Learning to Fly

(“Learning to Fly” happens to be one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs and I thought this title appropriate when writing about a newly hatched monarch butterfly.)

Yesterday, I let neighbor kitty, Leo, out and he immediately leapt from the porch and went after something in the nearby rhododendron. I looked over the rail. It was a newly hatched monarch butterfly!

“No, Leo!” I shooed him away, grabbed my camera, and commenced to photograph this beautiful creature’s first movements … the slow spreading of wings, the careful movement of its whole body as it attempted to crawl from the bottom of the leaf.

“Raoww aowww.” I turned to see Leo with a chickadee. For crying out loud, in those few minutes of watching the butterfly, he’d grabbed a bird and wanted me to see.

“Nooo, Leo, not one of the pretty, little birds!” He came and rubbed against my legs then went back to the spot and ate the entire bird but for two feathers.  A cat will be a cat. I can’t be mad, and I can’t dwell on it. But what a juxtaposition … one thing comes into being and another leaves this world. I returned to watch the butterfly.                    

Imagine wrapping yourself in a nice, cozy cocoon, going to sleep and waking with an entirely new body. Imagine trying to move a strange arm or wing; something totally alien to you; trying to move your whole body for the first time.

Once you were a long thin creature with head, eyes, mouth, and legs. Now you are totally transformed. How do you finagle this new body? How does it work?

Each step is a struggle. Every wing beat is learning to make these two appendages work. Each movement is getting accustomed to a totally different shape.

If I was really ambitious, I’d write this as a children’s story … or maybe an adult story. Hmmm … a story for older people, that’d be interesting.

Oh, this is funny – I have one children’s book written but need illustrations. Now I have one done with photos and need a written story … kind of along the line of “The Ugly Duckling” with the transformation into older wisdom/crone-hood.

Our early years are spent learning what others try to teach us … fitting into society.

As we get older, we come into our wisdom and find our own ways … We learn to fly for ourselves.

I don’t quite have my finger on the story.

Today’s challenge is having so many creative ideas. My brain is on fire and the flames are roaring after being unambitious the past few weeks or more. I guess the Muse is trying to see if I can stay focused. So many ideas are flowing! I want to finish the photos from the past few days first. I never got back to the last batch.

Perhaps this is a lesson about focus. I too easily bounce from one project to the next making it longer to get anything fully completed. I’ve been in a dry spell and now I’m inundated once more with words and ideas.

576. Dear Divine Presence; Thank you for showing me (repeatedly until I “get it”) the need to focus on the project at hand. I waste time and energy letting my mind run wild with other projects or worrying about what I’m not getting accomplished. Better focus will help me get things done and maybe I wouldn’t have so many uncompleted projects.

And this coincides with me sometimes feeling like a butterfly going from flower to flower, never staying with one for long. Yes, I may come back to the same flower another time, but when I return to a project (like a painting) I didn’t finish, it takes some time getting back into the groove of where I left off.

Hmmm, as for learning to fly? I’ve gone through many transformations (or rites of passage) as I’ve grown older. I’ve fallen to the ground, stood back up. I’ve spread wings, gotten them clipped. Grew bigger ones, different ones.

Now I am transforming again …

Oh, I almost wish I could have a recorder tied to my head, so all these ideas that flood through me I could talk about as I’m doing something else. I can’t stop to write everything down. I break the chain of word flow and I lose it. Maybe I should think of getting something like Alexa … no, the thought of being “spied” on by a machine sends shudders through me.