The monarch

c c    The Monarch    d d

      There was a little green monarch chrysalis hanging on the pole of one of the insectaries. I found it the day when Meg was there.

      A week later I got a letter from her.

      “In the weeks to come, your monarch chrysalis in the insectary will be growing dark, signaling an immanent emergence. I expect you too, will have undergone sufficient transformation to also emerge, casting off the remains of an undergraduate perspective, and taking on the form of a taneral scientist. As is an exciting process and one that will make you stronger, more confident, and more at peace with yourself. ”

      After that I went there everyday to check the little chrysalis. Day after day I was waiting for the moment to witness this great transition. Day after day I was hoping I was going through the same process as the little creature in there.

      One day when I finish my observation, I went there again to check. It was after the rain. Everything was wet. I saw something hanging there, but it was empty. It emerged! I open the insectary. It must be in there. I could not wait to see it. I looked for a while and didn’t found a beautiful monarch, but only a little gray ugly butterfly. The wings didn’t expand out normally. The abdomen was distorted at a big angle. I checked once again and was sure that it was the only butterfly inside.

      I was struck by the huge contrast between the expectation and reality. But the little poor butterfly flew to my hand and stopped there. The touch of his legs was gentle. Only think positively, Qiuqiu. So I thought I should encourage him.

      “Hay, we were on the same boat. And you did it first. It was great. Don’t worry. You will live on. Just wait and see.”

      But the butterfly flew to my face and stopped on my nose.

      “What do you want to say to me?”

      He flapped his wings. I almost sneezed. I carried him out and put him on the top of a grass. He flew up for a second and fell down. He struggled and flew up again and crashed down again…

      I stopped here, for a long time, to think how to end this piece. Language seems too pale. Any attitude I add should be awkward. For this true and sad story, there is no end.

She looks like a tree

c c    She Looks Like A Tree    d d

      Two months passed. My experiment stared to get better. Or I started to feel better of my experiment. I didn’t know which way it was. But that did not matter.

      One day I went out to the site alone. I was in the army suit. The normal clothes probably won’t last longer than a week there. It was pretty noisy. It must be another group of hunters, I thought. There were a lot of “hunters” there during that time of the year. Many of them were in the same suits as mine. I did not understand in such a civilized country, why hunting still exists. Do they really feel good when they pull the trigger? Of course most of the time they were too noisy. A real hunter would never do that. They made sound from half a mile away while I was in my insectaries. I always cursed them getting nothing. And I heard some kids. There were kid hunters too. I could not believe their parents let them go killing at such an age.

      But it was not. It was a group of retarded children, at least from what I can tell. Two adults were leading them into the woods. I guessed they were the teachers. The last child in the line was running around. And he saw me. He had cross-eyes.

      “Look! She looks like a tree!” He shouted.

      Then the whole group turned around and looked at me. “Oh yes, she looks like a tree.” The other children repeated his words. They came to me. And touched my insect net with their little hands.

      “Are you going to catch a lot of mosquito with this?”

      “Yes, I am.” I said.

      “My children, she is a scientist.” One teacher said.

      “What is a scientist?” A little girl asked.

      “A scientist is a person who catches mosquito and watches them.” The teacher said.

      “Yes. I catch a thousand mosquito everyday.”

      “Wow…”

      The kids all looked at me. I was so proud at that moment.

      She looks like a tree. This was the best praise I had gotten for my life.  

A day without rain

c c    A Day Without Rain    d d

      It was July 3, a day before the national day.

      The sun was floating fire, burning every inch of my skin. But I felt cold from inside. The sun was too bad for the damselflies. They kept dying in my hands.

      I got into an insectary for some males. I needed twenty of them for experiment that day. It was around 10:30 and I knew Meg was coming. If she had left right after breakfast, she should be there soon. So I caught the damselflies much more carefully than usual, one by one, and slowly put them into the small cage. But I knew I just want to stay there for longer so when Meg comes, she’ll see me through the mesh. I was escaping her eyes.

 

      My hands were slowing down. Time went back to eight months ago. It was a Thursday. I came to the lab after a class. Meg was in her office next door to the lab. My proposal draft sat on the lab table. I picked it up. It was all covered in red.

      As I read it I started to sweat. The words were running and dancing all over the paper. It took me so long to chase and read one. My mind was frozen, seemingly unable to comprehend the meaning of the words. Then I heard Meg came out of her office, passed the lab and left. I was trying to caught her and talk to her. But my body didn’t move at all.

      And then Meg came back again and talked to me. The moment when my eyesight met hers, something pierced into my heart. She was wearing the sunglasses at that time, so I couldn’t see her eyes. But there was something behind the glasses that was so shiny and sharp. I understood at that moment that she was the person who can look into my heart. I believe in this world there is only one person who can do this. She is the one. So there is nothing I can hide from her.

      That night was another sleepless one. I worked on that proposal until morning. I cannot remember how many times I played this song:

      Grow the tear in the heart

      It will bloom a flower of brave

      When you are tired

      Close your eyes

      You will the smell the fragrance

      ...

 

      Until now, every now and then I still feel the eyesight somewhere, looking at me. It still makes me sweat when I want to be lazy or weak.

      So I knew exactly that I was escaping the eyesight.

      “Anybody here?”

      I didn’t answer. I saw Meg checked one insectary after another until she came to the one next to where I was.

      “I am here.” I said.

      “Are you getting the males for dusting?”

      “Yes.”

      “How do you do it? I want to see.”

      “Sure. I’ll do it now.”

      I came out of the insecatry. I saw Meg was smiling at me. But I didn’t look at her in the eyes. I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t pretend to be smiling. I was never good at pretending something.

      “These insectaries look really professional. I love them. See the vegetation inside. They are the most realistic ones I’ve ever seen. I think things are great here.”

      “Yes, they should.” But what I really want to say was “But they are not.”

      I walked to the insectary where I was going to release these males. But Meg caught me in front of insectary No. 7. She padded softly on my shoulder.

      “There is a time that everyone has to go through, for Tom, for Jon and for me.” I was still unable to look at her.

      “The real world is never ideal. You will certainly have to live with all these problems.”

      I felt the muscles on my face distorted slightly. I wanted to cry but have to force myself to calm down, and put a little smile… Things made a strange combination on my face. It must be so wired. I cannot let anybody see this, I thought. She was still saying something but I lost track of that. I turned away from her and was trying all I can to hold the tears.

      “… I am here to help you. Things will change, I am sure. Think positively, Qiuqiu, only think positively…”

      I breathed long when the conversation was over. I went back to work.

      “Only think positively, Qiuqiu.” I said to myself.

 

      Everyone left that night for party, but Meg stayed with me. We went out to the field before the dinner, but not for work, just for fun. Meg was dancing in the cloud of mosquito with her insect net. Her mosquito hat looked shiny in the sunset. Her hair was golden. Her feet tips kicked up a little pinch of sand that made a perfect arch in the air. The arms waved harmonically with the trees. I never saw her so happy, so young. I smiled.

      It didn’t rain that day.

I'm fine

c c    I’m Fine    d d

      The old batteries murmured in the flashlight and made a dim light shaft. I forgot to check my flashlight before I came out. I finished late that day and was to send my damselflies to bed. Nine in the northern woods was as dark as the deep sea. The forest trail looked deep. A night monster was hiding far eating up the light greedily. My eyes cannot find things to focus.

      I was not afraid of going out at night. Night is best at covering things, on the face or in the heart. A month’s work, achieved nothing. Fear took over smile on my face. And I was trying hard to hind it during the day. But now it was night. I can finally take a break.

      The flashlight blinked several times and was about to go out. The trail seemed endless. The trees beside it were screaming at a high note. The high tips of them were swinging in the wind as if they were whispering something about me. I wondered were they laughing at me.

      I thought I suddenly heard something behind me, moving, in the woods. I stopped, turned off my flashlight. Fear came from everywhere, penetrated into every hole of my skin. When you don’t know what you are afraid of, that’s the most horrorable time. I didn’t know whether I wanted to turn around to face it. Then the sound moved closer.

      I am a poor man. Whatever you are, don’t come to me please. I said silently.

      A second was like three years. An approaching sound, a beating heart, a fearing soul.

      I don’t know how long I stood there before I finally turned around. The sound was at my feet. I saw nothing like two green bulbs. I knew there was a bear nearby. It was only a toad.

      On the remaining way, the house seemed further. The more I was longing for it, the further it appeared. The darkest darkness comes from nothing, just like I didn’t know why I failed all my experiments and what was sound behind me. I wondered how many times Meg had traveled on such night trail. Did she ever feel fear?

      I finally got home.

      “You are home. We were worried about you. Are you okay?”

      “Yes, I am fine.” 

Island

c c     Island     d d

     A drop of cold rain brought me back to the moment. I found myself sitting in front of an insectary, lost in memory.

      Twenty days ago, it was also rainy.

      I was in the car with Meg, my advisor. When the car got onto the narrow muddy road between the red pines, she put her hand in front of my eyes.

     “Don’t look now.”

     “Why?”

     “We are coming to your summer dream house!” She sounded so excited.

      One minute later she removed her hand. “Here we are. The three bear cabin!”

      “My summer house…” I murmured while I opened the door.

      The first moment when I got out of the car, I was surrounded by a black cloud of mosquitoes. There was no time to appreciate the woods or anything around. We retreated to the house as quickly as possible. 

      The house was very nice. In fact it was like the one in my childhood dreams. Everything was made of wood. The walls are made of whole logs. I don’t know what kind of wood that was. It looks dark. I heard that American chestnut is the best one to make cabin but I didn’t know whether there was any left since the invasion of a bad fungi together with the Chinese chestnut. There was a fireplace with a chimney passing through the second floor and going out. On the chair there was a warm afghan.

      It was getting late before I started to unpack my things. Meg had to leave. She gave me a big hug, and disappeared behind the door. I felt I was her child, not biologically but mentally. The farewell made me sad. Seven years ago when the bus carried me away from home to the real, I wasn’t sad. Months ago when I boarded on the plane to fly across the ocean, I wasn’t sad. I did not even feel anything close to “want to cry” while the man sitting behind me on the plane was covered in tears. I was embarrassed for a little while for my emotionlessness. But now there was something when Meg was leaving. 

      Before she stared the car, I felt an impetus to rush out for a moment. I felt there were so many questions that I hadn’t asked but I could not think of any at that moment. A second or two’s hesitate, she drove out of my sight. A surge of hollowness attacked my chest, eating up my mind until I fell asleep on the bed.  

      The next morning when I woke up, the shaft of morning light shine into my room through the blue curtain. The dust in the air looked like many busy bees. I open the window. It was chill outside. The sky was still pale, like a fish’s belly.

      I didn’t talk to Andrew and Natalie, my field assistants at the breakfast. Frankly I didn’t know what to say. This transition was too sudden. It takes ten years in China for one to have an assistant. And more importantly, I probably knew less in the field than them. 

      We went out to the field after breakfast. I thought it ought to be awkward, going out without really knowing where to start, and two assistants who were waiting for orders. I still didn’t say anything, just started collecting any damselfly I saw. They followed me. I only knew I have to start. It dose not matter on what.

      So I was there on the island.

      It was an island of time, away from past and future. The ocean was called “now”.

     It was an island of mind, away from confidence and support. The ocean was called “doit”.  

        

Summer on Sugar Island

            

 

In dedication 

to the solemn death of the damselflies

and my days and nights on Sugar Island

Prelude

      The rain started to fall on the leaves. It sounded like a crescendo rhythm. “ti—ta—ti--ta”, “ti-ta-ti-ta”, “tititata—tititata”…

      I pulled out the hat of my raincoat, stood up to relax the muscles on my legs and moved the flags to where the larvae were. There must be some magnet that trapped me there in the rain. I had been followed these two Epitheca final instars for the whole morning. Since they came out of the water, they had crawled across the beach, climbed up a cliff and passed the poisoned ivy. They must be heading the forest, probably a red pine, for the most exciting and dramatic moment of their life—emergence.

      Rain poured down. One of the instars found a dead leaf and hide there. The other one—No. 39 in my field book—sped up his crawling. He crossed the narrow pine-piont-trail, which certainly passed any records of how far the final instars travel before they emergence so far. He moved so fast that there was no time for me to move the flags. Half an hour later, he rested in the forest 16 meters away from the water.

      I grabbed my sandwich while still kept an eye on it. I was afraid of losing track of him. There were some times that I thought I lost him but I always found him again several minutes later.

      The rain stopped. There came little sun. I stood up, decided to leave since No.39 hadn’t moved for a long time. I just turned my head and amazingly found that an Epitheca was emerging right in front of me. The soft head the thorax had come out but he was still pulling his abdomen out. This made all my staying in the rain worthwhile, I thought. Then something shined and I heard a little sound. A teneral was waving its wings not far from this pulling one. His wings were still wet and had a color of yellow jade. Looked into that direction, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes—there were probably hundreds of Epitheca emerging in this small area of forest. Some of them were pulling themselves out of exuvia (exuvia are the cuticles where the larvae lived in and the last thing they need to caste off before they become adults), some were drying the wings, some flipping the wings and about to ascend into the air. I suddenly felt I entered a wonderland, the one in Hayao Miyazaki’s film. My mind started to become light and was willing to take off with them.

The afternoon was unforgettable.