Butterflies

The butterflies (in my stomach) are still fluttering, mind bogglingly; they came to me during the night of the storm and although by day they mostly rest and leave me in peace, by night they have a party and I am left feeling all jittery in the morning. I have a sneaking feeling that this nocturnal agitation, and subsequent unease in the mornings, may have something to do with the novel I am currently reading, about a man whose twin is a schizophrenic and has just been sent to a high-security asylum-cum-prison for hacking off his own right hand with a jagged World War II pocket-knife in protest against Operation Desert Storm.

According an article in The New York Times (23/01/96), the reason for ‘butterflies in the stomach’ is that the body has two brains: the familiar one in the skull and a lesser known but vitally important one found in the human gut. I prefer the explanation given by a Blackfoot Indian to a student of butterfly symbolism: “You know that it is the butterfly who brings us our dreams – who brings the news to us when we are asleep. Have you never heard a man say, when he sees a butterfly fluttering over the prairie, 'There is a little fellow flying about that is going to bring news to someone tonight.'? Or have you not heard a person say after the fire burns low and the people begin to make up their beds about the lodge, 'Well, let us go to bed and see what news the butterfly will bring'?”