So in the cicada theme of seizing the day, I’ve resurrected an ancient idea of mine: to self-publish a chat-book of poetry. I’m finally getting to the point where I have more than ten (dare I say twenty) pieces that I might show people or read in public. I’ve had a cover design and a title floating around in my head for years, and I finally started laying it out a few days ago.

I’m also working on a slam piece about the cicadas based on some very interesting things I’ve found in my background research. For example:

1. There are several Greek accounts of a person named Eunomos (i.e. Mr. Goodtune), an accomplished cithara player and singer, who was performing in competition when one of his instrument strings snapped. He was miraculously assisted by a cicada, which perched on his instrument and substituted its voice for the missing fifth string, enabling him to win a prestigious victory.

2. Plato and Socrates talk about a traditional belief that cicadas were once, long ago, human beings. Once music was introduced to human experience, though, these men became so enthralled with the works of the Muses that they devoted themselves entirely to music and forgot to eat or drink. Their bodies wasted away. The Muses, to reward them for their devotion, transformed them into cicadas and charged them with reporting on how other humans honored the Muses.

And there’s tons of other neat little tidbits. These hibernating insects go as far back as the Trojan War era! There are sculptures of them in tombs since their strange life-cycle suggested a ressurection … or some kind of immortality.

With my new-found knowledge about their lives – the longest of any insect, but lived completely underground save a month – I am watching them slowly die off. They twitch on the pavement everywhere. It’s weirdly sad. The world around the physical therapist’s office is a small ignored graveyard. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. A man comes out with a trashcan and a broom and sweeps at the concrete. And I can’t help but flinch every time I hear one of those dull little thuds on the windshield of the car I’m in.

Entire lives are being lived out while we wonder about futures impossibly distant for almost any other creature on Earth to even dream of. I put one of their wings in my wallet … it reminds me of very fine gold leaf.

Sigh. They will probably be gone by the time we return from this three-week road trip. I wonder if any of the seven states we’re headed through will be having them during our trip. I found a website where you can get state-specific brood X cicada t-shirts, and the list was longer than I’d thought, so it’s possible.

I wonder if the quiet upon our return will shock us.

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