Cicadas

It was the cicadas that won. The deafening, ear-vibrating fortissimo of the Australian forest cicadas was dramatic, but it lacked the subtleties, the rhythmic Morse of the trans-Tasman counterpart. It became a parable of choice: in your face juxtaposed against seductive invitation.

For twenty five years the various guises of a harsh red island held me captive, not entirely against my will, thundering an eremitic sermon of nothingness. While most in the wide red land clung to the coast I sought the dust storms of the center, the ferocity of eco-systems that told me only of my nothingness, that I was an intruder, and that my intrusion was as nothing in the vastness of an unconquerable land.

The cicadas’ crescendo counterpointed the harshness of the inland’s deathly silence. Nothingness is your being: dust you are and to dust you shall return. The cicadas crushed thoughtspace, obliterated identity, and taunted attempts to hymn the universe.

Awhitu… karanga tangata whenua

 

 WHANGAREI

5^th January 2007