Cicada Singing

Cicada singing —

six long years under the ground,

a few days of sun.

Why do you sound so happy

when the magpie kills your fun?

Life sure is a cruel mystery. Would you look at me? Have you ever seen a a more wretched wretch? I can't believe I am 43 years old already. If anything, I still feel like I'm in my 20s. Truth be told, in little over a month, I will actually be 44. Ah, and if only I had a real .44—a blue-steel .44 Magnum, no less, just like Dirty Harry carried underneath his armpit, except mine would dispense a different kind of justice. That's right, just think, I could smoke a final cigarette, place that big barrel under my chin, and then, with a twinkle in my eye, finally end this ridiculous charade I once called a life. Airing out these thoughts in a colourful display of red mist, skull fragments and brain matter.

Ah, enough jokes ... seriously, 43 years already! Can you believe it? You've got to be kidding me. It just doesn't seem real. Tell me, where did all that time go? The last two decades having passed as if in a dream, a coma, or else some kind of queer hibernation. Living like a god-damned grizzly bear trapped in an eternal winter, instead of living as a human being. Ugh, and what a miserable waste. My mum endured a C-section to bring me into this world, and I am the product of that scalpel scar? It doesn't seem fair on her, especially after all her efforts to raise me as a productive member of society. Yes, in my former years, I actually could have made something of myself. It's true. But now, in a flash, two decades have vanished in a puff of smoke. One moment I was a ruddy-faced youth, brimming over with promise, dreaming of glory, the next moment, my hair has thinned, my beard turned grey, and, as far as I can tell, all those promises have been broken.

Oh, I can't deny it. I'm an ordinary man. I once thought I could be extraordinary, but no more. There's nothing exceptional about me. I have very little to show for so many wasted moons. Since the doctor cut me from the womb, the earth has made its journey around the sun 43 times, and what? What have I got to show for it? A half-dozen unpublished manuscripts tucked away in a drawer. One lone story published in a collection that instead of producing fireworks went off more like a damp squib. What else can I claim from the last two decades of my life? A half-dozen lukewarm affairs with a few mediocre maidens. One delightful romance with an American girl that I destroyed through my own callousness. Thousand of dusty books put into storage because I still don't have a place of my own. Apart from that, there's really nothing much worth mentioning.

Yes, yes, life is a cruel mystery alright. I think of the poor cicadas. At first glance, one might not see any similarities, but on closer inspection, you will see we're quite similar in many respects. All those years underground, for example. Months and months inside their dark earthen wombs with nobody to keep them company. And then, after all that gloom and solitude, they're only granted a few days aboveground to enjoy the sun. A few days to use their wings and taste the joys of freedom and flight. A measly week, at best, to find a mate and spread their seed, that is, if they're lucky enough to avoid the scimitar beaks of the magpies, who feast on their fleshy abdomens as if they were the finest delicacies. Those poor old cicadas, spending their final moments with their asses torn off, lying on the road, croaking. Look at them. Flapping their now-useless wings, crying out to an absent mate. The poor bastards. Their brief sojourn aboveground more like a nightmare than the once-dreamed of romantic tryst in the sun.

Indeed, just like a cicada, I've spent almost two decades in my own mental underground, producing nothing of any substance, living in a strange limbo, eating just enough to stay alive, and otherwise serving no recognisable purpose. Seriously, 43 years vanished already! How on earth did such a thing happen? After a little rumination, two suspects immediately leap to mind. For one, 20 years of office work will do it to you. And secondly, nearly 20 years of marijuana addiction will do it too. Without question, just like the cicada's years underground, all those days in the office bleed one day into the next. Just as all those evenings after work smoking weed are now recalled as a single, interminable fog. And yet, given the drudgery I endure each weekday so as to earn my meagre keep, there's no surprise I turned to marijuana for solace. In fact, I'm reminded of what my colleague from the Black Forest, Klaus, said to me one day,

Joel, you're way too smart to be working in this place. The only reason you can bear it is because you smoke so much weed.

And hell, maybe that jaded German was on the money there. Now, after 10 months of sobriety and physical recovery, I struggle to understand how I've been living in such a fashion for such an extended period of time. All my years at the printing factory are now recalled as a single, unending week of tedium. And all my years at home in the evenings (three different homes, in fact), are no different to a foggy, featureless swamp extending towards a bleak, existential horizon. Apart from a few artistic flourishes and a little feminine company, there's very little to punctuate this personal purgatory. Hundreds of books consumed, now all but a blur. Hundreds of porn actresses, all merged into a dull faceless creature without attraction. But then, I guess that's no surprise. Marijuana, once you have past the initial honeymoon stages, has a tendency to envelop one in its numbing embrace and make one lose all track of time.

Shit, it makes one lose their reason too. Look, right here, for proof of the fact. I'm already losing the thread of this woeful web I'm spinning here. Come on, where was I? Ah yes, let us return to my Cicadoidean friends in the hope of keeping the theme alive. Yes, the cicadas: the Black Princes, the Green Grocers, the Razor Grinders, and yes, even the Red Eyes, as if they too have a marijuana habit so as to endure their miserable lot. My poor little insect pals. They can at least cry out into the Summer skies. The cicada at least has the drive to breed and perpetuate the species. I don't even have that anymore. I certainly can't see myself fathering a child this late in the game. Instead, I waste my seed like a teenage boy, hiding away in my room at night, watching the most wretched pornography. Hell, and maybe Herr Freud was right on that note. Perhaps that's all this writing is when you get down to it. The creative impulse merely a transference of the sexual impulse; the drive to make babies translated into a drive to produce so-called masterpieces?

Masterpieces, he says? Ha!

Sure, I once nursed dreams of winning the Nobel prize for Literature, signing books for adoring fans, and even groping gleeful groupies, but these last 43 years have at the least given me a little wisdom. Now, I'd be lucky enough to write something I alone could stomach reading, let alone a real reader. And yet, still this urge to write persists. After another tedious Groundhog Day at the office, here I am again, still trying to create something worthwhile with words. Really, and what is this writing game all about, I ask myself? Why this enduring urge to put pen to paper? I've been asking myself this question for years now and I am yet to produce a single acceptable answer. Perhaps, beneath all this wordy waffle, I'm simply a humble nutter, no different to one of those crackpots you see rummaging in bins and muttering to themselves in the street. After all, find me a single writer alive who isn't at least a little cracked in the head. In fact, maybe adding writing to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders would be a reasonable addition to the field of psychiatry. That's right, no more prestigious awards for us scribblers. No more respect and admiration. Nothing but a straitjacket, a sedative and a padded cell. That's all we deserve, right?

Ultimately, the question that remains to be answered, is this: Now that I have woken up from my two-decade slumber, have I, like a cicada, finally come to the surface? Is this my shot at freedom and flight, my opportunity to sing and to spread my seed? They say a fruit takes time to ripen, but has all my fruit hung on the vine for too long? Hell, is it already lying on the ground at my feet, rotting in the sun?

Ah, this mysterious urge to create something. I just can't shake it. Is it blessing or curse, a sign from god or a confidence trick? I really cannot tell anymore. Is this writing little more than a mediocre substitute for carrying on the species or the family line? Sitting here now, pondering my many thousands of ancestors reaching back into time, I can't help snickering at the absurdity of it all. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, and sailors. Rich men, poor men, beggars and thieves. All those people struggling to survive, hoping to produce a few snotty brats who will in turn produce their own shitty offspring, leading all the way through the millenia to little old me? It seems so nonsensical, so pointless. All that effort and struggle for it only to end here with me, a mere dead-end on the genealogical tree.

And even if we grant that art and the creative impulse is a transference of the libido, there's no doubt in my case that it's a failed transference at that. Sure, I may have produced a half-dozen novels and 20-something short stories, but let's be honest here. My drawers are filled with countless unfinished manuscripts—miscarriages mainly, unable to be carried to full term. And even those titles I may have carried through to birth, they all ended up as still-borns or as deformed foetuses one surely wouldn't show off to their co-cowkers and friends.

Yet, as you may have noticed, I still write. I'm still here whittling away my time at this keyboard. Like the cicada, I carry on the charade, but this time, I do it with full consciousness of the fact. Indeed, I've thrown away the weed pipe and dug myself out from my 20 years below ground. Now, you could say, it's my time to shine. Indeed, I guess, even with all my cynicism, there's still a lingering hope inside me (or else a biological urge) that believes I can still give birth to at least one healthy child. Just one small object of value. Is that really so much to ask? One small piece of writing that might, by some small miracle, make all these years of gloom underground worthwhile.

Ah well, I suppose a man can still dream. Looking at all the species on earth today, cicada or man, isn't that all we have? Hope. A small dash of hope that we might at least leave a little behind.