Vortex

I'm staying busy. Vortex busy. 

Lord Byron said THE BUSY HAVE NO TIME FOR TEARS. Ovid, a Roman philosopher who lived from 43-17 B.C. mused BE BUSY, AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE SAFE.

Projects have always saved me from my darker self in life's tougher moments. You would not believe what I have accomplished in the last two weeks. I designed my sister's save-the-date postcards, cleaned out my art closet, shredded stuff, threw away stuff, sewed a dress, completed the mending, made a gift for someone special, went on Friday AND Saturday dates with Greg, and pounded out a considerable dose of angst on the stair stepper and Samson leg press. Don't get excited, my legs are still as scrawny as ever. My point is that life is irresistibly engulfing and I am thankful for how much there is to do.

One of the things I threw away from my art closet was a Smithsonian magazine I'd saved since 1996. A BYU classmate had given it to me because it had a feature on dragonflies, and everyone knew that I loved dragonflies. (Unfortunately, the magazine didn't list photo credits, so I am unable to name the photographer for the above photo.) Anyhoo, I loved dragonflies so much that my first email was dragonflygirl2@juno.com, I decorated my home with dragonflies, and I even wore a dragonfly cardigan. (Now I'm into bees, but that's another story.) Unearthing this dragonfly photo post-crisis reminded me that there is power in being busy with good things. It also reminded me of a Cecil B. DeMille (film producer and director of the Academy Award-winning The Ten Commandments) quote I wrote in my journal nearly twenty years ago. This is his recollection of a summer day in Maine spent lazily drifting in a pond:

"One day as I was lying in a canoe, a big black beetle climbed up into the canoe. I watched it idly for some time.

"Under the heat of the sun, the beetle proceeded to die and its shell became dry and brittle. Then a strange thing happened. The glistening black shell cracked all the way down the back. Out of it came a shapeless mass. There gradually unfolded iridescent wings from which the sunlight flashed a thousand colors. The blue-green body took shape and left the dead carcass. It sailed across the surface of the water, going farther in a half second than the water beetle could crawl all day long.

"Before my eyes had occurred a metamorphosis-the transformation of a hideous beetle into a gorgeous dragonfly.  I had witnessed a miracle. Out of the mud had come a beautiful new life. And the thought came to me that if the Creator works such wonders with the lowliest of creatures, what may not be in store for the human spirit!"

I believe this. I believe that God is real and that he allows us to wither, as it were, like water beetles in the hot sun because we emerge as something better and more beautiful. I also believe that while we are in the Dead Beetle Phase we can stay busy within our shiny black confinement until it's time to crack the shell open and start a new chapter as dragonflies. I believe it is a considerable amount of work to change from a crawling nymph to a gossamer-winged aviator. Most of all, I believe it is worth it.

Photo from Smithsonian, 1996, p. 75. Caption written by Richard Conniff. Photo caption: Configurations of smoke blown around a dragonfly in a wind tunnel show how turbulently the air flows by the insect's flapping wings. The vortex created over each wing can exert the uplift of a miniature tornado.

Random dragonfly trivia: The largest dragonfly existing today, Tetracanthagyna Placiata, is native to Borneo, where a fossilized specimen had a wingspan of 24 inches.