My parent’s explanation of the Law of Conservation of Mass tinted my lenses for perceiving the world in a way that triggers responses in me that are comparatively different to most people around me. Or perhaps this was just because of my own understanding of what they meant.
I learned about death through the mail. At the time, my mother was unknowingly involved in all kinds of artistic affairs, the acts of which would sometimes implicate me. On a domestic weekend in the capital, a letter arrived from one of my mother’s colleagues that was addressed to me. Excited to receive my first piece of mail, I opened the envelope as swiftly as I could, not expecting to be launched to the ground by my reaction to what was inside: a live purple emperor butterfly. After recalibrating from the surprise, I called my parents to look at the guest in the apartment. The next few hours were spent playing a chasing game with the butterfly. I would get as close to it as I could until frightened by its luminous colors and wide wingspan, causing me to run to my father for protection. He made fun of me for my fear of the harmless animal, while my mother paid no mind to the games going on.
Finally tired from attempting to touch the butterfly with no success, I laid down for a midday nap. When I woke up, I took a moment to repeat affirmations in my mind to equip myself for handling the butterfly at last. I rose from the bed and entered the living room to look for the purple creature. Not being able to find it, I finally asked my mother where it went. She said it "died".
I put my finger to the glass of the window, pointing to the world beyond our elevation and looked at her with curiosity. She nodded her head. From that moment on I understood this concept my mother titled “death” as the disappearance of something from my most immediate senses, because while I could no longer see or try to touch the butterfly, its existence was in no way less potent or missing from my reality.
Creation, as my father told me, is initiated by bringing inspiring materials to your mouth and swallowing them with passion and intention. I asked how I would know if something is inspiring and he said my lips would signal me so. He denies telling me such a thing ever since he discovered me publicly eating flowers in the way that my lips commanded. He said such behavior was embarrassing and that he could not understand where I got this idea from. Later, I had to learn to add more nuance to my awareness of my mouth’s callings; not to suppress but simply to listen to their pulses upon encountering inspiring substances, to act upon them in a sensitive manner without inflicting too much on any possible perceivers’ well-being besides, if necessary, my own.
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The first lie I ever told was a ploy to catch a glimpse of a tulip patch over the fence. I once said this to someone of my father's culture and they found it amusing, but no American ever has. The tulips were described to me as being flame-petaled. They were barricaded from my view as I stood on the right side of the border line of that weekend’s outskirt house. This instance marked my recognition of a will who’s origins I could not trace, and a good dose of punishment for attempting dishonesty. Though eventually, I was forgiven.
While my plan of climbing over the fence was cut short by a skeptical guard, I still got to submerge myself in the petals’ beauty when the more mature company came back with handfuls of bouquets. My family took some of the flowers home, which became my playing field for the entirety of the plants’ week of freshness. I crawled through them like a serpent that enjoys weaving through blades of grass. I gave them kisses, brushed them against my cheeks, and when they wilted, confidently parted with them. I searched for ruffled shirts that could even slightly resemble their floral flames. And so began my inspired obsession.
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As part of my mother’s business, she was hired to seek out abandoned caves that could be transformed into grounds for heavenly venues and parties by her guidance and the monetary investments of the bald-headed gangsters who hired her. She was immensely successful, introducing the inhabitants of the capital and its visitors to more than just a single dragon to chase for the rest of their life. However, after acquiring years of skills, my mother’s fair and choleric nature could no longer take the curation of beauty under the rule of such old-schooled selfish forces as those of the brotherhood that funded her practice. So, she visited her most decadent masterpiece just once more to retrieve her talismanic white card that she stashed in one of the books of its literary dining hall, walked up its velvet-carpeted staircase and embraced the light at ground-level to close out this eventful chapter.
As the announcement of her resignation spread, people in the capital trembled from the news. The venues started to crumble from the neglect of the gangsters who did not understand the kind of maintenance their castles required, and the efforts that were once facilitated by her. But in just a matter of a few reorganizational months, my mother commenced a new project directed by the bonded will of her contour and talismanic white card.
By this time she foresaw the recursion of something a ruinous fate, like the one by the other layer in the cake. She sensed an urgency to depart from this land, but her friends could not understand. Her prediction was a bit too early. Still, she could not leave before throwing one final festivity; one that would burn to the ground and leave nothing but prophetic ash in its place. Not a single leftover trace.
So, she opened a venue for the celebration of chaos. One would enter through curtains of strung together branches, to discover the main colonnaded hallway. When decorating the space I remember my mother’s screeches of objection to my father’s additions of gold painted trails throughout the room. He claimed it was to give the venue a rich warmth while the cold outside was frosted over in white for half of the year. Despite my mother’s disagreement, they kept it. I thought the gold complimented my mother’s marks of red kisses, red pillows and cushions, to cradle and be cradled. Dark-haired angels flew over the rooms, overseeing the guests as they inhabited the space. In a more secluded chamber, one of these angels was the wife of my mother’s leading partner. When my mother’s prediction started to become more evident, the partner and his wife had to make their presence secret in order to avoid arrest by the oppositional parties who were rising to power in the land. To be able to continue her angelic supervision, the wife was given a red carnival mask to conceal her identity. Some artists took a liking to her look and commemorated her in a depiction as Jesus seated at the final supper surrounded by the other angels, creating an image of odd synchronicity to nearby impending events.
Of course, the venue included a kitchen, which was my mother’s central source for delivering a taste of mmmagic to her guests. While she cared about all of the environmental and decorative components of the place, she felt her collaborators had more of an aptitude than she in those directions. She wanted to guarantee that instead of carrying merely afterimages and memories from the celebration of chaos, that the moment somehow entered the visitors on more subterranean levels. She wanted to touch them chemically and mysteriously. The kitchen became a lab where she and her most trusted chef companions sigilized the recipes of their greatest teachers, for most of whom were inevitably their mothers, until they created dishes that would remind them of a lifespan of adventures.
In the end, with the help of her team, she transformed the grotto into a palace, and by her wishes ensured that every last bit of it was burned. Given my young age, she shielded my eyes from the sight of flames. She ripped me from the roots I had started growing and on the way to our next destination took me to the land of orange tulips, to calm me slightly in this transition.
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