What did the cicada say?

The slithering snake says cicadas are the primordial juice. They flow within themselves. Oozing bug juice, putrid sensations of wind and alterations of mind, matter and sound. These are pure justifications of the body. To fly, to be earthly, to be one and of itself. A demented creature.

Cicadas live under the ground (13 year and 17 year cycles). They are primordial in the sense that they represent the deep coming forward. A time capsule. They are also a kind of advent of the future. They were never part of their time. The cicada was in larval form until it emerged. It really only understands the present.

And so it screams.

Is there a cold weather version of the cicada? When it gets hot enough the cicada sings. But what about its deep winter counterpart? When it gets cold enough, it sings, but silently…

Hear it comes again.

How do you perceive deep time? Is it a clock? Is it birth and death?

Before you can conceive of either a clock, or birth, or death, a time that precedes the entire chain of cause and effect, the order.

The singularity of personality defines itself by its lifeline. An encounter with deep time shatters that illusion.

A “crude-oil” realization of time.

The bells of the city ring out in sequence with the cicadas.

Assume as you go down any staircase you go back through time.

A temple where the witches gather.

A serpentine idol. Plug it in the ground to activate the rays. A descent into Hell, which is really just a curatorial wing of a museum anyway.

The sea. Well, it was the sea. How big was that glacier?

JA and PP
Major’s Hill Park and Environs, Ottawa
July 2020.