Butterfly Storm

Imagine. If there were no more uproar and all turbulence were eliminated somehow, we would still fabricate our own discontent, and create our own reasons to be anxious, said Old Yuraq from Nashville as we got off the bus one early evening in Tucson.

That’s terrible, I said. My stomach growled. The bus door wheezed.

Yeah, terrible. But think about it.

Well, let’s get something to eat first.

Hold on, kid, said Yuraq. He tilted his head, stroked his old man beard.

What?

Look at the sky.

And I did. Look. The sky was filled with butterflies.

My face puzzled. Yes, I saw them as the bus pulled in, I said. What’s it mean?

Maybe we died, said Yuraq, and he made a cross sign in the air, like for a crucifixion execution, but he was only joking as he smacked my arm, and blew his Old Yuraq grin wider. He could sure fuck with my innocence.

Stop it, I said. I’m ready for the big lessons now.

Are you Matthew?

We walked into the terminal and I wondered, not the first time, if I had hooked up with the right teacher. Sure, Yuraq could open doors, but we lived an electrical age, and I could open them too, just by waving my hand at the sensor.

Hey Yuraq?

Yep.

If we died on the highway… you know… a smashup with a train or a semi truck, we wouldn’t be here in Tucson, would we? Under a butterfly sky.

You’re right, he said. We’d be at the crossroads still, with Bobby Johnson and his pals.

But what’s with the flies then?

Butterflies.

Christ, Yuraq could be such a stickler. Precision of language, he’d say. He knew what I meant, even though my mouth had spilled it badly.

Okay, butterflies, I said. What’s up?

We’re in the storm, Matthew. And before I could ask him what storm, he walked over to a confection counter and asked for a candy bar. They slid him a big one and he chewed.

Yuraq could be like this. Two months ago, when I met him in Nashville, he was reading a book aloud to a group in the library. I’d stopped by for the bathroom, and heard his voice. It carried bass clefs and flutes and low sparked Indian drums.

What are you doing? I had asked.

Reading. Unless you mean what am I reading?

Yeah, that.

The Book of Storms.

Must admit, that got me intrigued. Hooked even. Wasn’t until later though, after the library closed and we were talking over a coffee, that he told me he wanted to pass on his wisdom to a student, for he was about sixty and sure to die soon, that shit happens you know, and I was maybe twenty three, if my math was right, and still had a long ways to go.

That’s right, he said. You got a long ways to go.

I was new to Nashville and hadn’t quite found a place yet. Yuraq steered me to the cheap motel where he paid weekly, and I’d drop by his room in the afternoon where he’d show me pipes and trinkets he said could be used to blow magic smoke.

Took that with a gain of salt, but he was a good guy and I liked his eccentric wise ways.

After a couple of weeks, we went west to Kansas City for a while, where Yuraq taught me to meditate, and not to be left solo, to medicate too. He showed me some fun mushrooms and the sacred corked water.

We had a few hallucinations, nothing too extreme, and in Tucson, I thought for a moment maybe Yuraq had somehow slipped me another piece of the dream on the bus ride, but the butterflies were real. Everybody saw them. Everybody gasped. It was on the TV in the terminal.

Out in the street, traffic had stopped. Butterflies flew in all directions, stormed all the sadness away. Everybody laughed, brushed the beasts lightly, and hugged each other. A young girl filled her hair with their flapping. Yuraq clapped and danced, and his rhythm was damn good. Music was in his blood.

Too much blood, said a man with a doctor coat. He held me with both arms and told me to keep still.

But I couldn't do that. Butterflies swarmed my head and showed me the mystery of flight. They showed me with their storm that howled its winds along the highways that the path of benevolence leads to beauty, and beauty to a state of bliss, and bliss to a door that opens to a soft squall of kindness.

Give him 20 cc, said doctor coat.

Of what? asked someone outside my corn field of vision, with a butterfly voice.

Precision of language, said Yuraq. Butterflies don’t have voice.

Anything, said doctor coat. He’s fading.

Hardly. My clarity has never been clearer, never so free of bus exhaust. Storms of sins don’t tear my skin. Bobby at the crossroads has nothing on me. Just ask the butterflies. They know how to fly.

Say the names, Matthew. It was Yuraq, his face sad streaked in red.

But I couldn’t think of the names with the butterflies upon me. They waved their beautiful butterfly wings, grabbed me with their little stems, lifted me above Yuraq, an old man with a beard, above his sixty years of flesh, now asphalt sprawled and surrounded by suitcases and duffel bags. They blew me with their butterfly winds over the junction of two roads, one that went south to the margarita beaches of Mexico, the other west to the storm crossed multiplicity of Arizona cities of semi trucks that bring boxes of essential nothingness to the dead living.

Young student, said Yuraq. Come home.

Where’s that ambulance? said doctor coat. The kid’s gonna wander.

Heard that one before. My folks used to say that you need to stay in one place and pay the rent. Play the right tunes, the right games, say the right words, get ahead in the world. Be somebody.

But not me. I could wander for years in storms. I could leave my limbs and drink a cloud of burst rain, put my faith in myself, plunder my possibilities.

Most people know little nothing, and adore the frailest piece of life, suffered as they are by fear of death and failure of imagination, Yuraq told me as we had crossed Oklahoma on the way to Tucson where the butterflies stormed.

Look Matthew, he had said. Look at the storms you shelter and let them go.

Fuck, said doctor coat.

Yuraq was right. Tempests have no place in our hearts. I might as well be a poet or a boxer. Get it out there, put it on butterfly wings. Open the pneumatic bus door and light the desert on fire with your explosions of joy.

A red light spun and flashed, broke my eyes in two. A radio crackled my cranium. It might have been a flashback from the corked water, or it might have been the orbital gospel of butterflies come to sing me to stormy sleep.

Yuraq stood over me, extended his hand. We may live in the electrical age, he said, but we still believe in miracles.

I can do that, I said. And a high pitched trumpet sounded. Oh, it could have been a semi truck horn with a Doppler effect at the intersection of two conflicting paths, but either way it was sweet and caused the butterflies to part like a sea and let me cross.

They didn’t leave me though. They bunched and fluttered at my side, higher and higher, the top of the swarm out of my view, but not out of my reach, living canyon walls to guide me from lost with their wings of colorful salvation.