Snowflies,butterflakes.

I realized joy can never be relative. Leafless trees make a city look moribund, but to spot just one evergreen cypress on a street is what joy can be like. A TV show about a community joining hands to feed the homeless on Christmas day, watched by no initial intent, can later manage to move a lot of your inner scaffolding. That is joy. The unexpectedness of snowfall on the most potentially murky day is what joy has come to be, with me..

Butterfly houses always enamored me. A shrine to witness the wondrous transition of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Watch those brittle wings gently struggle to sprout from inside a cocoon. Take the form of an ethereal being, fluttering across the waves of air, swimming in an ocean of carelessness. So, anytime I wanted to block out the ugliness of subjected reality, like the times when you can’t seem to deal with the fact that Christmas can be lonely for some, or that the evergreen cypress (snow-sprinkled) outside your window has to stand in the cold all winter, I imagine a little cloud surrounding me, a cloud of imaginatively invented joy, of self-preservation.

Like a cocoon, it protects me while I momentarily hibernate from that moment. It becomes so easy to close the moment like that, pretend like the moment never befell you, never spun you, never turned you. While I develop wings inside this cocoon to help me lift off this unwanted, unwelcome earth. Like a thousand butterflies, engulfing me, like liquefying skin made of a million wings, a cloud of controlled motion, morphing into my shape, hiding me. Defining me.

And I only found out, on the day that it snowed, that this doesn’t have to be my fantastic vision, conjured by a desultory mind. Snowflakes falling weightlessly, staying afloat for those uncertain yet heavy moments, are like butterflies (both ephemeral). Butterflies made of snow that whirl in concentric flight around me. The whiteness of the snow hiding the murk of the street, of the day. And this time, reality confirmed my little bubble of imagination. It was reality (which we all try so hard to escape, make lame excuses from and cheat with sometimes) that showed me the silken thread woven between her and my imagination. And that was joy to me. Non-relative and simply confirmed.

artiste - Christian Clipart
art title - Butterflies and Christmas snow
image url - here