Seventeen years living underground.

A wake up call. A call to arms. A cicadas life.

It’s nine am and the cicadas are warming up. Their ticking is starting to echo in the trees like a hundred summer clocks. I am sitting on a rock. The time noisily accompanies me, while I am busy waiting for words. I feel as if I am in a bus stop waiting for a bus, when it starts to dawn on you that the darn bus is running late. I remind myself that keeping ones patience is key. 

A jay is hiding from me up in a tree. I’ve seen a flash of blue in its wing. A giveaway. 

My book they say, is on its way. Half of me is excited to see it; it can’t get here fast enough. The other half has looked at the pages in digital form for so many weeks that I feel kind of numb. I’m wondering if that is only because what I really need is for it to exist on paper. To be a book. You can hug a book. It can look at you from your bedside table, neatly closed, bookmark poking out the top. Comfortingly close. Digital books are so neat and yet so vacant. So convenient for travelling, storage, resources and yet they seem to understate their own value. Like a ghost of the real thing. 

Well, in a few days I will know, I will be able to compare the difference. It’s a test run. No calibrating for the images has been done with the printers. So it’s a gamble. Fingers crossed.

A cicada has just started up with a blast on one single continuous note, out-singing all the others. It’s the Placido Domingo of the cicada world. Finally this raucous, randy wakeup call stops. For a moment silence returns surprisingly loudly, only the aeroplanes overhead and the motorway in the distance fill the air. Then a chorus starts up, as if Placido’s one note was a call to arms. 

Or is it legs. They aren’t singing really at all, are they? Don’t they rub their legs together to make that noise? Nope, it’s their rib cage, I just looked it up. And they only do it if it is over 22 degrees Celsius. I knew they love it hot. If I had to make that volume of noise doing the same movement it would hurt and for sure I’d fall out of the tree immediately. What really amazes me, that I have just read, is that they are so harmless. They don’t bite or have any venom. Like me!? Ha! Not sure my husband would agree there.

What has blown my mind though, is that when you hear this noise they are mating at the end of their life cycle, after living in the ground as a nymph for thirteen or even seventeen years, depending on the specie! Now that to me sounds cruel. Crazy. All those years living without a view. How on earth do they keep perspective on life!? Maybe that’s why they screech to the sky, in relief!! I would.

The trees now shiver in cicada magic. If their sound was visible it would look like glitter on the landscape, like those Christmas cards you pay extra for. I could be in Greece. They always remind me of the Greek islands. Memories cling to iconic travels of my youth when I had no responsibilities other than to feed myself and keep safe. Wouldn’t say no to that level of responsibility all over again! Maybe that’s the beauty of getting really old. It’s a circular life for cicadas, and me.

The day has begun. The words are slow to travel today. They’ll be back and so will I. Lots of love.

Vineyard tales, photo by Pipp