I immediately thought of this (somewhat) famous passage from the Zhuangzi:
“Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering about joyfully just as a butterfly would. He followed his whims exactly as he liked and knew nothing about Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he awoke and there he was, the startled Zhuang Zhou in the flesh. He did not know if Zhou has been dreaming he was a butterfly, or if a butterfly was now dreaming it was Zhou. Now surely Zhou and a butterfly count as two distinct identities, as two quite different beings! And just this is what is meant when we speak of transformation of any one being into another—of the transformation of all things.” (Brook Ziporyn translation)
i love this. i saw you speaking at Amanda's show and this was like a beautiful extension of that. It was SO good to see you on stage. I adore these ponderings on catterpillars and butterflies. Lots of love to you.
“where the first one lives and dies…and then the other one emerges.”
I can not help but to go back remembering the morning I witnessed my wife take her last dying breath. In that instant I broke inside and the essence of myself dissolved into stardust. The immensity and the weight was in my dark intuition that everything, absolutely everything, has changed. That who I was is gone. The metaphor was as if I had been shot by a cannon into the deepest depths of the universe. I was untethered and drifting with one simple yet herculean task before me: How do I find my way home?
In those first weeks after Barbara’s death, I would sit in my living room overcome by this ecstatic state of sorrow, pain , and beauty. My gaze would be riveted to the cathedral window in our living room that framed the sway of sugar maples below a star speckled night sky. My body seemed almost feverish and flushed by the intensity of my tears and gasping breath. I would amplify this state of grief by listening to a particular piece of electronic ambient music ironically (or perhaps not so ironically) titled “When the Earth is Far Away” by Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms. Somehow I found both consolation and healing through the realization and the ritual of this action.
Thank you, Sophie. I am always enchanted by the brilliance of your speculative thoughts and reflections. It seems that one of the greatest gifts of my journey through grief is having great hunger and reverence for all the mystery that has been revealed to me.
Hi Sophie, I woke up this morning thinking of you warmly, inspired and wanting to thank you for the care and attention that you give your audience. (Thank you <3) and then I saw this piece, the first I’ve read of yours in a while and I was so grateful.
“But is it a migration if no single butterfly sees the whole journey? The whole migration spans four to five generations of Monarchs that live, reproduce, and die, along their journey.”
I wonder if the same is true of humans in our migratory journeys. Most indigenous folks have a relationship with ancestors that includes them to be an aspect of self.
Three years ago, I stopped in route from post my own mother’s tomb unveiling ritual, a year after her death, to my then home in British Columbia, in Spokane, Washington, where my jewish ancestors first landed in this country post their migration from Lithuania. There I found the grave of Abraham Wolfstone, my grandfather’s grandfather, and the ancestor who first came over at exactly my age, then 33, leaving behind his entire world, culture and language for the prayer of some dream held here in these lands, a dream he, in his body tomb, would never see.
And as I stood there over his bones, holding that expanse of time between that moment and his moment, I realized that I was the incarnation of that dream that he sacrificed so much for, and in that the past 120 years had been one long drawn ancestral cocoon, and here I was, body to bone, able to whisper thank you to the man for whom I owe so much.
In that instant, of praising and weeping over the bones of my grandfather’s grandfather, did his tomb become a womb, his dream finally realized? Was I in his dream, or he in mine.. we were not the same person.. and will I not face similar insoluble choices in my life, sacrificing for dreams that only my grandchildren’s grandchildren will realize? And is it enough, or rather perhaps, mandatory, that I understand those future ones as ‘self’ so that I garnish the courage and resilience to submit to what is asked of me - if those separate yet so inextricably intertwined bodies, lives, dreams stand a chance?
There is so much to digest in this. I feel everything you wrote so viscerally and wonder at how many deaths and metamorphosis I have embodied in the past thirteen years. Many lifetimes and I am the same butterfly who sang with the morning glories that slithered up my garden fence in the South Bronx so long ago.
I still remember when I learned the monarch migration was 4 generations…and how my mind exploded. Related to How the flowers carry generations both above and below the dirt. For eons. Thank you for your magical words Sophie! Words that weave depth and tapestry and music to these musings of womb and tomb.
I immediately thought of this (somewhat) famous passage from the Zhuangzi:
“Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering about joyfully just as a butterfly would. He followed his whims exactly as he liked and knew nothing about Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he awoke and there he was, the startled Zhuang Zhou in the flesh. He did not know if Zhou has been dreaming he was a butterfly, or if a butterfly was now dreaming it was Zhou. Now surely Zhou and a butterfly count as two distinct identities, as two quite different beings! And just this is what is meant when we speak of transformation of any one being into another—of the transformation of all things.” (Brook Ziporyn translation)
One of my favorite ideas!!! Yes!
i love this. i saw you speaking at Amanda's show and this was like a beautiful extension of that. It was SO good to see you on stage. I adore these ponderings on catterpillars and butterflies. Lots of love to you.
🥹 so happy to know you were there!!!
You know Michael Levin's work? I believe he did the original study of caterpillar memories in the reconstituted butterfly...?
No but WOW looks like so much here!! Thank you
“where the first one lives and dies…and then the other one emerges.”
I can not help but to go back remembering the morning I witnessed my wife take her last dying breath. In that instant I broke inside and the essence of myself dissolved into stardust. The immensity and the weight was in my dark intuition that everything, absolutely everything, has changed. That who I was is gone. The metaphor was as if I had been shot by a cannon into the deepest depths of the universe. I was untethered and drifting with one simple yet herculean task before me: How do I find my way home?
In those first weeks after Barbara’s death, I would sit in my living room overcome by this ecstatic state of sorrow, pain , and beauty. My gaze would be riveted to the cathedral window in our living room that framed the sway of sugar maples below a star speckled night sky. My body seemed almost feverish and flushed by the intensity of my tears and gasping breath. I would amplify this state of grief by listening to a particular piece of electronic ambient music ironically (or perhaps not so ironically) titled “When the Earth is Far Away” by Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms. Somehow I found both consolation and healing through the realization and the ritual of this action.
Thank you, Sophie. I am always enchanted by the brilliance of your speculative thoughts and reflections. It seems that one of the greatest gifts of my journey through grief is having great hunger and reverence for all the mystery that has been revealed to me.
It brings me shivery joy that science cannot fully explain metamorphosis.
Hi Sophie, I woke up this morning thinking of you warmly, inspired and wanting to thank you for the care and attention that you give your audience. (Thank you <3) and then I saw this piece, the first I’ve read of yours in a while and I was so grateful.
“But is it a migration if no single butterfly sees the whole journey? The whole migration spans four to five generations of Monarchs that live, reproduce, and die, along their journey.”
I wonder if the same is true of humans in our migratory journeys. Most indigenous folks have a relationship with ancestors that includes them to be an aspect of self.
Three years ago, I stopped in route from post my own mother’s tomb unveiling ritual, a year after her death, to my then home in British Columbia, in Spokane, Washington, where my jewish ancestors first landed in this country post their migration from Lithuania. There I found the grave of Abraham Wolfstone, my grandfather’s grandfather, and the ancestor who first came over at exactly my age, then 33, leaving behind his entire world, culture and language for the prayer of some dream held here in these lands, a dream he, in his body tomb, would never see.
And as I stood there over his bones, holding that expanse of time between that moment and his moment, I realized that I was the incarnation of that dream that he sacrificed so much for, and in that the past 120 years had been one long drawn ancestral cocoon, and here I was, body to bone, able to whisper thank you to the man for whom I owe so much.
In that instant, of praising and weeping over the bones of my grandfather’s grandfather, did his tomb become a womb, his dream finally realized? Was I in his dream, or he in mine.. we were not the same person.. and will I not face similar insoluble choices in my life, sacrificing for dreams that only my grandchildren’s grandchildren will realize? And is it enough, or rather perhaps, mandatory, that I understand those future ones as ‘self’ so that I garnish the courage and resilience to submit to what is asked of me - if those separate yet so inextricably intertwined bodies, lives, dreams stand a chance?
BTW, your collage is awesome!
I guess Euripedes beat me to it by a LOT! I've been wondering the same thing.
I'm so grateful that you are running again!
There is so much to digest in this. I feel everything you wrote so viscerally and wonder at how many deaths and metamorphosis I have embodied in the past thirteen years. Many lifetimes and I am the same butterfly who sang with the morning glories that slithered up my garden fence in the South Bronx so long ago.
Mmmhmm... delicious.
I still remember when I learned the monarch migration was 4 generations…and how my mind exploded. Related to How the flowers carry generations both above and below the dirt. For eons. Thank you for your magical words Sophie! Words that weave depth and tapestry and music to these musings of womb and tomb.