Cabbage White & Why Gross Was Good

Maybe I like butterflies more than I thought I did. Maybe they're kind of like the color pink, which I detested as a girl because girls are supposed to like pink. There was something I had against girly things all along, and maybe I saw butterflies as girly? As a kid, I was busy looking under rocks for bugs to feed to my turtles or searching where we kept the garden hose for slugs. Caterpillars were neat, cocoons were cool, the cicadapocalypse was exciting, and in general, gross was good.

Maybe it was because most of my early childhood friends were boys. The other little girl in my neighborhood, Laura Lee, wasn't much into wearing dresses and acting prissy, either. Neither of us wanted to be Daisy when we played Dukes of Hazzard down by "the red bridge," a once red-painted three by five foot sheet of metal thrown across the muddy part of the ditch between Laura Lee's and Shawn's houses. Many of our exploits took place in one of three ditches. Maybe it sounds kind of impoverished, but it wasn't.

Image from Endolith's flickr

Maybe it was my early exposure to the LIFE Science and Nature Libraries that whet my appetite for, uh, science and nature. I remember my then sister-in-law Mary, who is now a scientist at Rice, going through my favorites (below) with me, over and over again. There's an audio cassette of our discussing The Universe when I was four or five. I pronounced it like "yoo-nee-vuhws." The series constituted much of my literary infancy, Richard Scarry and Dr. Seuss being the other strong presences.

Speaking of Seuss, I called my sister Kim "Goo-goo" for about ten years because she would read me Fox in Sox, which I'd request by referring to its Goo-Goose passage: "Here is lots of new blue goo now. New goo. Blue goo. Gooey. Gooey. Blue goo. New goo. Gluey. Gluey. Gooey goo for chewy chewing! That's what that Goo-Goose is doing." My word for the book became, in my mind, her proper name. But I'm not here to talk Seuss right now. (However, Goo is gross. And if gross is good, as I claim, then Goo is good. And everything's relevant somehow!)

I picked up a bunch of the oldies-but-goodies from this series at a local thrift store, and I often use images from them in collage (visual or verbal) and as drawing references. For instance, the wasps' nest in my drawing Landscape with Wasps' Nest (below) was informed by a LIFE Nature Series picture.

by Karri Paul

Maybe my enduring interest in "the gross" and my early distaste for "the girly" were inborn, part of my personality — the result of nature as much as nurture. According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which I took in 1991, I'm INTJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging), a type referred to as "The Scientist." When I read the description now, it largely rings true. One part says:

"An INTJ scientist gives a gift to society by putting their ideas into a useful form for others to follow. It is not easy for the INTJ to express their internal images, insights, and abstractions. The internal form of the INTJ's thoughts and concepts is highly individualized, and is not readily translatable into a form that others will understand. However, the INTJ is driven to translate their ideas into a plan or system that is usually readily explainable, rather than to do a direct translation of their thoughts. They usually don't see the value of a direct transaction, and will also have difficulty expressing their ideas, which are non-linear. However, their extreme respect of knowledge and intelligence will motivate them to explain themselves to another person who they feel is deserving of the effort."

I wonder why I didn't pursue science. Making the non-linear and hard-to-translate image/insight/abstraction into an understandable form sounds a lot like what I'm working on via writing and making art.

At a recent Otis faculty meeting, a colleague quoted Frederick Buechner, "The vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness and the world's deep need meet — something that not only makes you happy but that the world needs to have done." Actually, my colleague said it more like this, "Vocation is where your passion meets the world's hunger." I prefer his version. Whichever way you put it, a vocation of that sort is what I've sought — is what I seek. Maybe the seeking itself is my vocation? Maybe the world's deep need will soon find my deep gladness?

Okay, back on track. I think I like butterflies more than I thought I did because I'm suddenly interested in taking a picture of all eight butterflies and moths on the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles's page. It's not as ambitious as spotting everything on their checklist (at the bottom of the page), but still, it takes a long time to get close enough to a butterfly, once spotted, for a halfway decent picture.

So, this (top of post) is the Cabbage White butterfly, a.k.a.  Pieris rapae, European Cabbage Butterfly, Imported Cabbageworm, and Small White. Non-native to North America, it's the most commonly seen butterfly in Los Angeles. It flies over or through my yard a lot, but it seldom lands. Here, you see it on my Sweet Alyssum, where it was still for, like, one second. Then a second one came along and they frolicked off together (below).

As for my butterfly checklist, so far I have: Fiery Skipper, Red Admiral, Mourning Cloak, Painted Lady, and now Cabbage White. These remain to be photographed by moi: White Lined Sphinx, Gulf Fritillary, Monarch, and Western Tiger Swallowtail.

Below: This moth is not on the list, and I'm not sure what kind he is. It flew out of another plant when I was watering and landed on the lime tree. (See the baby limes?) I've been through hundreds of images at this, this, this, and especially this site, but no luck. If you have an idea, please share!