Anchor Points: Butterflies, Desire & Geography
I am on a two months journey following the Fall migration of the Western population of Monarch butterflies and (finally) writing a story that has haunted me for the past decade. A story about tenderness and migration. A story of which I feel only flashes, caught by the hairfull in the middle of the night, from which I wake with restlessness on my tongue and longing in my bones. I am writing an unknown story, a chaotic constellation of points of light calling in the dark, which I feel compelled to follow and struggle against but rarely understand.
I had a vague notion of attempting to trace the journey that got me here, to this particular moment of leaping into the unknown and committing to what calls me. But beginnings are notoriously difficult to pin down--the more you try, the more they slip away. Beginnings like desire: just when you think you are about to grasp it, hold it down, put it in your mouth, you realize you are holding nothing but empty space. In the absence of a beginning, I have tried to thread together some anchor points, which, like a wobbly chain of paperclips, lead to this moment.
It begins with heartbreak. "Begins," understand, out of necessity, because I am fishing around for a starting (again) point. I have always been driven by my obsessions and a deep restlessness. As a child and teenager, I was impulsive, passionate and wholehearted. I cried for paint and craved certain qualities of light. But as I grew older, I grew afraid, anxious, and, ultimately, stuck--mentally, emotionally and physically. Fear, if you don't ride it to the other side, will shrink your world. I know because I let it.
I no longer remember if it was all at once--one fateful morning--or little by little--small accumulating glimpses of recognition-- but, eventually, I realize that my world has shrunk. I feel hard and dry inside. I don't write anymore, I don't get lost, I don’t paint or wake up to watch the sunrise. I just go from one day to the next, purposeless, passionless, afraid and small. The restlessness has dimmed like a heartbeat fading. I try and am incapable of recognizing who I am. I have forgotten how to be me; it wasn't his fault.
I move back to my parents' house for a few months until I find a room on a tree lined street where women give blowjobs in parked cars and men threaten each other with dogs and knives. I live upstairs from a crackhead and next-door to an ancient pitbull named Sheba. Most nights, when I come home, I find my next door neighbor doing trash angels, splayed out on the black bags that take up most of the sidewalk. I sometimes wait for someone to walk by so I can try to persuade them to help me lift him up to his place. Mainly, I try to remember how deep and vibrant and restless it felt within myself before I let fear, routine and comfort drain the color. I try to get that feeling back but I keep fucking my ex, because every bit of his skin feels safe and known and I feel afraid, floating alone in outer space. I read somewhere that if you stretched someone’s skin out it would fit, like a perfect cover, over a bed. I promise myself I will choose courage over comfort. Tomorrow.
I go on a weekend camping trip on the Appalachian Trail with my delightful cosmic friend, K. At night, when we finally reach the campsite and I am drenched in sweat and dirt and basking in the revelation that I would love to be in this state more often, we meet a 7 foot tall author and thru hiker named Skywalker. I ask Skywalker what long trail he recommends for someone who can't read a compass or fight bears.
Two weeks later, Skywalker sends me a book he’s written about the Camino de Santiago, what he calls the "European Divorce trail" and I decide (or acknowledge?) that it is something I must do. I head to REI, discover that I love geeking out over gear and google YouTube videos on the proper way to apply permethrin.
I walk from Saint-Jean-Pied-De Port all the way to Santiago. I meet lovely and strange people. I walk and I walk until my feet swell so much that they no longer fit inside my boots and the mental knots start to loosen. No grand epiphanies (though one night, in an albergue appropriately named Casa de Jesus, I meet a drunken self-proclaimed "Angel of Death" and when we talk about fear and power it feels a little bit like meeting a prophet.) I walk and write, the words flow, the kilometers disappear. I discover for myself something that's been whispered down from generation to generation the world over: there's a special something about walking and writing (or thinking-- I write to think, but maybe you're less dense).
Before returning to New York, I make a detour to Paris to spend time with my cousin and we go on an impromptu trip to Naples. We take a day trip to Capri and find ourselves in Axel Munthe’s Villa San Michele. I stand by the sphinx overlooking the bay. I know I'll keep this promise though I don't yet know what it means or what it is I am promising.
BREAK YOUR HEART, FIND YOUR SPINE
I come back to New York energized and restless. I dream of walking a larger chunk of the Appalachian Trail. My ex decides he doesn't want to see me anymore. My heart breaks again, but in the rubble, faintly at first, I hear my voice. Why or how love and fear came to be so inextricably tied to each other in my life is not entirely clear. I suspect my love was the first thing I felt I ever really had to lose.
Break Your Heart, Find Your Spine, I cover the city in my cris de guerre. Cris de coeur.
FLOATING IN THE FEELING TONES OF FRIDA LAND
I go to Mexico with my mother. I bring a book about the color blue and a red notebook. I cannot stop writing. The words are leaking out, the colors trickling back. I see a butterfly at Frida's house and my mother says she believes, really believes, in le hazard.
I will treasure this moment always, sharing wine and tapas with my mother who reveals something true about herself.
January 9th - Today is the anniversary of the discovery of butterfly mountain, the secret Mexican hideaway of wintering Monarchs. I am so hungover that I can't get out of bed until after the sun has set. Today is also the day I know, the way women know, wordlessly and in our blood, what it is I promised myself in Capri. I must follow the butterfly migration and fight for my story.
I spend the Spring simultaneously collecting signs and looking for excuses. I exhaust myself. I have seen three dead birds, two days apart from each other, there is no going back now. But do I really want to quit my job to live out of a suitcase, on ramen and poetry? I could keep my job, get an apartment, go on dates, get a boyfriend, fall into a routine.
LOOSE PAGES AND RED LIPSTICK
The night before my 28th birthday, I light too many candles and take off all my clothes. I am opening all of my drawers, all of my boxes, dumping everything out. The floor is covered in notes, cards, ribbons, pearls and all the other tiny things that make up our treasures and our lives. I find an old tube of red lipstick. The name has been rubbed off. I begin to draw on myself in fast and violent strokes, smearing, smudging, covering, like a Celtic warrior preparing for battle in a different shade of blue.
I roll around on white pages, depositing red lines and curves on the soft grain of the paper. Resisting the temptation to trace the disconnected contours, I write in the in between:
Did you know that grasshoppers play on the 37th floor
and that neon lights eclipse the stars?
I can see the underbelly of airplanes
reflected in the puddles on the roof
in a row all with their eyes
Not the blue of the little words I keep writing you
I’ll never name another dick or
use lazy words like love,
it couldn't even contain a snowflake.
What I have named, I have lost.
I buy a one way ticket to Georgia, email my boss that I will not be renewing my contract. Then I order a tent and a sleeping bag. I’ve never gone camping nor have I ever surrendered so fully to what breaks my heart. I tell myself I will figure out both of these things on the go.
Less than a month later, my alarm goes off at 4 am, I lace my boots and head to the airport. In my backpack, I carry too many notebooks, a photograph of Federico Garcia Lorca, one of Axel Munthe and one of Alberto Giacometti, watercolors and marbles. It is time to face the bears and the white page. My heart is pounding. It begins.
CHASING BUTTERFLIES AT 4 A.M.
I come back from the woods happy and determined. I contact butterfly experts to figure out the route of the Fall Monarch migration and learn that there are two migrations: all the Monarchs East of the Rockies go to Mexico, while all of the Monarchs West of the Rockies go from British Columbia to overwintering sites in California. Since I have neither a car nor a license and am dependent on bus lines, I decide to follow the Western migration, which seems more manageable.
The truth is that not much is known about their exact route and that the Rockies is a much more permeable boundary than previously thought--there is a lot of overlap between the two populations. I am told to follow rivers and milkweed. I spend days looking for and at maps of milkweed density in different cities along the primary rivers of the Pacific Northwest. I define an approximate route following the Fraser River to the Columbia River in British Columbia, following it East to Grand Forks. From there, I will cross the border back into the US and travel back West through Washington and Oregon, still along the Columbia River, to Portland. I will then go mostly straight South through Oregon and California to go meet the Monarchs in their Californian overwintering sites.
I book a one way flight to Vancouver. It begins again.
Won’t you share your journey with me?
