WHAT MANY PEOPLE DON’T KNOW IS THAT…

When I live in contact with Nature, in a more natural dimension of life, my gaze immediately becomes sharper and more sensitive to the small, the delicate, the essential. The myth of the hero, of greatness, of extraordinariness, of visibility, crumbles, making way for the simple, delicate power of the real.
The ordinary reveals its mystery, the small opens passages to the infinite and the eternal, tenderness becomes the key to unlocking worlds. If you polish your gaze from the dust of habit, phobia, preference, expectation—if you make yourself available to receive—you might stumble, sometimes literally, upon an intuition or teaching that you feel is extraordinary, simply by taking a few steps in the woods without direction or purpose. Some of these “teachings” are ineffable, untranslatable into words, and settle somewhere in the soul. In my opinion, these are the most important. You feel it because they become part of you; they become you. At other times, in other cases, the mind manages to decode a fragment of the message and create a clumsy and wobbly bridge between the invisible and the visible. Between the ineffable and the expressible. To this second category belong the series of writings “not everyone knows that,” the Sarangi version. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Vulvia from Corrado Guzzanti. Well, that’s kind of how I see them, like clips from a “Re-educational Channel” version: yogic-meditative-esoteric. So please don’t take them too literally; I have no pretensions of scientific dissemination.

The Cicada. Or the importance of going underground, and staying there for quite a while.

Not everyone knows that cicadas have an incredibly fascinating life cycle.

Their larvae live underground for a rather long period—proportionate to their total lifespan on Earth—which can last for several years (in one species of “periodical” cicadas, it can even be up to 17 years, I’ve read). During this subterranean phase, they feed on nutrient-rich sap from plant roots. Once mature, the young individuals, already very similar to adults but without wings, emerge from the soil by digging tunnels.
How do they know the time is right? I mean, how do they avoid popping out in the dead of winter? Apparently, they test the soil temperature. And right here, I imagine how an average human in the identical situation would fare: “Okay, my gut tells me I’m ready to come out. But am I really ready? Maybe I should stay down here a little longer, quiet and still, and then something will happen. No, no, don’t be still and quiet! I need to study a bit more, make my body more adequate, be a little better than this. Oh god, maybe I’ve been down here too long and everyone else is already out. How embarrassing! Okay, the ground seems to be the right temperature, summer’s starting, I can come out. But what if I’m wrong? I mean, come to think of it, what frames of reference do I have to decide this is the right temperature? It’s not like I have much experience with this. I’d better see what others are doing, consult Google, or ask a Guru! Oh no, I’m underground, in the dark, alone. Oh, woe is me, all this responsibility on my fragile little shoulders!”

But it doesn’t seem to be such an arduous question for cicadas. Following their instinct, a kind of natural calling, perhaps feeling like an integral part of a “group soul” that moves harmonically and in tune with Nature, they dig their way to the light. At this point, they seek a tree or “something vertical”—from what I’ve found—to climb and molt: they definitively shed their nymphal casing and, after a few hours of metamorphosis, are ready for their first flight.
Despite having a long overall life cycle, their existence above ground lasts only a few months, generally the summer ones, and ends with the close of the reproductive season. Brief, by our questionable standards, but certainly an existence that makes itself heard! It’s the males that emit that loud chirping we know so well: the song is a courtship call, entomologists hypothesize (because, I ask, how can they really be sure?!). In some species, the sound intensity can easily reach 100 decibels and a frequency of 4.3 kHz. Well, the females aren’t deaf! I imagine them perched there, commenting, “I get it, calm down!” to the male who’s screaming like a maniac to get attention. The females, incidentally, make their presence known by emitting a sound that’s harder to hear, but it’s very much like a finger snap! Simple, elegant, and essential.
The scientific hypotheses explaining such a clamor (because we humans need an instrumental, utilitarian explanation for everything, otherwise we get uneasy) are varied: it’s possible that females are attracted to the most booming and muscular males (the membranes through which they produce the chirping are vibrated by prodigious muscles, among the most powerful in the animal kingdom), or that the purpose is to cover a very wide territory, or even to scare or stun potential predators. Indeed, they have many, and, with the exception of their wings and a decent camouflage ability, their only tool of defense to perpetuate their existence is… simply being numerous!
Be that as it may, I find the cicadas’ chirping to be one of the most striking and joyful manifestations of Life’s impulse to simply promote itself, without hesitation: the power of manifestation, of simply being. It’s no coincidence that where human-caused climate change has altered temperatures, the first symptom of distress for cicadas is their inability to “sing” anymore: the biological reaction to thermal stress prevents them from regulating their body temperature, and consequently—in Provence, for example—on summer afternoons, silence becomes deafening.
Returning to us and the cicadas’ fascinating life cycle: after mating, males live for a few days, females deposit hundreds of eggs in smaller, lower branches and live for two weeks at most. Once hatched, the larvae burrow into the ground, and the hypogean, chthonic phase begins.

And the cycle begins again, like a rhythmic pulse, the inhale and exhale of a great collective soul.

A cicada honored me by leaving its shed skin in front of my room here in Lakazeza. You can see it in the photographs. The skin—the exoskeleton—is perfectly intact, and if it hadn’t been pointed out by A’s young and sensitive eye, I would have mistaken it for a live cicada.

This is the essential poetic power (from ποιέω = to produce, to do, to create, and, in a broader sense, to compose) of Nature.

To mature and grow in the depths, in the absence of light. To draw nourishment and strength from that moist darkness to grow. To emerge, to make space for oneself. To shed the old “garment,” even patiently constructed, to unfurl one’s wings and thus honor one’s natural calling. To fly and sing one’s summer, in a disruptive celebration of life. To be. To let one’s note resonate. And then to leave even this form, as autumn arrives. May this precious and delicate gift be of very good omen and profound inspiration.