i love the sound of cicadas in the summer - the rising and the falling of their calls, the late afternoon buzzing in the branches of overhead trees. this morning when i walked out, early, to send robin off on his journey back to boone, i glanced down at the edge of a bottom step and saw this beautiful creature - newly emerged from its shell, translucent, wings damp and green (if you'll click on the photo, you'll see a closer view, especially of my scarred and weathered hands). some interesting facts, from wikipedia: Male cicadas have loud noisemakers called "timbals" on the sides of the abdominal base. Their "singing" is not the stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the timbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click. The interior of the male abdomen is substantially hollow to amplify the resonance of the sound. A cicada rapidly vibrates these membranes, and enlarged chambers derived from the tracheae make its body serve as a resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. They modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they are on. Additionally, each species has its own distinctive song.
In addition to the mating song, many species also have a distinct distress call, usually a somewhat broken and erratic sound emitted when an individual is seized. A number of species also have a courtship song, which is often a quieter call and is produced after a female has been drawn by the calling song. The song of the cicada is a favorite sound effect used by filmmakers and animators as a means of representing silence, pathos, and the great outdoors. prehistoric looking, aren't they? while in china last september, roy ate an entire dish of them, stir fried, and said that they were actually quite tasty. i can't imagine.
A summer insect (at least in temperate countries), the cicada has represented insouciance (i.e. nonchalance or indifference) since antiquity. Jean de la Fontaine began his collection of fables Les fables de La Fontaine with the story La Cigale et la Fourmi (The Cicada and the Ant) based on one of Aesop's fables: in it the cicada spends the summer singing while the ant stores away food, and finds herself without food when the weather turns bitter. In The Tale of Genji, the title character poetically likens one of his many love interests to a cicada for the way she delicately sheds her scarf the way a cicada sheds its shell when molting. In China the phrase 'to shed off the golden cicada skin' is the poetic name of the tactic of using deception to escape danger, specifically of using likenesses/decoys (leaving the old shell) to fool enemies. In the Chinese classic Journey to the West, the protagonist Priest of Tang was named the Golden Cicada, in this context the multiple shedding of shell of the cicada symbolizes the many stages of transformations required of a person before all illusions has been broken and one reaches enlightenment. enlightenment? this gives new meaning to the words bug off.
it's been a hectic week here on firefly road, in spite of the slower pace with roy's surgery and days of rest on the sofa: friends have been dropping in and staying 'til all hours of the night, his brother robin was here from tuesday until this morning for a visit, and even his dad came to spend the bulk of yesterday, visiting and laughing and sharing stories old and new. 
aspen has loved the fact that i'm camping out on the living room floor while roy occupies my bedroom. it's all i can do every evening to get the sheets on the futon before he is flaking himself out across the spot, sighing when i nudge him over a bit. some dog. falling asleep on the floor of the living room, a large spot with one whole wall of windows and another set of sliding glass doors that lead out to a small screened porch, is like falling asleep halfway outdoors.
last night that nearly full moon inched its way across the mountaintops just outside those windows, and i drifted off bathed in silky, white light. 
above the windows, i've strung the cards so many of you have lovingly sent, and it's a pleasant thing to wake first thing and gaze up at what looks like colorful prayer flags clothes-pinned to stretches of jute.
we've all - robin, roy, i - enjoyed opening the envelopes, reading the notes, seeing from what corners of the earth these cards have come. all ages, from four to ten to who knows how many years, have tucked things into the mail to come this way, and we thank you for that. there are many many many kind people out there, reaching out to us this week, both in the home and here on the internet, sending notes and letters of strong encouragement and support. i remember now why i keep coming back here, again and again - why i keep doing the art and the writing that i do. here's to you, one and all: i send you my heart. i wrap it softly in the days that have been good to me, and continue to be thankful for the place where this journey is taking me. xo
