The Pyre Chapter I. Ring.

Back in September of 2018, Brazil’s oldest natural history museum, caught fire. This fire ripped through most of the buildings, and in photos against a night sky, large swathes of bright flame bloom high above the old buildings. Inside, entire collections of memory were being swallowed up in this blaze, butterflies and other insect collections, shells, taxidermied birds, and perhaps the most devastating - recordings of indigenous languages being spoken were completely lost within hours. Scraps of paper with hand written notes and illustrations rained down over a mile away, blown by the roaring winds generated by the fire. I remember hearing about this happening in real time while driving through the darkness of a lonely midwestern road, the radio on, hearing a woman speaking with devastation in her voice about the loss to our collective memory keeping. I remember thinking : my heart is this pyre too, filled with these butterflies. I could feel her grief from across the sea. I could fe