My girlfriend recently gave me a piece of jewelry, a pin, shaped like a ladybug. I acted like it was no big deal, but really it was a struggle to keep myself from smiling wide.
See, in the Reprobus Mythos, ladybugs are an important symbol. Luck, of course. Luck they give freely, because according to legend Reprobus saved one from the snare of a spider’s web, something he wouldn’t normally do (Law of Nature dudes; law of club and fang). Pleading for her life, the ladybug managed to bribe Reprobus into saving her, promising that Reprobus would have an endless blue sky of luck rise around him, and that ladybugs would always be secretly watching over him.
They do, too. Even in the dead of winter, it is pretty common to come across a ladybug in my room (honestly I don’t know how). So I’ve always liked them. I put the pin on my mala in my car. Not sure if that’s like bad or something. But I like it.
I think bugs are cool in general. Fireflies, OMG! I wrote a haiku once about fireflies. IMO the most haiku of all haiku I’ve written. Every time I read a haiku that is SO damn close to being perfect then the write must have had what I consider a haiku experience. Something so damn vivid that there really is no way to capture the emotion behind it. For me this is what that experience was like.
Before I was driving, I used to walk the 4 miles to where my buds hang out. Cedar Lake is a fairly quiet, small and somewhat rural area, so there are decent amounts of woods to explore. One of these areas was cut on the edges by a length of train tracks. So my walk would lead me these tracks, and I’d climb on them and take them along the edges of the trees until I came directly behind where everyone was.
It’s normally a scary walk at night. On one side, you have a dark patch of wilderness, full of sounds and shadows. On the other side you had a cement factory, strewn with jagged and intimating pieces of crag and the like, silent and dead. Both sides of the tracks looked like areas from a horror story.
Still, the tracks took about 20 minutes off my walk so I took them. Usually hurriedly. Usually while blaring my IPod and jumping at every shrub or shadow. On my return trips, there was this one piece of bush that I always mistook for a figure and would send my heart racing LOL.
I’ve got a lot of stories about this stretch. But the most memorable, isn’t so much a story as it is a scene. The haiku experience I’ve mentioned.
Beautiful. Breathtaking. Left me speechless, practically unconscious. Whereas it’s fairly common to see fireflies in the summer, and bunches of them near the woods, the amount that were out that night was immeasurable. Like snow, like rain, bright flashes surround the entire woods, the factory, and the tracks. When I tried to describe it to my friends later that night, it felt like I was a God or something, some huge being swimming in the stars. I don’t know if it was like a baby boom thing, or if it was darker than normal so the flashes seemed brighter, but it was awesome. Take a picture of nighttime woods off Google and fucking shake gold glitter over it. Seriously, I can’t stress how many there were.
I say it was a haiku experience because I really basked in it. Lost track of everything. My rushed and terrifying stroll has now leisurely and peaceful. I zoned out, took everything in around me, felt great, and before I knew it was out of the area. Not once was I scared.
I posted the haiku on allwritethen. Here is the original:
Stars by Reprobus
Pitch black summer night-
fireflies light the train tracks
that I saunter on
fireflies light the train tracks
that I saunter on
I wish I could incorporate the ethereal feeling I got. I am going to try to for the Dead and the Dying. I am writing a response to this piece as well.
In Sauk Village, right of the Trail, they have been doing road work for like 4 months now. It’s a pain in the ass because the lanes are cut down to one on both sides, and the rest are covered in bright orange barrel things, the ones with the flashing lights on them. Construction doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Instead it seems like the single lanes are becoming thinner and thinner, and more barrels are being added.
On one of my late night drives, I was on the Trail with the street empty, and started thinking how in a way the emergency lights on the barrels reminded me of the fireflies in the woods. So the Dead and the Dying is going to have a piece reflecting this and what I felt. Here it is, unedited as of now:
Ghetto Fireflies by Reprobus
If I ever did experience a haiku
It happened on the tracks,
Right before Parish,
That run along the thickness of the woods
Where I found myself walking
Beyond the earth and among the stars
Like a million fireflies
Like that fucking shitty song
But no romance involved
Only myself and the bugs
It was the only time
I’ve ever walked that path late
And not been at all nervous
For the last month
Sauk village has been doing roadwork
Expanding the trail outside of Dyer
And each day the flashing cones
Multiply
In the night, they become
A bleak version of that experience
As if to say
This is your future
The fireflies are gone
The only lights that scare away the beasts
Are dead and not at all watching over you
LOL the title. Definitely needs work though. But I like the idea of it so far. Anyways, that’s it. Peace.
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