July Flies

The buzz  is deafening, but no one else seems to notice.

The noise is like electricity in surround sound.  Has it always been so loud?  Was it turned up this loud yesterday evening, or did my ears just become attuned to the chorus of a thousand cicadas ?  I noticed the sky first, dusk was dropping shadows on clouds,  and then I felt the heat.  Hot, but not too hot to hike. I noticed my breath as I walked out of the hospital becoming deeper and slower. My scuffed white Dansko’s led me down the sidewalk that hugs the ambulance entrance to the emergency room.  I always notice the “dropping in” that happens right about here.  I wonder if lots of souls took leave of their bodies here, if  this is a sacred sort of space.  Perhaps there is a tear in the fabric of reality and it’s leaking it’s otherworldly vibrations into this one. Maybe this space holds an  interdimensional opening between this dimension and the one to come after we have had our way with these bodies and shed them as we all will eventually do.  It feels sacred.

I am praying as I walk.  A simple prayer.  Nothing fancy, just your garden variety,  “please free me from unhealthy junk food cravings” kinda prayer.  My breath is  deeper and slower. I notice the muscles in my face beginning to soften, and my body feels light despite my day full of  reckless ingestion of all things sugary.  Deeper and slower.  Softer and lighter.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……this is when I am swallowed by the sound of the cicadas.  Wow, its loud. I try to decide if this would be considered “white noise?”  In a moment I decide yes, it would.  Other nurses are in the parking lot too, walking to their cars, but they don’t seem to be interested in the sound.  Hundreds of paloverde trees line the employee parking lot, and these green skinned trees are where the big flying bugs have taken up residence. I am admiring the vision:  dark blue sky sliced up by green branches holding…. big buzzing winged bugs. I am walking closer. Suddenly I’m not sure if the sound is that of the cicada or something else, so I move closer to investigate, up and under the branches, I get my eyeballs about 3 feet from one.  Yes! It is a cicada, I can only make out the outline, its body, its wings….What?  Before I have time to formulate another thought, a cicada flies straight at my face.  It happens in slow motion. It flies from behind the bug I’m eyeballing, and I see it coming at me, but I have no time to register what is happening, it flies right into my left cheek, and skims my ear. I scream and jump up and down, shake my head to be sure it’s not stuck in my hair, scan myself for pain, or any other strange sensation, and once I realize that nothing is wrong, I start to giggle. And giggle and giggle. I notice another nurse watching me curiously,  but I just shake my giggling head and open my car door, and get in feeling as if I have just been shown something, told something, but I don’t know what.

As I drive down 56st, I notice the noise is still there, each time I drive past a paloverde tree…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.   When I drive pass space with no tree, no buzz. My windows are rolled up, and the hum from the air conditioning fills my ears, but it is no competition for that buzz. As I’m driving I wonder about the cicada and what it symbolizes.  I know it’s powerful whatever it is.  

Rebirth. This is what I learn upon investigation The cicada, or “July fly”,  represents rebirth. I am satisfied with this, it seems utterly appropriate.  My old life is falling away, bit by bit, and I am stepping into another life.  A life full of I don’t know what. I don’t know. I am beginning to, after lots of wrestling, settle into this space. The big, fat, wide open space of I DON”T KNOW. And I’m relaxing a bit more, and letting go of the edges, and I don’t even want to hold on to this. It’s not mine anymore.

I don’t have a choice. I’m gone. 🙂 zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz