In which I label the season

The cicadas, still loud, plentiful and annoying, are starting to die.  Every day on my deck I find fifty or so lifeless, leg-up bugs that spent 99.9% of their lives underground sucking on tree roots yet made enough noise in their .1% above ground that my head will still be vibrating when they return in 2024.

I found out something interesting about this breed a few days ago.  I was out for a walk in my neighborhood when I heard a loud, shrill buzzing ten feet or so ahead of me and saw a cicada flopping around on its back, unable to right itself, sounding like a chainsaw.  So I did what I've done a billion times in the last month-I brushed him with my foot so that it could turn over.  And that's when I saw that it was missing its head.

If you had asked me what cicadas had in common with chickens, I'd have guessed that they taste relatively the same when deep fried.  Or that they make way too much freakin' noise as soon as the sun comes up.  Add to the list: they both freak out and live on for an undetermined amount of time when they lose their noggins.

Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, I went outside to water some flowers and as soon as I did, I was overcome by a odor of rotting insects--or so I thought--hundreds of them, all piled together somewhere within the range of my nostrils.  I had to find where they were and get rid of them.

I wish I had not.  My first inkling that something wasn't right arrived when I looked at the foot-long space between the house and the AC unit and did not recall rocks on that part of the ground; and then I saw them moving--tiny, rice-grain size "rocks"--millions of them.

Maggots.  Gamboling upon the rotting corpse of a unfortunate opossum, which, by my completely unscientific process of inhalation, had been there for at least a few of the past 90+ degree days.

It was one of the more unpleasant things that I have ever seen.  I went back inside and debated what to do.  There was no way that I was going to deal with the carcass myself, but should I do something about the maggots?  What gets rid of them?  I thought about bleach, but thought it better not to introduce that to the freon that might be wafting about the AC unit.  Water?  If I drown them, where do they go?  Do other maggots come to feast on dead ones?

In the end, I chose to do nothing.  This morning I decided to call the city, which does not deal with dead animals on private property.  Fortunately the association that we live in does.  I told the gentleman who took my call to make sure that he warns whoever gets the shortest straw to stuff his nasal passages before venturing over here.

By early this afternoon my morbid curiosity took over and I had to take a quick look to see how much worse it was than yesterday.  Turns out I couldn't have been more incorrect; just about all the maggots were gone.  It still reeked, of course, but the poor, skinless, late opossum was all by his lonesome.

The demise of the cicadas and the opossum, combined with the fact that every time I watch the news or log on to the Internet it seems like all I read about are people dying in all sorts of strange and imaginative ways, has me thinking that 2007 appears to be the summer of death.  I even heard a news report yesterday saying that there have already been a few heat-related deaths in Chicago, which reminds of me of summer 1997, when they were dropping like flies.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Ordinarily I would think this rationalization to be a bit morbid, but I can explain it quite simply: ever since I found out that I am going to be a father at the end of this year, I have become much more aware of mortality--my own and that of every other thing on this planet. 

I'm guessing that this is somewhat normal, so I'm not all that spooked by it, though if you should see me hanging out in cemeteries and watching Night Gallery marathons, please feel free to shake me out of it.

I expect it to pass.  Should it not, I may have to buy a new wardrobe.

 

Walk on

There are moments when I find it embarrassing to be a human being, because I want no one to think that I am capable of the behavior of others.  For example, this whole Paris Hilton thing.  Why is it such a big deal?  She is quite possibly the largest waste of DNA ever, and the media is going apeshit because she has to spend a month or so in jail?  I'm sure that any of the hundred or so people who have been exonerated of crimes that they spent more than ten years in jail for are following this story closely.

What a waste of time.  Poor spoiled little rich girl has to be held responsible for something she did.  My heart, it breaks.

Apparently, cicadas have Internet access and can read, because ever since I accused them of being dumber than George W. they have been at it non-stop.  Everything I read about them said that once the sun goes down they clam up, but for the last two days they have been making noise 24/7.  Last night at around 2 AM I thought the belt on our central AC was getting ready to snap because I could hear a high pitched squealing until I realized that the AC wasn't running.  As I gravitated towards the noise at the back of the house I realized that it was cicadas, gyrating like it was high noon.  Must have been no-cover night.

I am on the back deck as I write this, noticing the two bugs that keep flopping over onto their backs, no matter how many times I right them.  One is missing a wing and quite clearly is not going anywhere until he meets his final reward here soon.  There are a few other late ones lying about as well., but there are enough flying about above me that the din is covering up some of the noise from the jets that pass over as they make their final approach to O'Hare.  If I stick my fingers in my ears only a small portion of the noise goes away.  This is as loud and persistent as anything outdoors that I can ever remember.  And when I look up, they are still everywhere, hundreds flying in among the trees.  I can only imagine what it must be like for people who are terrified of bugs this summer.

End of cicada-palooza, for now.  Today marks the fifth anniversary of the death of my father.  This day is like any other except for the realization of just how fast time passes whenyou are not paying attention to it.  To think that five years have passed since one of the irrevocable lines drawn into my life has passed simply blows me away.  It doesn't seem possible.  There isn't a level of sadness or sorrow that comes with this day, just a little bit of bewilderment.

Today is no different from the 1726 days prior; I think about him every day.  I don't think about how he died.  I think about how he lived.  I think about how I lived when he was alive, and I think about how I have lived since he died.  There are few things or processes in this world that I find difficult to put into words, but the feeling of how one deals with someone who was always there suddenly not being there is just about impossible to convey.  It is intensely individualistic, and if it hasn't happened to you yet I don't know how to tell you about it.  In the month or so after my father died, I talked to a lot of people who had also lost their fathers, and they all pretty much said the same thing, something along the lines of "yeah, I know what that is like."  And I realized that indeed, this happens to a lot of people.  My father was only a dad to three, but since I can't imagine a father being any other way than mine was, when I hear about someone else's father dying I automatically think that they have lost someone who was just like mine.

I don't think that death has a Doppler Effect.  You never hear it fade out as it moves away from you.

(As soon as I finished writing that last sentence, the cicadas stopped for five seconds.   It was completely silent.)

The only times that I struggle with the idea of my father no longer being alive is when I get caught up in the aftermath of life here on Earth.  If I could have any question answered, I would want to know where he is.  I am not completely bound to my existence by faith.  Sometimes I believe in Heaven and feel that my father is there, and other times the scientist in me is convinced that life is but a random series of events and that we are all destined to spend eternity in oblivion.  I go back and forth and find this pendulum to be moving faster and faster as I get older.  I know that my father still exists in my mind and in my heart, along with the minds and hearts of many other people, but I wonder where his mind is; what happened to all his knowledge, where have his feelings have gone to?

My father poured his heart and soul into his family, and I can't believe that when he died that all went away.

I am currently reading a novel by Philip Roth entitled Everyman.  It's about a man nearing the end of his life, and since I am only a little less than two-thirds of the way through it I am still unaware what the significance of it is.  It's a great metaphorical title, obviously, because one way or another, we are all Everyman.  I get that.  I have for quite a long time.

My father's death turned out to be a motivating factor for me to examine my life and decide if I was truly happy with where it was going, and after some time thinking about it I realized that I was not.  I would like to think that I would have come to that conclusion even had my father lived.  I will never know.  In the last five years I have become a completely different person in that I have jettisoned the things that were sandbagging my psyche and as a result I have experienced many things that I had thought were not going to happen to me, the most significant being marriage.

After I got married, I realized that if I examined my life next to my father's, there was only one thing different: he had children, I do not.

Well, we've taken care of that issue now too.

We are going to be parents in December.  The true ramifications of all this have not hit me yet, and I am to the point that I don't think they will until I see our child for the first time after its birth.  People tell me that this is normal, so I am not that worried about it.  I've spent a lot of time around children for the last twenty years or so.  I am ready for this.  We are ready for this.

So in about six months, I too will experience something that my father did, the awesome responsibility of bringing another life into this world.  He won't be here to witness it, but since he lives on inside me and others our child will know him as well as they could if he were still physically here.  I will make sure of that.  I am looking forward to my child getting to know all about their grandfather.

In five years, when my father has been gone for ten, our child will be almost five.  I try to picture what life will be like then, but I have no way of knowing what it is going to be like.

Six years ago, if you told me that I was going to lose my father ina year and to try to imagine what five years without him was going to be like, I would have had no idea.  I suppose I would have said that I would be just happy to have survived it.

I (and we) have done a lot more than that.  It is a cliche, but it is indeed true that life goes on.  Amazingly we have preserved and grown stronger, fortified our lives and our souls and continued on towards whatever destiny the fates have in store for us. 

Life without my father is not better, because that would imply that we are all better off without him, which is highly ridiculous.  It isn't worse though, which kind of surprises me.  And of course, it is surely different.

Whatever power and influence that my father still has over me will increase when our baby is born, because that will be another person who will know who he is.  He may never be able to hold his grandchild, but I guarantee you he will be present in its soul.

My ramblings about my father become more metaphysical with each passing year, so I must have faith in some sort of value of existence beyond life on this planet.  I do believe that one day I will lay eyes on my father again, and that we will spend time together.  I'm not even remotely ready for that day, and that is partly because he prepared me to want to live out this life until I am satisfied with what I have accomplished.

He was the same way.  I know that on the day he died, my father had absolutely no regrets about the way he lived his life.

I have no regrets about the way he lived it either.

I don't remember '73 or '90 being like this

I'm about to go insane, if I am not there already.  Stress?  Nah, you kidding me?  I haven't felt stress in a long time.  The Cubs?  Nope, past that too.  World strife?  There's a naive part of me that always feels that no matter how crazy the people who run things are, it will all work out.

Cicadas?  BINGO.

I cannot believe how noisy it has been the last few days around here.  We live in a subdivision that wasn't here seventeen years ago, so if I walk outside and down the street I won't see a single cicada.  However, our back deck faces a neighborhood that was there seventeen years ago.

It's cicada spring break, and directly behind us is South Padre.

I was six in 1973 and all I remember is the occasional bug flying into me (which I'm sure caused me to wig out since I was scared of everything until I was about, oh, 28).  In 1990 I remember my then four-year old nephew being absolutely fascinated by the cicadas as they emerged from the ground and attached themselves to anything they could to molt.  I left shortly after the emergence that summer to spend the summer in Iowa City, taking a few classes before my senior year.

So I guess this is really my first time experiencing the cacophony that these red-eyed creatures create.  They never shut up, unless it rains.  Maybe they are like turkeys; when it rains they look up and drown.  Anyway, it starts at sun-up.  The noise is two-tiered; there is a constant scream in the distance that short of sounds like a billion chickens in choir practice (or a motion sensor alarm going off, but that's something perhaps only Mr. Retail would know), and close by there is a rapturous hum of cicadas looking to get their groove on.  It sounds like the crackle that you hear if you stand under a huge electrical tower, except that it starts low, erupts into an ear-bleeding screech, and then dissipates for a blissful nanosecond or two before it starts all over again.

Our bedroom is at the end of the house where there are not any cicadas.  They woke me up this morning anyway.  And they sang me to sleep last night.  They don't make noise at night-I heard them for so long yesterday that the sound stayed in my head until I fell asleep.  I can hear them now, and they aren't making a peep, so my cerebellum must have the capacity for awesome echo retention.

I keep thinking that there is a loose wire somewhere in my house, spewing sparks and live electricity.  And then I remember that this is the summer of the bugs.

It is actually quite fascinating.  Watching them emerge from the ground just before Memorial Day was interesting.  I'd find small holes everywhere along my mother's house, and there were so many shedded skins at the base of the two trees in her front yard that you'd think she piled mulch there.  The little buggers spent seventeen years underground, and I was surprised at the numbers that never made it to full-blown cicada-hood; some never made it out of there shells before they were devoured.  My sister and her family, which includes a small dog (Roo, also affectionately referred to as the "niece-pup") were here for Memorial Day and I think Roo ate 57 million cicadas.  She gained twelve pounds and six chins in three days.  Others died as they tried to shed their skins, and the really unfortunate ones shed their skin but had something go wrong and popped out with mutilated wings.

The ones that made it fly around all day and make noise.  It's a mating call, they say.  There are billions of cicadas out looking for Mr. Goodbar.  I sit on my deck and look up into the trees that hang over the deck and I can see hundreds just flapping around the trees.  Come here often?  Their wings aren't so graceful-they almost tumble instead of fly.

And they're dumb.  Lord, are they dumb.  Cicadas might be the dumbest living creatures that I have ever encountered (and I know plenty of St. Louis Cardinal fans).  If they somehow wind up on their back, they can't right themselves; they just sit there with their legs going light speed but nothing happens.  Eventually they die of exhaustion.  For some reason I find this hysterical.  I've taken the initiative to try to help these inverted cicadas by turning them over, but they are either almost dead and lacking in energy, or they spin in a circle for a moment or two before they manage to wind up on their backs again.

Again, not the smartest insect out there.  I understand that there are a significant amount of earwigs that are members of Mensa.

Cicadas cannot swim.  I have found many in pools of water that have collected in odd places.  I'm thinking that by 2024 someone could make a lot of money developing a cicada life vest.

You know who is having a party summer?  The birds.  They are all over the place.  Everyday I clean fifty pounds of bird waste off our deck.  Perhaps I could get them to consider Depends.  We even have gulls hanging out in this area.  We're about ten miles away from the lake here.  I've never seen gulls out here before.

I admit that I was looking forward to the cicada experience this summer, since it had been so long since they were here last, but I'm ready for it to be over.  Male cicadas die shortly after they mate, so I've been leaving suggestive video tapes and mini-smoking jackets all over the place in the hopes that they'll get excited much more quickly.  The females don't kick the bucket until they leg their eggs, so there's nothing that I can think of that would speed this process up.

They'll be back in 2024, when I will be 57 and grumpy, so I will have invested in some ear plugs by then I'm sure. They'll be here in 2041 too, when I will be 74.  If I'm still alive then I will probably have lost some of my hearing, which I will be slightly thankful for.

 

 

Twenty-eight and a half days later

I really haven't had much to say lately.  Last time I was 'round these parts someone had just shot 32 people to death at Virginia Tech.  I suppose I could have said something about how idiotic it is that some people immediately used the event to call for the arming of all college students (because, you know, someone would have shot the culprit right away, and there'd never be a time when a fully loaded college student got suspicious of someone else and just blew 'em away) but it seemed like a waste of time.

And kind of boring, quite frankly.

My absence can be attributed to the end of school year.  Four semesters of grad school down, one to go.  I've been writing like a bloody fool.  My thesis is about two-thirds done, I think, if you count first and second drafts as "done."  I don't really, so it's going to be a busy summer.

Writing can be a very lonely event.  It's best to be someplace where you can look at something pleasant, someplace bright.  It's hard for me to write when it's gloomy outside (I would have never made it in Seattle).

The Cubs are driving me insane.  That's all I have to say about that.

Saturday is my 40th birthday.  I've been saying for years that it's not a big deal, and while I believe that mostly to be true there are still moments when I can't quite believe that this point has come.  I guess the only way this conflicts me is that I don't feel like I am about to turn forty. 

I feel pretty much the same way that I did when I was 25. Or 30. Or 35. My mind set is the same.  Physically is a bit of a different story but that is completely my fault and not worth getting into. 

Am I missing something?  I think about my father when he turned forty (1974); I was six and don't really remember it, but he was married fourteen years by then and had three kids.  I'm married just over two and have no children yet; our lives at this stage couldn't be any more different could they?

That reminds me that we went to Vegas shortly after my last entry.  I lost my ASS.  I am still looking for it, butI doubt that I will ever find it.  You could not do any worse in a casino than I did during those three days in mid-April.  And yet I had a blast.  Vegas is funny that way.

What I've been listening to tonight:

1. "Regret"-New Order.  It's funny that this came up first, since I've been ruminating about forty.  I've reached a point in my life when I look back at my past and pretty much don't regret a single thing.  What's done is done.  I didn't always feel that way.  I was a short fuse/burning all the time...

2. "It's Money That Matters"-Randy Newman. Featuring the awesome licks of Mark Knopfler.  I could listen to this song for the next forty years.  All of these people/are much brighter than I

3. "Black"-Pearl Jam.  It's early 90s night on the i-pod.  Those boys from Seattle wrote some depressing junk, no?  I take a walk outside/I'm surrounded some kids at play

4. "Secondhand Love"-Pete Townshend.  From the best CD of all time-White City: A Novel.  It matters not that you have never heard of this.  I am not sure that I would have lived through the fall of 1985 without this cassette tape and a hideous white car (inside and outside).  I can guess where you've been tonight, (yeah)/you've been hanging out on the street/wearing your dress to tight/showing out to anyone you meet

5. "Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)"-The Flaming Lips.  Definitely the longest title of the 546.  Excellent driving song.  Perfect for Utah, ironically.  No words though, and I haven't figured out yet how to write instrumental.

6. "Bargain"-The Who.  OK, I never really had a desire to be a rock star, but I admit that I would have liked to have been in a situation to perform this song in public once.  For some reason, I know exactly how I would do it.  Kareoke wouldn't cut it.  No, I'd need instruments and three other folks in the band.  And some cool lighting.  I sit looking 'round/I look at my face in the mirror

7. "The Boy in the Bubble"-Paul Simon.  I'm pretty sure this is the only song with an accordion in it on the 'pod.  I'm stepping into the wayback machine tonight.  Whenever I hear this song I am reminded of a drive I took with someone once, back and forth, four hours each way, and we just kept listening to Graceland.  He died about a year or so later. Medicine is magical and magical is art/think of the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart...the way we look to a distant constellation as its dying in the corner of the sky/these are the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby, don't cry

8. "Broken Hearted"-Eric Clapton.  It's a good thing that I'm comfortable with my past now or these songs would have sent me for a fifth of Jamison by now.  It's amazing, absolutely amazing, how a life can change so much in ten years.  I press my fingers to the wound/to tell you of my dreaming

9. "Help Me Angel"-Steve Winwood.  I have a feeling that I have told this tale before but I used to stand in the window of my dorm room my frosh year at Iowa and dance to this (with my back to the street, of course).  It was on the first floor.  I was normally not very outgoing.  I have no idea why I did this.  It was all feet, just the feet.  It's such a damn catchy tune.  Shim shim, scooby shim/scooby scooby, shim scooby

10. "Dakota"-Stereophonics.  A guy singing about his past.  Perfect.  Thinking about think of you/summer time think it was June/yeah I think it was June

<FONTSIZE=4>11. "Temporary Beauty"-Graham Parker.  And we have to make sure to include a song that was big smack dab in the middle of high school, without question the most awkward time of my life.  Excuse me while I take a Brillo pad to my brain.  No, No, I kid, I kid!  And you need temporary beauty/and hope to God it doesn't rain/you need temporary beauty/even though it might be love in vain

12. "Closing Time"-Semisonic.  Perfect.  One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer/closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here

OK I am officially spooked.  I just went on about the past, turning forty, etc. and then every song that comes up has something to do with it.  Someone is messing with me.  It does make me realize something though: I would love to get together with some people that I don't see much of anymore.  That would be a heck of a present.

 

Just three words

God Bless America

(um, yeah, that's sarcasm)

In which I confess my Reykjavik deception

I have read many tributes to Kurt Vonnegut today and I am reminded of how much I have enjoyed reading his books, and also of the circumstances surrounding me as I read these books, which I feel like writing about today:

My first Vonnegut read was Slaughter-house Five, a brilliant book (though not what I consider his best) about the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II.  It is one of the few books that have made me uncomfortable picturing myself in it; I can't imagine what it must have been like to be in a city as it was being fire-bombed.  My fondest memory of this book is buying a copy for my nephew years later, in the late 90s, and hearing him say "so it goes" again and again for the next month or so.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of introducing a piece of literature to someone and seeing them embrace it as much as you did.

In 1997 I was in a bookstore days before taking a flight to Europe.  I needed something to read and eventually made a selection.  As it turns out I slept on most of the flight to London and did not read (it was overnight) but ten days later my return flight was in the middle of the day. The book I had bought before I left was Bluebeard, another Vonnegut novel, one that I had never heard of but decided to give a chance since I had enjoyed reading him before.  I started it an hour or so out of London and finished it about an hour or so before we landed in Chicago.  287 pages, and as far as I can remember, this is the only book I have ever read start to finish without stopping.  It is my favorite Vonnegut book, and one of my favorite books of all-time.  The next year I went back to Europe for two weeks and spent four days in Iceland by myself.  I had always wondered what it would be like to pass yourself off as someone else in a place where no one knows who you are, and in Iceland I decided to give it a try.  Icelanders are very friendly people, and every time someone introduced themselves to me I shook their hand and told them that my name was Rabo Karabekian.  He is the protagonist of Bluebeard.  I hope I represented him well.

I will always remember where I was when Al Gore finally conceded the 2000 election-stuck in a massive snow-related traffic jam, inching along on what would be a four hour trip home from work.  I had left downtown at six.  Gore conceded at eight.  I got home at ten.  Under normal conditions it was about a thirty minute trip.  December 2000 was exceptionally snowy and I had three of these nightmare commutes within a few weeks of each other.  When a fourth seemed certain based upon a weather forecast, I thought of ways that I could counter the boredom.  I wound up bringing my copy of Breakfast of Champions with me, and when the hours long commute materialized, I held the book against the steering wheel and read it.  I was either stopped or creeping along at less than five miles per hour.  It was surprisingly easy to avoid colliding with the car in front of me and concentrating on the book.

So it goes

Usually no good news comes just as one is preparing to retire for the night.  This is no exception: Kurt Vonnegut died Wednesday at the age of 84.

There are hundreds if not thousands of reasons why I write, none more important than any other, all spinning in the middle of my mind trying to help me make sense of what it is I am trying to say.

Most of the time when I write, I sit at a desk in a spare bedroom that we have upstairs.  It faces east and during the day what I see depends on the time of year. In the summer I can barely see anything other than trees, their leaves concealing what is beyond.  We live over a flight path to O'Hare, and in the summer I can usually only hear the planes.

When the leaves fall, I can see almost an entire neighborhood of homes beyond the shells of the leaf-less trees.  I hear the planes before I see them, and then they pass in between the branches, seemingly.

I get distracted by the view a lot.

To my left is a bookcase that has three shelves full of an assortment of books.  There is no real order to it, except perhaps for height.  I tend to store my books in descending order.

Sometimes when I am having difficulty transposing what I am saying in my mind to the screen of my computer, I look at the top shelf of the bookcase and see these titles displayed in a row:

Slaughterhouse-five
Cat's Cradle
Breakfast of Champions
Bluebeard

Sometimes it takes a while, but I always wind up figuring it out.

And so it goes . . . the man was a genius.