locust memory

Sitting by the window this morning, still in Stamford, I began watching the leaves falling through the crisp air outside. Nature is all around all the time, and I hardly see it. The impinging of the human desire for order is the most telling sign of our times. In the Christian creation story, humans were given dominion over nature, a kind of stewardship. Where has this gone? To mowed lawns and meticulously controlled gardens, raked yards, trimmed trees. I remember the experience of playing in the woods as a boy. How the wildness of it was compelling somehow. I remember the bramble thickets and how tough their stems and thorns were. I remember once, it was the Year of the 17-year locusts, giant reddish things that had grappling-hook legs and a horrible face mask and flew en masse around everywhere outside — once I found myself standing in the middle of a tall grass field (which is now the yard of a new house), I was locked in a terrified immobility. Each time I tried to move, hundreds of these thing would rise up from the grass and many would land on my skin, clinging, seeking to pull me down to feast on my body in Bacchanalian frenzy. I stood there for what must have been an hour, it seemed eternity. I don’t remember how I escaped, whether I simply ran screaming from the field, arms akimbo and windmilling the beasts away from me, or whether someone came for me. No memory of escape. Strange.

Later I gathered my things (I weighed them in at 56 pounds) and caught a bus to the train to Grand Central and took the subway to City Hall and walked to Stefan and Ellen’s place in Tribeca where I was going to meet Stefan. He was delayed at work, so I ended up cabbing it up to the opening with all my bags where I rather self-consciously, though very appropriately, entered the Sandra Gering Gallery for the opening of the blast5drama event.