winged things
leaf after a pagoda box worm is done with it -image by J It became a winged thing imperceptibly, as a maturing face imperceptibly becomes beautiful. And its wings - still feeble, still moist, kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God, and there, on the wall, instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk. And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness. [From Nabokov's story in Russian "Rozhdestvo", reproduced in Nabokov's Butterflies ] It was actually Facebook that had sent me to find and wipe off the dust from my copy of Nabokov's Butterflies . And as I was reading random parts of the book again, I found the except above. Ah, who else but Nabokov could have written thes...