realize.
yesterday i watched a fly die. it was strange. he crawled up in front of me on my desk and tipped over. he stayed there, off kilter, one wing in the air the other under his side until i flicked him off the back edge of my desk. he seemed so big, sitting there dead on my desk. much larger than the pesky nuisance i would have considered him had he been alive, buzzing around my head. somehow his death made me realize how real his life was in a way i never could have had he been his normal buggy self.

sometimes i have moments like that--realizations of how incredible the world and life are. strangely, many of those moments involve insects. lying on my back on the grass, looking up at the trees thinking that this must be what a beetle sees. standing in the dark face to face with a hovering fire fly the summer I first discovered them. finding two beautiful fuzzy, black & white, striped and spotted caterpillars crawling their crazy crawl along a fence post. i don't care about the science of insects, about how their lives work biologically. but the facts of their lives amaze me.