cicadas

Ah, the noise of a September in Houston. A chorus of cicadas screech love or death with the beginning of dusk. There’s a whir, some kind of rythmatic, awful rising and falling in their cadence, like fiddles being badly tuned or violins beyond a bearable pitch, and yet it’s an autumn sound I’ve heard most of my life.

And then it’s still hot, though there are morning hints of cool to come, when the temperature lets go of its hold on the humid 90s, and I can sit outdoors with some comfort. Another September. This time last year, a hurricane had blown in and decimated Galveston and the stock markets were tumbling on a brink that frightened everyone and the election was a free-for-all that made politics seem really vital again.

We’ve hung on, and another fall has begun its cycle. A change in health care has people at the pitch of the cicadas outside. A Congressman is rude to the President in a public address. I wonder what piece an unstated racism has in the hysteria and hate displayed. I wonder why hate plays so well.

Is it so much easier to howl our dark rather than trust our light?