Grasshopper

The paradise of summer lingers in the air as delicately as the honeysuckle scent on my skin or as gently as my bed linens caress my sunned legs, sweet and soft and warm like the promise of a distant and misunderstood happiness. The solstice has come and passed, leaving behind a trail of ever-fading daylight hours, bright summer minutes burning themselves out in what will soon seem a desperate grasp of light known as Indian summer, a time when afternoons are as slow and heavy as Mississippi mud.

Light shines from my nightstand as if to illuminate the air laced with a faint scent of flowers, intoxicating in the exotic femininity of jasmine blossoms and honeysuckle. Scattered across the bed is a stack of books, as usual, and the requisite black extra fine point liquid ink pens that always accompany them.

I can't seem to get one tiny line of an old Dixie Chicks (strangely) song out of my head: "The moon is full, my arms are empty..." The melody seems to play in a constant repeat, much like a music box or carnival ride.

My thoughts are likewise scattered, looping in and out of each other like the classic atomic diagram, a whirl of ideas and hastily hidden dreams. I still find it so hard to describe them or create some sort of tangible existence for them, a defined set of wants, desires, hopes... these elude me to the most frustrating end.

One finds what one seeks when it is meant to be sought, I keep reminding myself. Wisdom, understanding, and the enlightenment of the soul are elusive mistresses, though amorous.

Another thing plagues me. (No pun intended). Had a terrifying incident during my drive to work today involving an open window and a giant electric-green grasshopper/locust. In short, one alighted on my head while I was stopped in the shade of a leafy tree garden on Allisonville Road. Having minutely sensed the rapid flutter of wings, an almost imperceptible hum drowned beneath the Cure, I caught sight of the creature (on my head. my head.) in the rear-view mirror. Suffice it to say my reaction is best compared with an epileptic fit as I screamed and shook my head frantically until the poor insect flew out the opposite window. It remained, legs eerily bending (one can easily see why grasshoppers are compared to musicians, for indeed it appeared to be playing as one would a cello, that strange natural symphony), on my side rear-view mirror until I parked at work, slammed the door as cautiously as possible, and jumped aside as it landed on a neighboring blue Astro-van.

Try as I might, I cannot conclude any sort of satisfying lesson or interpretation of this event, symbolically or otherwise. Besides the obvious Kung Fu reference, of course. Searching for grasshopper mythology has been rather unsuccessful, though I have managed to collect the following

GRASSHOPPER: A symbol of the unbeliever, symbolizes the conversion of pagan nations to Christianity.
Grasshopper Noble

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates says that locusts were once human. When the Muses first brought song into the world, the beauty so captivated some people that they forgot to eat and drink until they died. The Muses turned those unfortunate souls into locusts— singing their entire lives.

I rather like the story of the Muses. Perhaps I am likewise doomed... though a lifetime of music is not so seemingly 'unfortunate,' especially in this world of chaos and cacophony and mayhem... how better to express joys and triumphs and melancholy and anguish and delight than with song?

Nonetheless, a disturbing incident.

I gathered what I've christened my 'starter set' of plants and blooms for the back steps. I simply cannot live without some remote imitation of a garden and the harsh industrial terracotta of the back stairs and bricks and pipes and concrete is utterly withering after so many months. I shall thus take a gamble on several geraniums and herbs and vincas and impatiens and lavender, etc. Daisies too. Tiny ones.

Mary Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
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On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's -- he takes the lead
In summer luxury -- he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

John Keats