A windy day on the Danube. It reminds me of the föhn in the Rhine Valley. Mild, with a certain wildness in every gust. On the shore among the stones, I spot a butterfly. It seems to me as if it can no longer take off because of the air current.
I pick it up to bring it to a sheltered spot among the plants. As I hold it in my hand, I realize it is dying. Its wings move; it wants to fly. It can’t anymore. Its breath is palpable across the surface of its skin. The small body moves violently up and down.
Can animals feel fear of death? It seems to me as if the butterfly is in a struggle, a wrestling between here and there. Between life and life. I shape my hand into a bowl and take the butterfly with me on my walk. I want to support it in this struggle.
At rhythmic intervals, a sequence alternated: a fine trembling, intense breathing movements, attempted wingbeats, and stillness. Exhaustion, relaxation. I try to convey calm to it, the certainty that it is good, that this step out of the body is beautiful. Already lived through—from egg to caterpillar, from caterpillar to butterfly.
I hum it a melody. A confidential closeness arises. The last breath. A reverent moment for me. Now it has gone. Life has been breathed out. I’m happy for it. And yet I’m sad never to see it again. Like this, in this form.
I pick it up to bring it to a sheltered spot among the plants. As I hold it in my hand, I realize it is dying. Its wings move; it wants to fly. It can’t anymore. Its breath is palpable across the surface of its skin. The small body moves violently up and down.
And if a butterfly fluttering its wings in Brazil can trigger a hurricane in New York—as the founder of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, put it as a memorable line for his new insight in the 1970s—then I wonder what “unpredictable changes” these last wingbeats, this final breath, this loving encounter might carry within them.
“Even the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a hurricane in Texas.” With this image, meteorologist Edward Lorenz made the emerging field of chaos research, as it were, popular overnight in the early seventies of the last century.
It stood for his observation that minimal disturbances in nonlinear systems can lead to drastic, unpredictable changes.
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