IRIDESCENT AURELIA

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- CURIOSITY -

Naturalists have collected, categorised and curated butterflies for over three hundred years. Stuffing boxes and cabinets with their curiosities, they ordered and classified their shining Aurelian specimens. This was, of course, at a time when evolutionary theory was hot off the press, and science was becoming exciting.

Yet, the Aurelians were not just a people of science; they were also a people of great feeling. It was their curiosity, their admiration of beauty, their passion and wonder that drove them to search in fields and in forest. And, oh, that moment of discovery - of sighting a rarity. Such a moment was often based on luck, and likened to an epiphany. Take, for example, the feeling of one Aurelian enthusiast, upon finding an Ornithoptera croesus:

“My heart began to beat violently... I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache for the rest of the day.”

— Alfred Russel Wallace

Now, my curiosity is with the naturalists themselves: what made them tick, and how and why they created these beautiful, dusty monuments to Mother Nature. That is my study.

HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS

ONE DAY I MIGHT LIVE IN A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS.

It will be a log house, made of wood.
There will be snow on the ground, and in the branches of the trees,
and a fire in the hearth,
and a book in my hands.

I USED TO LIVE THERE

MONTREAL

When I was six, my family packed all their things in bags or in boxes, and took off to Canada. For one whole year we lived in Montreal, where I made new friends, learnt a bit of French, took ballet lessons, and played in a park that reminded me of a sandpit.

We used to get those orange ice-blocks that snapped into two. Our apartment was on the ground floor, in a large complex of buildings surrounding a small woodland park. Back then the trees seemed so large, and they would scrape the autumn leaves into piles, which were perfect for jumping in. 

My mother bought us a plastic slide, and stuck it over the balcony, to reach the ground. On that same balcony, a squirrel would always come visit us - it liked to eat crackers. My sister was born around this time. 

When I turned nineteen, I went back to Montreal. I visited places that seemed both familiar and strange. I visited that apartment complex again, and everything seemed so much smaller this time - the balcony, and the woodland park. My time in Montreal as a child had become almost mythical in my mind - more of an imagining. Funny to think that it was simply a younger me that stood looking at the same place thirteen years earlier. I felt as if it was a different me instead.