their pace, and to being approached, and touched, and chosen by them. They’re quite insistent, in their way. With each other, and with everyone, and everything.

  He’s handling it well, though. He instinctively knows to move slowly, and now there are at least ten butterflies dancing around his body, and casually moving from arm to arm, and leg to leg, to atop his head, and onto his shoulders, and off again.

  Aristotle called butterflies Psyche, which is the Greek word for soul. The myth of Cupid and Psyche was one of my favorite bedtime stories as a child. Although, when I came upon a mythology book that was less oriented around sugar-coating things for children and parents, and more inclined toward grappling with suffering, and malevolence, I learned that the myth of Cupid and Psyche could be super-brutal. Like, Psyche had some serious suicidal ideation issues.

  And in many cultures, butterflies are seen to bridge the world of the living with the world of the dead. The Aztecs believed that the spirits of happy deceased relatives visited those who were still alive in the form of butterflies.

  59.

  Oh, wow. A female Ulysses just landed on his forehead. He’s shut his eyes. Very wise. Surrender, and let her do her thing. The first time she landed on me, I entered a portal and never came out. I’m still in it, I think.

  She has little crescent moons on her wings, which differentiate her from the male. She’s so enormous, and gentle. During our first encounter, she landed on the top of my left hand, and I had to consciously keep breathing and keep my limbs supple as she tested my skin and got to know me.

  She told me about how people think the world revolves around them, and that it’s very funny. As she sat on my wrist, I looked around the room and realized how quiet it was. I had never noticed before. I mean, I’d often watched the butterflies dancing around each other, and feverishly interacting, and fluttering apart, and finding one another again, higher up, and closer to the glass. Yet their silence hadn’t dawned upon me.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I wish I could . . . see what you see.”

  “I wish I could see what you see.”

  “Come here.”

  He’s crying, and I don’t know why, and I’m not going to ask, because it doesn’t matter. He wants to be held and I can do that. That’s what matters. I can hold him, and then I can let him go.

  60.

  I decided to wear a silk dressing gown and slippers to the door because I wanted him to see me in a silk dressing gown and slippers at the door. I tried to smile and it felt like it was overdoing things a bit, so I restrained myself. I even considered chasing after him because I liked the idea of being able to do that. Yet the fact that I considered chasing after him at all caused me to be embarrassed at myself, so I decided to ditch gestures that were at one time used to control something that cannot be controlled. Smiling at or chasing a person can’t change the reality of what a good-bye is or the way that it’s felt for, like, centuries. Eons, even. So let a good-bye be a good-bye, and my life on earth can be whatever it is, too.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the following people and animals for the roles that they’ve played in my life, and in the writing, editing, and publishing of this book: Kristina Andersen, Sofia Andersen, Paul Cox, Casey Denis, Ellen Dutton, Debi Enker, Mala Enker, Ashlen Francisco, Jess Grose, Heather Karpas, Katinka, Sharon Krum, Mary MacKenzie, Sharne McGee, Rabbi, Andrew Rule, Tom Ryan, Zoe Swanton, Alissa Tanskaya, Danielle Teutsch, Totoro, Marika Webb-Pullman, Michal de Willoughby, Fiona Wood, Zero, and Barbara Zitwer.

  And I’m especially grateful for the contributions of Hector H. MacKenzie, who held A Room Called Earth in his heart and mind through every stage of its development.

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  e Ryan, A Room Called Earth