sospirando

When somebody loves you
Its no good unless he loves you - all the way

I recently asked myself how I got here, how I came to start this blog (I can hardly bring myself to press the keys and form the word without cringing). It all unfolded one evening in front of a tv show about, well, bloggers, some two or three in particular—you’ll know the ones I mean—and there I was, surveying their sites, sampling with head cocked to one side, like a robin listening for worms... then, peck, peck, looking for clues. What were they writing and why had they written?

Happy to be near you,
When you need someone to cheer you, all the way

And I realised that whilst they were pretending to write a diary (the usual stuff packed and pricked with plots) something else was intervening, something that the lonely diarist, wracked with neurosis, scratching at the fibres of his page smudged both by ink and tears, only hints at. In theses texts the writers voice was not stitched behind the charming narrator; here the writers voice did not form the deftly woven tableaux through which the interplay of character and plot were teased and tricked. Here we were asked to be interested in… ah… the writer himself. And it was thus I realised—like a bird looking up, listening to what we do not hear, hearing what we do not understand—that stabled before me were some of the hungriest egos of our time, and this is why I was cringing… earlier on, remember?

Taller than the tallest tree is
That’s how its got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue see is
That’s how deep it goes - if its real

Funny… that night, I drifted off quickly from those first blogs… there were links of course, and comments and all the trappings, the stepping-stones if you will, that nimbly guided me from one site to another. I got a little splashed along the way of course, but I found myself, well, found some stuff that maneuvered my spirits, kind of fucked me over in a way… the way the curve of your lips could rewrite history.

I pretended I had found a community of people with blood and emotions, a society condemned to live by their confessions alone, a clan of neurotic individuals for whom the publishing of these coughings-up was a massage to their egos as the analyst massages the id.

When somebody needs you
Its no good unless he needs you - all the way
Through the good or lean years
And for all the in between years - come what may

I was astonished by the naked hunger demonstrated by these texts. So disenchanted was I by their rapacious and unquenchable thirst for glory that I ran for cover more quickly than I had arrived. Yet cowering—like mole, in his snowy tree-stump in the wild wood, longing for his dear friend ratty-—I heard a sigh, the sound that comes from a body expressing the emotion of absence. It was me… as if each of my breaths, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other. I was, sadly, unglued, drying, yellowing, shrivelling. It had only been fifteen hours and seventeen days since I took my blog away, I’d been out all night and slept all day, since I took my blog away. And unlike the seventeen-year periodic cicada, it had taken me only seventeen days to dissolve into amorous absence.

Who knows where the road will lead us
Only a fool would say
But if you’ll let me love you
Its for sure I’m gonna love you - all the way, all the way

Bring your lips to mine, so that out of my mouth my soul may pass into yours.

17

Seventeen years here. Here in the dark. No sound. Almost no sound. There’s the scurrying of course. Is it scurrying? No. It’s certainly, what would you call it, footfall? Yes, somewhere up there, dull undefined footfall. And the sounds here—scratchings, scrapings—all the sounds that reach this point below, which make their traffic through the leaf litter and the soil into this rotten retreat, if that’s what you could call it, are so vague as to be indistinguishable. In fact, you might say, that we’ve been here so long, that trying to distinguish one sound from the other is nigh on impossible. The result of a kind of apathy of waiting I suppose… what else would you call it? As sure as the diurnal relief of night giving birth to day (we know nothing of these matters here), the equinoctial marking of the seasons pass, the years unfold unnoticed.

Year after year of lying here
A serenading I would go.

Nymphs. That’s what they call us. And its not that anyone is around to take notice. Oh, look, those bloody nymphs are at it again! Nope, we’re not at anything. Actually the contrary is true: we're busy doing nothing, whatsoever. Waiting. Biding our time. Biding our time whilst nature awaits our deplorable gift. And as sure as the spring and autumn equinox measures the growing and shortening of the days, we wait. Getting fat.

Year after year of lying here
A courting I would go.

You can imagine it… complacency, boredom—call it what you will—a kind of tedium sets in, and the mind bluffs, beguiles, loses focus, is hooked on the mulling over of… is imagining (if such things are imaginable) is calculating the passage of time, the passing of the winter and summer solstice. One year, five years, ten years, fifteen years. It all the same. It all blends. Here in the dark. Hardly able to move. Breathing, feeling the tightly hugging earthy grave.

Year after year of lying here
A mating I would go.

Suddenly a shout goes out, a rasping call, there’s the scraping of carapace, against… something; the scratching of legs amongst grit, panic abounds and incredibly, after seventeen lonely years below, we claw with one ambition, tunnel and haul ourselves up—up to the drying rays of the sun, and with twitchings, and palpitations, crack out of dry casings to stretch our fresh formed slender still-damp wings. Flexing to yield our serenade of eros and eloquence that lasts for one night only, we fight up tree and branch, scramble higher, yes, higher, to find a mate, to sing, to audaciously flex our new formed wings, to seal our fate.

After seventeen years of lying here
I’m dead of course.

Having found a mate, eggs laid, the seventeen year periodic cicada drops dead to the floor. Like a brittle carpet formed from twiglets, the cicadas lie crisp underfoot and return their macabre gift—the largest dose of fertilizer in the natural world; as eggs hatch, nymphs traffic through the leaf litter and soil, to their rotten retreat below, in the deep dark wood.

Seventeen years I’ll be lying here
Getting fat.