The Butterfly Collection of
Miss Emily Watson
single channel video
8:00 minutes
2004

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1 minute (streaming video)
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1.

A small advertisement in the New York Times announces the sale of the estate of Miss Emily Watson. Among the items listed under the sub-heading, miscellaneous, personal, is a collection of rare butterflies.

2.

mother, timeless constant son, age 11 daughter, age 12 (the cast of characters in this haunting) a silent house empty but for the three who live alone there or so it seems an otherworldly presence blankets the house muting voices obscuring vision a primordial dirt ancient dust from a previous universe covers ancestral images hanging like mysterious constellations on the stairway wall that leads downward from the bedrooms into the stillness of the world where they live their daylight lives in rooms of unacknowledged hurt there with its places to hide and never seek or need the children play queer games of fantasy twin mothers who live in a doll-house with windows of unblinking eyes looking back at her looking back at her she turns to her sister formless pain it is she who calls to them the boy perhaps more vulnerable in his love is first his older sister, mirrored-like herself proves less willing to begin the systematic exorcism of the great unspoken horror the dead are never discovered and the three live alone here ever-after

3.

There is no mystery to it.

The vision is crystal clear.

It is a crime scene.

A murder.

The television psychic says that the bodies will be found near some water.

She also sees railroad tracks,
and telephone wires,
and a black pick up truck.


His mother,
seemingly hypnotized by the story

nods at the television with recognition

not at the psychic's uncanny gift of vision

but of the horror that is the TV family's life.

The tragedy,
as it unfolds in the hour-long docu-drama
brings his mother to the verge of tears.

It is her great un-resolvable sadness that has overshadowed all else in their lives
and attracts her to the grief of others
like a moth to a flame.

He sits quietly,
observing the scene,
contemptuous of the emotion that she is able to share with these complete strangers.

4.

The specimens are labeled as follows:

1. The arctic sea
2. The colors beyond the visible spectrum
3. Freefall
4. A garden of poppies
5. The treachery of false memories
6. A low grade infection
7. The journey home
8. Aversion to touch
9. The surrender of natural consolations
10. The fruit of a poisonous tree
11. An inconsistent voice
12. Stripped bare
13. The light from the TV
14. A worthless souvenir
15. Self-mutilation
16. The edge of the world
17. Night

5.

A feeling of helplessness overwhelms him.
Nothing is as he remembers it.

He searches for a small photograph of himself and his sister that lies buried in his wallet--one of the few pictures of them together as children.

The picture is badly overexposed and out of focus.

They are in the garden.
His sister is collecting butterflies--mother looks on from the background.

You can hear the sounds of the dead if you listen closely.

6.

Stories from beyond the grave comfort her--she tells her son.
She is waiting for the dramatic conclusion of the murder mystery.
The psychic will reveal the identity of the killer after the station break.

7.

Beloved daughter and sister, the inscription reads.

Her desperate hand
plucks him
mid-flight

from the horizon-less blue sky

and dropping him into a glass jar
twists the lid shut

afraid
suffocating, he calls out

soft noise
a flutter of wings

captured here for you to observe

each in a separate death

rare beauties

The Butterfly Collection of Miss Emily Watson
Rudy Lemcke
June 8, 2004