(The Cicada Spends Most of its Life Underground, but the Cicada is Made to Rise)

This is about how we break.

This is about how we recover
—and also the ways in which we cannot recover—
from that breaking.
It is about what changes
and what stays the same.
How we are marked by the ways we hurt.

It’s that crashing-chandelier-feeling of everything happening finally now at once.

In this, some darkness exits, some light enters.
Some light exits, some darkness enters.

*

In one scene, I try to catch the object but am not able to get there in time.
In another, I don’t even stop it from happening.

In both cases, the outcome is the same: the object is broken.
The question is about intention, and how much it matters.

This is not about what you were trying to do;
it is about what you actually did.

Failure to act is also an action.

This confuses many people.
Many people seem to feel that if they simply do not act then they cannot be held responsible.

Here is a question for Oedipus—
should we share his bleeding eyes?

*

The clock is an attempt to control something that is so entirely outside of our control. It is a measurement for something that cannot actually be measured.

The clock is a mistaken idea about the power we think we have.

In calculating to the nearest second or mili-second, we are claiming to possess that thing.
In naming something so acutely, we mistakenly believe we have dominion over it.

Why do Cicadas spend so much time underground?
And how do they know when it is time for them to rise?

Let us not forget that the body of a cicada has both wings and eyes—their bodies are made for flight and for sight even though they spend almost all of their life underground in darkness.

Their bodies are not made for where they spend the most time, but for the apex of experience, not for duration but climax.

The cicada spends most of its life in darkness underground, but the cicada is made to rise.

*

Calendars stand for the passing of time. The ways in which we can’t stop it from happening. We cross out the days; we tear out the pages. They accumulate in piles at our feet, these lost moments—the present which is constantly becoming the past and burying itself.

*

All I can do right now is express what I’m feeling, tell the stories again and again, record the pieces for later. This moment is singular, and once it happens it will be gone forever, each moment slipping over and into the next. And here I am trying to collect the pieces of myself—the pieces of what happened—for something to hold onto, to salvage what I can so that later I can try to make sense of it.

Something about recording feels safe, to not lose it forever, to not just let it pass away and be gone without remark as if it had never happened. I want to honor this time by recording it, by remembering it. Later I will want proof that it really happened.

*

The mirror distorts even as it reflects. It even flips what we see so that words are backwards and our right becomes our left. Each mirror changes the reflection and yet we are asked to trust it—not as one perspective but as absolute.

To break the mirror is to break the idea of the absolute. When a mirror is broken there is not one but many different versions of the self reflected. A whole shimmering multitude of selves. I believe that a shattered mirror is more accurate.

*

Remember please that it is not possible to move backwards.
Everything is different now.
It will never again be like it was.
Everything is always new.

& so now I must emerge with my own scabbed wings.

I must become the Cicada.

And so I dance counter-clockwise to un-spin the direction of my past.
I unravel myself.
I untangle myself.

This is how I eat the darkness and vomit up light.

I spin against the direction of the clock to go back in time.
I spin backwards and anti-clockwise.
I spin until I am strongly struck by vertigo:

by the fear of falling mixing with the desire to fall.

Aurora Bones

Aurora Bones is eternally curious about the relationship between the internal and external worlds. She enjoys planting sunflowers, and often spends her evenings catching fireflies and then letting them go again.