Shouting at the Ground
This medieval water moved, so eliminated of human features
An old house is a porous thing. Now that the nights have grown colder, a prelude to deeper autumn, the crickets are sneaking indoors. The how is anyone’s guess—through the ductwork maybe. A miniaturized camera should be invented, in order to document their travels. It would provide some very compelling footage: driving rain, gnashing branches, then a long tunnel into regions of light and warmth. Along the way, the crickets would encounter monstrous villains (cats) as well as unexpected blessings (stray cat food pellets). All in all, a compelling, elemental narrative, filled with suspense and rapid turns of fate.
These past few days, the outdoor crickets have become less vocal. And with all the wind and the rain, they certainly don’t have much to chirp about. But soon enough, they’ll have nothing to chirp about at all, the temperature growing too cold for their life processes. Meanwhile, the indoor crickets chirp as loudly as ever, as if to mock their less fortunate compatriots. They seem to invest their success with moral force. Whether or not they deserve a warm house and leftover cat food is not my place to decide, but I’m sure the indoor crickets have evolved a theology that justifies their material conditions.
Three centuries earlier, I would’ve been tempted to expand this cricket narrative, filling volume after volume with detailed comparative examinations of cricket society, both indoors and outdoors, covering not only their theology but also their various forms of government, their various economic systems, their sexual mores, like Voltaire or like Swift (or maybe like Casanova) all of whom used science-fiction as a vent for their editorializing. These writers could inflate themselves at the slightest provocation. Some things about the genre haven’t changed a bit.
But it’s late. A thousand nightly noises tell me: go to bed. And so for now, I’ll leave you to enjoy the crickets chirping—enjoy it while it lasts.
