Bird eat butterfly world
2023
Asbestos Art Space
Helsinki, Finland

A couple years ago I saw a bird eat a butterfly and it ruined my life. I saw it happen by some bushes in my backyard. The bird was a white wagtail, a favorite of mine; they’re jumpy and charmingly snobby, confident in their smallness.

Imagine my horror when on the way to Alepa I spotted one, and as I looked down in admiration saw half a butterfly in its beak. The bird was shaking its fuzzy marble of a head, trying to separate protein-rich body from nutrient-less appendages. Half of the butterfly’s wings already lay flat on the dirt, between me and the violence. As I lingered, a breeze picked up and pushed them toward me in awkward sharp tumbles, with every lurch flashing their hue, a color I can’t for the life of me remember, maybe blue, or orange.

My cue to leave, chased by a perverse tumbleweed. I felt vaguely ashamed, and wished I hadn’t witnessed the villainy, the death of beauty/innocence/ornament/hope. The words ‘butterflies seem so small to me now’ kept repeating in my head as I walked to the store, floating along in my melodrama. I bought some beer and went home a changed woman. Diagnosis: severe tendency to anthropomorphize, and symbolism-induced exhaustion.