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"god" to lepidopterists ...
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Complete article at following URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/30/CM5E109UDJ.DTL
Butterfly madness
One man's mania for lepidoptera takes him on an endless quest
Sunday, June 1, 2008
During the years when he was an actor, Liam O'Brien was torn. He adored the process of acting, the charge of adrenaline and the unity he felt with the audience. But he had little patience for the life of the actor: the instability, dependence on a director's approval, the constant hustle.
One day in 1996, while he was sitting in his Duboce Triangle apartment, a tiger swallowtail flew into the garden outside his bedroom window. Bright yellow, almost a canary shade, the tiger swallowtail has long, elegant wings with black, smudge-like markings. It's the Vegas showgirl of butterflies, an Erté illustration.
[ ... ]
Speaking of one's passion is difficult, even for someone as chatty as O'Brien. When I ask him to describe the experience of butterflying, its emotion and attraction, he defers to Vladimir Nabokov. Recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest writers of fiction, the "Lolita" author was also, O'Brien says, a "god" to lepidopterists. His close observations and transcendent, acrobatic prose are a bible of sorts to lovers of butterflies.
O'Brien quotes the "momentary vacuum" line from Nabokov - the delight and isolation that butterflying affords the enthusiast - and advises me to read Chapter 6 in Nabokov's great memoir, "Speak, Memory." Later, I open the book and find a description of Nabokov's childhood walk between field and forest, when "the animation and luster of the day seemed like a tremor of sympathy around me."
In another passage, Nabokov gives this word picture of a "pale-yellow creature" atop a honeysuckle: "As it probed the inclined flower from which it hung, its powdery body slightly bent, it kept restlessly jerking its great wings, and my desire for it was one of the most intense I have ever experienced."
[ ... ]
In the 2002 film "Adaptation," Chris Cooper played John Laroche, an orchid thief who goes into the Everglades to poach rare, protected species. In one of the film's best moments he describes to a magazine reporter (Meryl Streep) the hallucinogenic qualities of the ghost orchid. In an old Seminole ritual, he tells her, the root of the orchid is pulverized and then snorted like cocaine, offering an expansion of perception, a spike in one's appreciation of the natural world.
"It seems to help people be fascinated," Laroche says.
It's that level of enchantment, an engagement that goes beyond interest or hobbyism, that comes naturally to O'Brien. Unlike the majority of people, who find comfort in sameness and routine, he's hooked on fascination.
E-mail Edward Guthmann at eguthmann@sfchronicle.com
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