The emergence

In praise of cicadas and slow summers

On the easel

I bring you tidings of (loud) joy—

It’s cicada season.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about them…

— The long life cycles of the periodical broods (13 or 17 years?!)

— Their long dreaming underground nestled in the roots of trees

— Whether the rarity and timing of their emergence correlates with any planetary transits (Jupiter maybe?)

Last week I drove another 14 hours (barefoot, as mentioned) to return to my home in the Ozark foothills, where the evening resounded with the noise of the summer choir.

The sound was so pronounced, I thought we must be in range of the rare periodical double brood hatch happening this year. But if the predictive maps are right, we missed out by a county. Dang.

So this is “just” the clamor of an annual brood.

I felt a little deflated. Who doesn’t want to be part of an auspicious convergence? Being in the path of totality for this April’s solar eclipse was a pretty epic experience. (And if there isn’t a death metal band named Path of Totality, there should be.)

But digging in (heh, pun?) to cicadas—even the annual kind—turned out to be layer after layer of remarkable.

I take back my deflation and render my praise.

The annual cicada has its own astounding life cycle—taking 2 to 5 years to push up from the ground and live its comparatively brief adult life on the surface, where the males sing for their supper—excuse me, for their mates—at decibels approaching a jackhammer or subway train.

Like their periodical cousins (or whatever kinship), annual cicadas spend their underground years barely moving, drinking liquid from tree roots, waiting for the soil to reach the right temperature to emerge. But not just the right temperature—it has to happen in the right year.

No one knows how they count the years. (My favorite theory is that they use the tree roots to keep track of the seasons.)

Regardless of how they’ve counted it, the day has come. It’s graduation day, initiation. We are listening to the loud love songs of insects who have waited several years (in some places, decades) for this day.

This is it, this is what they’ve grown for: they’re topside, in the sunlight, old skins shed, adult form achieved. They’re singing for a mate to begin the cycle again. They will not return underground, but their offspring will.

The males use organs called timbals to produce their famous mating call and the females have ~METAL~ (!) ovipositors to deposit their hundreds of eggs into the bark of trees.

And of course, it isn’t all lovely, as much as I like to romanticize them dreaming in the roots of trees. Their burrows, scientists tell us, are covered in anal fluids. Perhaps that is inevitable given the situation. But still, not a detail I’d choose to dwell on, although it has been coming to mind ever since I read it.

Nobody tells a cicada it’s late. Nobody tells it to hurry up. And they haven’t seemed to do so over the purportedly millions of years they’ve been around.

They do not rush their climb to the surface.

They do not rush the liquid pumping through their wings.

Maybe they rush the mating, who knows? No judgement, their time to get it done has a literal deadline.

Maybe that’s part of the thrill.

I’ve been thinking about my own cycles, the parts that feel too long or short, my judgement of how I’m unfurling myself (or not).

I’ve been thinking about why I applaud the cicada for living its own unusual timeframe and damn myself for the same thing.

A friend’s (now ex-) husband once asked me if I’d rather write a lot of bestsellers or one really well-loved, critically acclaimed novel.

The latter, of course.

I told him so, and he said, “You’re a publisher’s nightmare.”

I bristled at the comment, which felt like a curse spoken over my not-yet-started career.

Now, I remember it with pride.

Not that I am proud to be the possible nightmare of anything, but proud to realize that a publishing schedule, in fact, is my nightmare—and one I’ve been free to wake from, choosing routes and spaces—over and over again—that allow me to be free form, flowing, on my terms.

To choose to be my own publisher, and set the schedule of “whenever the work is ready.”

New obsession: drinking bubbly water out of glass bottles + straws. *clink*

So I’ve been thinking about cicadas and creation and the season that we’re in—officially summer, even though the thermometer and general vibe has been skewing that way for months around here. (Tell anyone sweating in a river raft on June 13th it isn’t really summer yet and find out how much a calendar matters to them.)

I think the culture thinks of summer as an open season, time to get things done that couldn’t happen in the cold or during the schoolyear.

I get the reasoning and support anyone who wants (or needs) to cram in as much as they can.

But if you ask me, summer is another slow season, like winter. When the heat is high, adding our own frenzy to it will only overheat our systems. It seems sensible to ease up, cool off, chill out wherever we can. Take it easy and take the long days in stride.

Summer is for basking, and basking is not a hyperactive sport.

Let’s use this season to practice what the cicadas have already mastered: sovereignty over your own timing, adherence to your own inner schedule.

Let no one rush your cycle of creation, including the creation of your Self.

And likewise: let no one tell you it isn’t time when you know it’s time to emerge.