Bugs

How many insects were born today? It is a question too boring to answer. My father, a scientist, tried to answer it for many years, but kept getting distracted and so he never figured it out, before he became old and worthless. "Age is a dinosaur which chomps into all of us," he once told me. The most wisdom he could conjure in his compromised brain.

I sent away for hedges. In my yard -- it is exposed to the street, and the hedges provide me some cover to observe the people who walk past and the disgusting garbage they discard on a public street. The filth people are capable of it simply unbelievable. Food, paper waste, bodily fluids. They'll just go and spit right into the street like no one is watching them from behind a nearby hedge with a big hole cut in the middle of it by me to make it easier to watch their depravity.

I sit in a sun-paled lawn chair and watch the people go past. We don't live in a pedestrian area, to be sure. We'll get two or three people an hour, and of those, one of them will be doing something depraved. From behind the hedges, I can express my disapproval without risking a confrontation. An "ooh" or an "oh, no." They pretend not to realize. They are, truly, filthy animals.

I think about livestock sometimes. I come from a farming family -- all those who weren't scientists were farmers. It's odd. The relationship you develop raising something with all your energy and attention, knowing that you're going to kill it. You have to be pretty fucked up to go through with it, I assume.

From behind the hedge, I consider the world, unmolested, or molested only by the insects, of which there is a seemingly endless supply. Yesterday, for example, I killed 17 bugs. And the day before that, 12. Why more bugs yesterday than the day before? What happened to the 12? Was their absence felt at all? From where did yesterday's 17 come, rushing in to fill the void left by their felled brethren? I'd killed 12 bugs, therefore there should have been 12 fewer -- instead there were 5 more. Or...by God, wait...17 more?! Does that...could it be? Clearly there was some other variable I was not considering -- time spent outside, or hit percentage. But variables are a dinosaur...that chomps...it is hot today. Only 8 bugs so far, but it is early.