Destroying the Beautiful

[This post also appears on The Skirmisher.]

I was feeling sentimental the other night. There was Mozart’s
piano sonata in the background as I worked. Then out of nowhere, a small butterfly
came fluttering into the room. It circled around me as I stared. Tenderly, it
landed on my shoulder.

 

I almost cried; there’s something about pretty small
flying things that touches your heart. The Hindus say dead loved ones come back
sometimes to visit you, and it’s a blessing if they’d come in nice forms, and
not in ugly things like maggots or a small, crawling insect version of Bella
Flores.

 

I remembered many things that night. I remember that line
from a writer I like, about a dream of water and hands and song.

 

I remembered how I’d usually imagine most of Mozart’s music
as they would visually appear in my head—as butterflies that suddenly flutter
from out of nowhere: Mozart begins so simple, for example; there’s just the
whisper of basset horns. As Salieri said in the film Amadeus, “Then
suddenly—high above it—an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a
clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.”

 

This butterfly was that single note. This butterfly was
that oboe, hanging onto me, unwavering, even if I’d try to remove it from my shoulder.
It kept coming back to land again. And again. And again.

 

It would not leave.

 

I looked at the butterfly so sweetly. God’s beautiful
creation.

 

Then I squashed it.

 

Yeah. It’s dead, baby.

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