pensquare

We here in the southwest are experiencing a very rare and (in my opinion) vastly underappereciated natural pheonomena lately. Due to wetter-than-normal conditions in Baja, Mexico, millions of butterflies are migrating north.

Most people don't notice it; if I were a poet or a cartoonist, I'd make a series about watching folks go about their every day activities without realizing they're surrounded by butterflies. I didn't see them immediately, either. In doing all the things I do in a day, I recall seeing a couple, but never remembering seeing one just a few moments earlier, and thus not sensing anything out of the ordinary.

But then I had some time to sit around and do nothing. And there they were. All of them. All the time. I understand they'll continue north as far as Washington. They fly on, stopping at night to mate, until they die. I've tried to take pictures, but they're so fast and so small it ends up looking like bad amateur landscape photography.

A friend of mine named Brook knows a guy on her street named Manuelo. Manuelo paints traditional Mayan designs on canvas in his front yard. He's always a little detached, like he's trying to hear something in the distance. We went to see him a couple weeks ago.

Brook: Are those chickens in your yard?
Manuelo: Si. There are four of them.
Brook: Where did they come from?
Manuelo: I think the rain brought them.

I so desperately wish I had that kind of mystery around me. Talking to Manuelo is like talking to an ancient Greek; he's so aloof, but *genuinely* aloof. Not Harvard-Law aloof. You know?