Because the day is cloudy, muggy and threatening to rain here in the city, I have opted for the quiet, semi-slothful day at home. (By “semi-slothful” I mean “putting up the cherry jam I made last weekend and maybe making a batch of hummus for the week ahead, but not much else.") Having thus given myself permission to goof off this weekend, I started going through the rest of my pictures from Arkansas and found one I’d forgotten I’d taken. This was taken at the parking lot at the Colony. The butterfly had been slowly opening and closing its wings in a regular breath-like rhythm. It was so still, and moved with such deliberate quiet movement, that I thought it was dying, but after I took the picture it flew away, not suddenly, as if it were afraid, but with the same thoughtful movement, as if it knew that the picture had been taken and it was free to go.
