The Butterfly Effect

Not sure about the flap of a butterfly's wings causing a tornado across the other side of the world as the chaos theorists have it, but this red admiral had an effect on me.

It was attracted by the blooms of ivy outside my back door. I was very close and focussing on its eyes. When I looked at the pic on screen I noticed the beautiful scales on its underwing. The underwings look quite drab to enable the insect to blend in with its surroundings. Up close they're beautifully vibrant.

Life does imitate art. I immediately thought of Klimt's The Kiss. A butterfly kiss maybe? Then the orange hat of the boy in Georges Seurat's Bathers at Asnières, it is one of the few parts of this painting exhibiting his trademark pointillism.

I used to chase butterflies with a net when I was child like Nabokov but was always careful not to damage the 'dust' on their wings.