The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

Hello, this is Jack.

Sometimes life throws you, snatches you out of mid-air, presses you with its grimy fingers,

and hurls you on a new course. You flap your wings, as desperate as

something drowning, as you hurdle from the path you chose into one you will need to find.

You must adjust. And so you find yourself, as I did, with an agenda full of to-do items, one that was already set,

and you can't bring yourself to do any of them.

I was supposed to be writing and talking about butterflies, of all things.

A whole episode, Two Butterflies, an Emily Dickinson poem, Wordsworth, original music. The episode is half created,

and the rest is outlined. All I had to do was return from my trip to Paris, a spring break

flyer to visit my older son, who's studying abroad, and then sit down in my chair and finish it up.

Talk into the microphone for an hour or so, yet another episode to toss onto the pile.

But I must adjust.

Butterflies adjust all the time.

They dart and direct themselves and redirect,

flit and float and fleetly flee and fly. Bigger craft like hawks and eagles can overpower the wind.

They determine their course of action and zoom. Currents and other distractions be damned. Their ability to zoom, to zero in, is awesome. Butterflies don't live in that world. They

moved from one leaf to the next, one microscopic airflow to another, flying as if hopping.

Their thoughts seeming to change mid-flap. They appear to us as erratic, unfocused, prisoners of the

semi-moment. They seem ephemeral, possessed of fragile, delicate wings, beauty that can be

easily destroyed, twitchy, and impermanent. I was supposed to write about these things. Instead,

I find myself thinking about Al.

...