Unrelated. Here’s an alligator. Alllll eeee gaaaay tor.
At around 1.30am last night, Heather and I turned in on the third floor of a rickety, disused, Pittsburgh townhouse. There are two tiny single beds and an oscillating fan that moves just enough air to make me jealous of Heather’s skin when it turns it’s attention from me to her. The room is orange.
I didn’t realize that last part at the time, actually – we turned in exhausted last night – but this morning, I slowly come-to to birds and orange.
No, last night, I was just aware of weird architecture and a LOT of stairs. We’d worn ourselves thin with one of the best days anyone has ever had.
A fantastic Tuesday.
Yesterday morning, we woke up in a very different third story room: Sarah’s little apartment, in contrast to the rest of her parents’ house, is scattered with posters and paper and clothes and carpet and one kitten filled with enough frenzy that it feels like it’s scattered with Skitz, too.
We slowly roused ourselves and took a Day. A day for ourselves.
We had been seeing signs around town for the Phipp’s Conservatory, and specifically, their butterfly house. I’d never heard of a butterfly house before, and Heather was all excited, so we decided that that was where we’d start. We drove through the (almost) summer air, through a golf course (posted: “Golf Course Drive at Your Own Risk”) and down into the myriad parks that congregate on this side of Pittsburgh, hunting for parking.
Tuesday. Go see Phipp’s Conservatory on a Tuesday. The parking is easy, and the crowds are non-existant. We got to wander the gardens and greenhouses almost completely alone. We caught glimpses of two or three other couples, three or four employees – fleeting catches of company through the leaves and through the paths of the place, the only place where it was even remotely populated was the Butterfly House itself, and even then, it never went beyond about five other souls in the place…
Well, that’s assuming that the butterflies don’t have souls. I hope not, in a way – apparently their Lifespan is perhaps a week for most, and even though they hatch about 330 every Tuesday, they average just over 300 butterflies in the place on any given day. Their little brochure talks about how at the end of the exhibit, they keep the temperature and humidity set for the butterflies until the last one dies – and Heather turns to me and asks “Can you imagine being the last butterfly?” A question that hurts my heart.
It fills me with loneliness, and fills my skull with morbid images of the people on butterfly body patrol, scooping them up with little shovels, having fifty little butterfly funerals a day, or perhaps they are cremated in butterfly bonfires? Or perhaps, and probably most likely, they are thrown in the trash, and in among leaf clippings and paper refuse, there are clumps of faded colour and twisted speckled bodies, wadded up and tossed away.
But the actual Butterfly House was like… like nothing I’d ever seen. It was like we’d wandered in through Jen’s backdoor and there might’ve been a Mystic behind a tree – it was THAT magical. Multicoloured wings fluttered everywhere, fighting the breezes and lighting on flowers and leaves and each other. They filled the air like a b-grade fantasy movie sans the glitter.
The only thing marring the mood was that the whole of the Phipp’s Conservatory contains little hidden speakers, and the butterflies, apparently, have a taste for smoooth jazz. Or perhaps it was HOT jazz. In any case, I think I would’ve preferred silence and the muffled sounds of city-Life and construction – I don’t think the butterflies would’ve minded.
I’m going through the photographs of the greenhouses now, some two hundred +, and I’m realizing that there’s just no way to capture the place without a more concerted effort than I made. The air in the butterfly house was ALIVE.
After we had glutted ourselves visually in the Conservatory, we ventured further into the city in search of food. What we found instead was even more visual feasting. Two cathedrals (one to learning, one to God – guess which one was beautiful on the inside, and which one was air-conditioned) and hundreds of people to watch – we finally got up-close and personal with Dippy and ended up lunching at a food chain, which was probably bad, but one of my favourites (Baja Fresh) which was good.
So, at this point, we were pretty exhausted and very filled with Mexican food. After some asking around, we found that there were no movie theatres within walking distance – and decided to return to Squirrel Hill to see if we could catch something in the dark, air-conditioned caverns of todays movie houses… Shrek II? Mr. Potter?
Whatever would get us out of the heat.
We ended up in a sparsely populated viewing of Harry Potter III, and I was amazed. Right from the opening graphics of the slowly flashing WB, everything was different, and I could feel those slow spinal tinglings as I realized I was watching something beautiful.
Everything that had been missing in the previous two movies: a sense of Magic, a sense of joy, beauty, discovery and awe – had found itself into this sequel, and I’m agonized to hear that this director has decided NOT to do the next one.
And we finished out the day at the Aspinwall Grille. I want to organize a trip with friends… NOW. It has to go up to Pittsburgh on a Tuesday, stay the night after hanging out at the Aspinwall Grille, and then come home. The BEST pick-up band I’ve ever seen plays here. Fantastically different from the last time we were there (only one horn player, different lead guy), last night was focused more on blues numbers and the amazing lead guitar of Craig. A tall black man built like a construction worker with a soulful Jimi Hendrix voice and a blazing guitar style to match. He even did the whole playing behind his head and with his teeth stuff.
My spine just spent the whole day yesterday in a state of wonder and tingle.
So delightful.