The Color of Butterflies: A Novel in Progress
The story of Kim Net and Jamie Burroughs
“What was first written on nothing but scraps of paper in the Edina County Jail continues its metamorphosis. The Color of Butterflies continues to grow, continues to be written, and unfold its wings from its intial state within the chrysalis. The first 140 pages was written on newspaper clippings, mental health and drug addiction worksheets, and college-ruled paper with dark flexible ballpoint pens and colored pencils. The Color of Butterflies wasn’t planned but was rather something that blossomed naturally from one of the darkest places imaginable — from the abyss, from the bottom of the Golden Spiral. The story was about color trying to break through the infinite shades of darkness and the trauma of a lifetime to bring love, light, truth, and belonging. Whether it serves as a metaphor, analogy, interpretation, philosophical discussion, spiritual experience or just a much-needed dialogue of mental health is neither here nor there. What truly matters here is the essence of estrangement, the etymology of the word nostalgia, the nuance found after breaking from the constraints of black-and-white thinking, and discovering and reconnecting to your own personal history from which you have been exiled.
The Color of Butterflies began inside the institution, a place that lacked any color — a place where violence and depersonalization were enforced to break one down to nothing but a faded negative of what one used to be. The Color of Butterflies go on to illuminate the new age digital hippies within the darkest raves, the alleyways filled with the forgotten, the rooms of those in recovery seeking a life of sobriety, the universities, starving artists who care less about the money, revolutionary youth of Generation Z, and the teenagers who lost their innocence too young within the insidious margins of the suburbs they had become stuck in. From life to life, generation to generation, emotion to emotion that creates an ocean, heart to heart. My name is Kim Net. I found the book, then I found myself.”
There are two seemingly parallel stories that run throughout the book I am writing. The first one is about a young woman who suffers from manic highs and devastating crashes due to Bipolar Disorder. This woman is heavily addicted to methamphetamines but is an artist first and foremost. She consistently photographs the beauty and color found within the world around her, no matter how dark and desolate her life may be at times.
After one of the main characters leaves Pittsburgh for a day with her best friend to travel to Ohio to photograph the long-abandoned Cleveland Aquarium, she discovers something that only lends itself to the unpredictable course of life and Carl Jung’s ideas on synchronicity. After walking into the aquarium, stepping on decay, a whole galaxy of colored paint chips, and hypodermic needles, and moving through the rays of light jutting out from the cracks in the dilapidated ceiling, this young woman, in a stream of her own consciousness, reflects upon the memories that this time capsule holds. She photographs the clash between beauty, decay, and mother nature with her best friend by her side. They then zigzag through twisting, blue-glassed hallways filled with black mold, asbestos, and abandoned exhibits that once held aquatic life. Upon finally reaching the courtyard of this long-forgotten sea of a grave, this woman discovers a story that was left to never be found, titled The Color of Butterflies. This woman’s name is Kim Net.
From this point on, The Color of Butterflies becomes deeply entangled in Kim’s life as she tries her best to navigate through the uncharted waters she has found herself in. Her constant guides are her camera and the unpublished book, The Color of Butterflies, which she found on that fateful day in the abandoned aquarium. She embarks on a journey of self-destruction, love, addiction, mental illness, intellectual discovery, estrangement, and eventually self-transformation. You are by Kim’s side as she visits multiple institutions in our society. You witness Kim come to terms with her feelings of abandonment and her attempts to reconnect with her mother, who left years ago due to her own mental health disorders. There is nuance in what she learns, with the overall message being that we are all too human.
The other narrative that runs alongside Kim’s journey is that of Jamie Burroughs. Jamie Burroughs is a successful photographer who is middle-aged with a loving wife and kids. After many years of treating his body and mind with love and care, he collapses. His life is now marked by a lack of direction and uncontrollable feelings of grief associated with losing a loved one. Jamie spent his life putting himself in the most dangerous places imaginable to chase his passion for being a photographer who captured things that meant something to him. He also put himself in these dangerous places as a byproduct of his unaddressed trauma. His recent acts of self-harm, propelled by suicidal thoughts, drugs, and alcohol, are symptoms of the trauma he has harbored his whole life.
Jamie Burroughs picks up a photojournalism opportunity and travels to an unknown town located somewhere in Maine. This town becomes a representation of the murky depths of consciousness itself. It is an ocean, and the universe is a breathing, living organism. Every step he takes in this town confronts him with Freud’s studies on the uncanny and the past he is haunted by. He ends up having his own guide, a guide he has had a relationship with for longer and shorter than he could ever possibly know. Jamie says at one point, “Time is a flat circle.”
In Jamie’s part of the book, we explore the basic architectures, labyrinths, and foundations of the psyche. Pages spiderweb into discourse, examining the meaning of art, the psychology and science of color, Michel Foucault’s book The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Sylvia Plath’s poetry, and the vision of butterflies. We travel up and down the various spiral staircases of the mind and journey to the heart, love, and beauty of all things.
Even though this book I am writing is fictional, it is one of the most personal and honest creative projects I have ever worked on and possibly one of the most important. I believe the best art is honest art, and that is always my goal: to be as honest as possible. Kim Net and Jamie Burroughs are very much extensions of myself. The abandoned aquarium at the beginning of the novel, where Kim finds Jamie’s unpublished manuscript or document, The Color of Butterflies, is a place I have actually been. I remember when I was 16 years old, photographing the abandoned aquarium that once existed in Cleveland, Ohio. With my love for photography just beginning, I felt the adrenaline of dangerous exploration pumping through my veins, naive to the dangers that could have possibly lied ahead. I remember falling into the grips of depression and addiction not long after.
I’ve spent years reading philosophy and about the artists I love, enjoying the intellectual pursuit, only to realize there is no singular Truth to be found (I still read regularly and very much enjoy it). Yes, my addiction towards the end led me to the darkness of incarceration, and that is where this story’s origins lie — where The Color of Butterflies was formed, and where the pen was originally placed to whatever scraps of paper I could gather.
Currently there has been 200 pages typed up.
Today, I am over two years sober and have a life that is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. I live with my beautiful partner, Hayley, who has truly made my life blossom. We have collaborated on A Blue Pink Cloud, and I am forever grateful for her. She is my love, my best friend, and a very talented poet herself. I continue to write, take pictures, and grow as a human being who is the furthest thing from perfect. If there is a singular Truth, then I believe it is Love.
Thank you.
