108: Buzz Buzz

Brood 13 cicadas are out in full force now. They're active as long as the sun is up; they only have a few short weeks before they'll die. There are so many in our neighborhood that the background noise is a constant high-pitched hiss. I can hear lower tones from the trees outside our house, and sometimes I can make out individual insects nearby. Sometimes the buzzing ebbs and flows, like metallic ocean waves.

I joked repeatedly about getting a cicada tattoo a few days before one of my favorite tattoo artists announced that she had an unexpected opening last weekend. The problem with doing anything as a bit is that the bit, more often than not, ends up being something you do in earnest. I booked an appointment. The tattoo is almost done healing now; it's itchy and tender, soft skin fresh from under the needle. It isn't lost on me that tattoos go hard and peel as part of the healing process, nor that tattoo needles make a buzzing sound when they make their mark. My backyard is covered in hundreds of brittle brown cicada shells, which the bugs shed shortly after emerging from the ground. Cicadas, too, are pale and tender after shedding their shell. They have to rest and heal and harden up for a few hours after they transform.

The cicada tattoo on my right arm mirrors a deaths'-head hawk moth on my left. I got the moth years ago, back when I had the free time to drop everything and walk in to a tattoo shop without an appointment if I wanted to. I remember talking to the artist who gave me the moth tattoo about work, and about writing, and about how I didn't feel like I could commit to writing as a full-time job. I said something so stupid while he was tattooing me: "You can't put a deadline on creativity." I thought I was being clever. I meant it as a way to justify the fact that I didn't write much at the time, because I also had a day job and didn't want to feel rushed. This to a person whom I had just asked to draw something original and then tattoo it onto my skin less than an hour before. As soon as I said it, I was so embarrassed. The tattoo turned out beautifully.

I still have a day job, and probably always will; the bills need to be paid and I'm not enough of a hustler to go freelance full-time. I can't say that I have a healthier relationship with deadlines now, either. I write as though I'll actually die if I don't turn a piece in on time. The drive to write is a constant buzz, like the cicadas whirring in my backyard. Most of my life has been a long process of learning to loosen up, to let go, an ebb and flow of picking up disciplines and habits in order to develop them into a writing practice that has slowly calcified around my routine, like a shell. I'm not sure what the change yet needs to be, but I think it might be time for one. The shell's starting to crack, whether I want it to or not, and I hope the resulting tenderness makes way for something new and strange.

What I'm watching:

I saw Finding Nemo for the first time in over a decade for an essay I'm writing for Bright Wall/Dark Room. The movie holds up! I babysat a lot when I was a teenager, so I'm pretty sure I still have significant portions of dialogue from Cars committed to memory, but there's still something uncanny about watching a movie for children when there aren't any children around and still being able to engage with it on its own terms.