I spend a lot of time musing about the way we use common phrases, and words. This morning the common warning:  "watch your head" has my attention. The other day, some one said it to me, and I couldn't stop myself from responding, "how?"  What on earth, or any other planet, does that mean? 
       Now, because we live in the Internet age, I am going to pause and see if I can find anything about that phrase on Wikipedia...I'll be right back.....well, not a very satisfactory trip...no reason to spend more than five minutes on this search because my point is simply this: we know the function of the phrase; that it is  a warning to be careful because you may be close to bumping that old head on some low hanging branch or whatever.
       It is a useful function. The fact that the words as we ordinarily use them make no sense is irrelevant to the utility of the way they function as a communication.  Off hand it seems paradoxical. If we all agreed that "oo boo oo" functioned as the same warning as "watch your head"  we could use those sounds and they would serve the same purpose. But those sounds could not be re-arranged to mean anything else.
       The words individually have meaning. But as they are arranged in that phrase they produce a phrase without meaning, but with a specific  function. That simple reality intrigues me and I will have to return to play with it after a while. 

I've been reading bits and pieces of fascinating business articles focused on the emerging markets, emerging  international trends, aging, technological innovation etc. etc. etc. as Yul Brenner said so eloquently many years ago in the King and I....funny the drift and flightiness of my thoughts, much like the butterflies in the title.  
          The articles are focused on the positive side of life, the promise of global international trade, the development of jobs for the the young who will be burdened, one way or another with the responsibility of caring for the ever increasing aging population, aging in part as a result of advances in medicine and diet and exercise, etc. etc. etc. The articles are about the butterflies, endless butterflies that go on and on from caterpillar to butterfly to caterpillar to butterfly as generation after generation embrace more and more rapidly  the tech-industrial future that await us.  
          There are other articles that talk about the wasps that seem to go from nest to nest swarming at different times in different places. The angry disenchanted, dedicated to their disenchantment with this world, hungering to bring back a simpler, clearer, less ambiguous authoritarian world of distraction and disorder that will lead them to their dreams of righteousness.
          And then there are the other articles that tell us with the chilling clarity of scientific research that the butterflies and wasps are nothing more than the physical manifestations of our hope and despair, and are both en route to the history books that will never be written, and never be read, as we complete our brief moment on this earth.