Metamorphosis
A frog pond, filled with little frogs.
Frogs exist, whether we hear them or not.
Humans have to learn how to be human.
By the time this paper arrives in mailboxes and stores, people in some parts of the country may have begun to hear the chorus of frogs that assures us that spring is coming. But most places will still be deep in winter. The frogs know this, and they have nothing to say. Not yet.
Fast forward a few months, though, past the thawing of the ponds and the outpourings of lusty frog song, which can be deafening to those who wander close, and past the equally prolific extrusions of eggs out of frogs and into ponds — fast forward past all of that to the moment when those eggs have hatched.
Now. Imagine a pond in the middle of spring and the middle of the country teeming with life, roiling below the surface with little black jobs zipping to and fro. They seem to be made up of nothing but big heads and slim, powerful tails. Tadpoles. Pollywogs, if you will. Or, if you are in Honduras and trying to fit in, …
The Long Song
Midwesterners literally watch the grass grow; can tell you the age of a stretch of asphalt by the hum of their tires.
The first KFC is located near Versailles, Kentucky
It’s no accident that some of our nation’s finest neurotics bought Prairie homes
The Prairie houses that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in the leafy Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago abide by a principle known as “compress and release.” The entrances and hallways of these homes are tight, cramped affairs, often with low ceilings and few windows. Wright’s goal was to compress the visitor so that, upon entering the living room, he could achieve an orgasmic release; your standard-issue field guide to psychoanalysis can tell you more (it's no accident some of our nation’s finest neurotics bought Prairie homes). Wright’s exteriors likewise played on the illusion of the prairie’s flatness. The profile of a Prairie house is almost two-dimensional, allowing it to blend into the Midwest's pencil-thin horizon. Actually step inside one of these houses, though, and you’ll discover a startling degree of depth.
Oak Park is also a favorite stomping ground of Ratboys, the Chicago-based indie-rock band …
Nabokov's Butterflies
A lepidopterist’s passion for Pugs, Satyrs, and Blues
His eye for detail and towering intellect led giants in the field to crave his approval
He fell for the Magdalena Alpine, the world’s only all-black butterfly
He wrote great novels, too
At the breakfast table recently, my partner Florence was reading the parlor game known as "The Proust Questionnaire." She put one of Proust's questions to me: "What is your idea of perfect happiness?" What came to mind was Nabokov's reply to Simona Moroni in a 1972 interview in Vogue: "What is the perfect walk for you?" asked Moroni. Nabokov replied, "Any first walk in any new place — especially a place where no lepidopterist has been before me. There still exist unexplored mountains in Europe and I can still walk 20 kilometers a day. The ordinary stroller might feel on sauntering out a twinge of pleasure, but the cold of the metal netstick in my right hand magnifies the pleasure to almost intolerable bliss."
That Vladimir Nabokov was deeply enamored of butterflies and moths comes as news to almost no one who even knows his name, though many misconstrue this attraction as somehow symbolic, …
