 |
| Hard to plant your eggs in a tire. |
So the cicadas are having an orgy, right? Pop out of the ground, fly around, singing their whirring love song, meet, mate, lay their eggs and promptly expire. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking chitinous nymphal exoskeleton behind, stuck to a tree branch.
The circle of life. Yet the double dose of cicadas in Illinois right now seem to leave the media focusing on their strangeness, the exotic red-eyed bug pageant, while willfully ignoring the larger implications they offer to us. Charles Darwin, prompted by an ancient plow to consider the plowing done by earthworms, certainly saw it, writing: "Man with all his noble qualities, with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system ... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
Does he ever. The cicadas are not exactly an advertisement for the deep spiritual meaning of earthly existence. They're here to procreate and die. We are too, more or less. Pop out of a dark place, mature in a moment, flap around, do the deed and vanish — though humans do have midnight feedings and help with homework to kick-start the next generation, which cicadas manage in a few strands of DNA.
The cicadas arrive by the trillions since a good percentage are gobbled by squirrels and trampled underfoot. People populate the earth by the billions to make sure there's a partner for just about everybody. Our gravestones and photo albums and memorial halls barely conceal the fact that we're here for only a little bit longer than cicadas. A mumbled sentence or two versus an eye blink.
This central place that procreation holds in the scheme of existence has to be a real bummer for the childless. They won't like the suggestion that the only purpose of being alive is to pass on your DNA, and the rest is distraction.
Not that I'm saying this, mind you. Don't get mad at me. I don't care what you do, or don't do. It's nature sending this horde of winged monsters to frolic under our noses, reminding us, subtly, of our primary job. I'm just the messenger. Ditto for those who believe their purpose on earth is so their eternal soul can eventually sit cross-legged in heaven, smiling up at Jesus. I wouldn't dream of arguing with you. Which is not the same as saying you're right.
To continue reading, click here.
I feel sorry for Francis Bacon back in 1597. No good windows to close, no central air conditioning! That chirping would drive me to madness, but everyone says that you get used to it. Must be like “dry heat”.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to see or hear a single cicada in Rogers Park. Current temp here is 56, so I think if there are any around, they're still underground. I find the praying mantises in late August far more annoying.
ReplyDeletePlenty of noise and exoskeletons here in the River Forest/Oak Park area, although the crunch underfoot and the buzz overhead vary from block to block, which is nothing compared to the annoyance of bombardment and the inconvenience of armed thugs knocking one's door down as described by Antony Beevor in his all too graphic "The Second World War." I only recently heard the age cohort I share with President Biden and ex-President Trump named the "Lucky Generation." Yes, lucky for us born some 80 years ago in the U.S. or Canada or Mexico; not so lucky for those drawing tickets to London, Dresden, Berlin, Nanking, Nagasaki, etc. Nor for those nowadays headed to Ukraine, Gaza, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Some cicadas live a little longer than others; some humans a bit less.
ReplyDeletejohn
There are some columns about which I’d love to hear Mrs. Steinberg’s views.
ReplyDeleteA real bummer for the childless? Not so much. Not everyone desires kids, Mr. S. My father was the fifth of seven brothers who grew up poor and struggling, in the Chicago of Prohibition and the Depression. Then he went to war, and came back with what we now call PTSD.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I do have a lot of nostalgic memories of growing up in the suburbs--backyard croquet, going swimming, riding bikes everywhere, playing in the new houses. But on the whole, my kid days and my teen years were not happy ones. My old man inflicted a great deal of physical, psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse on both me and my kid sister. And I clearly remember the day, while in tears after yet another whupping, that I vowed I would never have kids, and repeat the whole miserable process. I was ten years old. The buck stopped here.
Regrets? None.
Similar childhood. But I had kids to prove I could break that cycle.
DeleteOnly thing I would have proven, by having kids, would have been becoming a similarly lousy parent...a father, rather than a dad. Hell, if I got pissed at furry feline children, just imagine how I'd have behaved with human ones. So I made sure it didn't happen. One method...advocating for bodily autonomy.
DeleteMust have been rough for your Mom too, Grizz.
DeleteNo hugs or terms of endearment, at least that ever I witnessed, once I turned five or six. After she became a widow, at 82, she rarely spoke about him, except to say that he'd been a good provider and a good earner. Had I penned her biography, I would have called it "Sixty Years of Servitude."
DeleteEchoing Clark St. about not seeing or hearing any cicadas in Rogers Park so far. I'm okay with that.
ReplyDeleteI'm okay being childless, too.
It looks like there's a typo in the Darwin quote. Should it be "*has* penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system . . ."?
So, last Thursday I'm in Evanston, pushing Dad in his wheelchair around the back gardens of his assisted living facility, and what I quickly recognized as a flying cicada came lumbering into view, flying straight at us. It passed right over Dad's head, bonked head-on into my chest and fell to the sidewalk, sitting there stunned and clearly wondering what the hell just happened.
ReplyDeleteTo say that they're slow-moving and harmless is too polite. I can only describe them as the dumbest insects in nature, waking up in big winged bodies that they clearly have no idea how to operate, then mostly just sitting around pushing their buzzer for Room Service and waiting for a mate to show up. Those that do decide to have a go at flying will stay in the air just long enough to either crash into something or get eaten by a bird. If there is a Life Lesson to be Learned here, I don't want to know.
I don't worry that I am childless. If everyone who ever lived procreated, we would have either crowded ourselves off the planet, or really fucked up the gene pool. Maybe both. I like to think that I'm playing a part in this saga.
ReplyDeleteMr. S, how exciting that you mentioned Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita". It is one of my all-time favorite books. If I may add that it was not so much written "under Stalin" as "under Stalin's nose," which might explain why it was banned in the Soviet Union for decades. Anyone who hasn't read it may have trouble understanding how significant it is to understanding today's EGD, which is brilliantly written and worthy of that elusive Pulitzer. Ride that roller coaster with your hands up. We cannot live in fear of the descent and must never lose our sense of humor.
ReplyDelete"The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! "
-Mikail Bulgakov
One of my favorite books.
Delete