There is, in the old city, a museum of living butterflies. The glass walls of the Imperial Greenhouse hold them hostage. Among the tropical rot the insects bloom, bright eyes simulated on powdery tissues. They sip sugars through prehensile tongues, careen in choppy orbs. The heat drove me out. At a cafe table—-coffee, chocolate fingers, slate clouds of tobacco smoke—-I sketched them badly, their forms terrific and scarce.
Mark Wunderlich | excerpt from “The Imperial Life of Insects” | Voluntary Servitude