It's only music

on gardening, language, and reconciling oneself to cicadas

Not my garden, but a photo from my neighborhood to illustrate just how abundantly things grow around here. Taken yesterday, 5/18.

Well, my garden has once again begun without me.

The riot of azalea blooms has come and gone, and it may be too late now to prune them. The ivy has climbed up the supports under the deck and has made a foray of several feet under the Japanese maple. The ferns, which I swear were just beginning to unfurl a few days ago, are now crowding the hydrangea. The ajuga is long finished blooming. And yesterday I discovered calla liles sprouting where they absolutely cannot stay, forced there, I’m sure of it, by the aforementioned ferns.

I don’t want the garden to get a head start like this, but it always does. My mulching efforts of recent weeks spawned one strip of near-tidiness under the roses, but the patch at the top of the driveway is already crowned in multiple places with some very eager, clover-like weeds.

It can only barely be helped. Our growing season here in North Carolina’s Piedmont is lavish in every way: length, moisture, sunlight. From late March until early November, my garden will sprout, spread, and entwine itself over and around things— and I, depending on my schedule, will keep after it in small, almost achievable doses, one task at a time.

I will “keep after it,” I say. I cannot keep up. A garden wants to be a full-time job, but I already have one of those. Pruning and the like have to be wedged in along with the laundry. And the writing.

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Here’s something else I’ve tried to keep after: versus. Abbreviated vs, vs., or simply v., it expresses with curt simplicity and some small Latin flare what we might otherwise express as “in contrast to” or “as the alternative of” (thank you, Merriam-Webster), but would most likely use “against.”

You know how it works: “margarine v. butter,” “morning-person vs. night-person,” “Ali vs Frazier.” Anything pitted against anything else in ways large or small can be set up with that tiny abbreviation between them, and everyone immediately knows what’s going down.

The problem with it (that bit I’ve tried to keep after) is tied to the abbreviation, not its meaning. Because versus is seldom written out, people have forgotten or never been taught or neglected to discover for themselves what the abbreviation stands for. They still grasp the meaning, but they don’t know the word. As a result, we get this in speech:

“Margarine verse butter.” “Morning-person verse night-person.” “Ali verse Frazier.” As if suddenly, where we would have had conflict, we’ve got poetry.

I wish.

In my former life as a high school humanities teacher, opportunity would arise for me to keep after this small linguistic pitfall. Teaching, say, a conflict such as Athens vs. Sparta, I would offer my students a lesson in the meaning of that vexingly challenged abbreviation. I would write it out on the board for them: VERSUS, and I’d say it for them. I’d even make them say it. And of course I’d explain it a time or two: “it’s versUS, not verses, not verse.”

It didn’t take. Not much anyway. Keeping after this miscommunication in my small corner of the world hasn’t been enough. “Verse” as an expression of “against” has taken hold: (almost) everyone says it now.

I try not to let it bother me. Having a sister who is also an editor for the dictionary has served to reinforce what my observations should make clear: language is like a living thing. Used by living persons, it has ways of changing while continuing to serve.

Of course this can be frustrating. Some changes might grate you because you know they’re “incorrect.”

But there’s something beautiful about it, too. Something that signifies livingness and capacity for growth. Something that resolutely proliferates, no matter how hard we try to keep after it— like those clover-like weeds at the top of my driveway.

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So here’s your word question of the week: what’s a word or phrase whose change in use, spelling, or otherwise, is— based on your previous study— incorrect? While you’re at it, feel free to say whether this change annoys you and why, and share any efforts you’ve made to stem this tide. Do put all of this in the comments below. That way we can all commiserate and/or rejoice in this fascinating shift.

I’m very much looking forward to reading.

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This spring in the Piedmont, we’re enjoying a rare occurrence: the emergence of a specific variety of cicada.

Apparently all cicadas “emerge:” they spend their adolescence underground, coming above for a short span as adults for a few weeks or months. Their song is a soundtrack of summer, often emphasized in movies as instant atmosphere for heat.

But some cicadas are “periodical,” meaning that their life-cycles find them emerging together only after a number of years. In our case, we’ve got a thirteen-year variety, which means that the last time we saw them was in 2011.

They’re everywhere.

At first I was only seeing their husks: curled, parchment-colored shells clinging to tree trunks and branches, their living counterparts long departed. But lately we’re seeing those living adults, too. They’re big, husky things with long, translucent wings and round, bright red eyes.

I’ve seen them in flight a time or two. They seemed unpracticed. Careening only to crash-land, they buzz as they go, which makes the entire enterprise seem like a waste of energy. But mostly I spot them at what appears to be the end of their lives, walking (also an ungainly maneuver) or lying on their backs, wings buzzing frantically.

My puppy likes to eat them.

Some people are really bothered by them. The cicadas are what many might term ugly, and their abundance might feel, to some, like a plague. But I’ll admit I find them fascinating.

We were warned they were coming sometime in late spring, so I was watching for them. But my first sign wasn’t a sighting. I’d just arrived home from school and, stepping out of my car, I heard them: a constant whir from a long way off, a single note mixed with air. I thought for a moment that I was hearing a new type of electric car, but the sound was too stable for that. It has a musical quality— so much so that I asked my friend Nat, who has perfect pitch, to give me the note.

He listened, then texted back: “slightly lower than a C#.”

I kind of love that. Not a C#, and not a C. The song of this particular periodical cicada is its very own note, one we don’t have a name for.

They’ve been with us for about three weeks now, I think, and we’re told they’ll last until early June. After that, it’s thirteen years until we hear this song again. Of course I’m no entomologist. I can’t claim to be a cicada fan. But there’s something wonderful about these creatures, in the true sense of the word. A wonder that they do their thing, their underground sleeping-growing-feeding thing and then emerge into life and song regardless of what we’ve got going.

It’s an insistence on livingness, that’s what it is. An insistence that can somewhat be explained by an organism’s “need” to reproduce, contributing to the survival of the species.

But there’s a force behind that, too. Life itself. The Life whose very livingness insists on livingness, whose first words shared with us in the Genesis account proclaim, “Let there be.” It’s this call that the hydrangea answers, and the ivy, the weed, the fern. And the cicada, periodical or otherwise.

“Live,” God says. “Live.”

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And here’s your poem.

Joy

"Don't cry, it's only music,"
someone's voice is saying.
"No one you know is dying."

It's only music. And it was only spring,
the world's unreasoning body
run amok, like a saint's, with glory,
that overwhelmed a young girl
into unreasoning sadness.
"Crazy," she told herself,
"I should be dancing with happiness."

But it happened again. It happens
when we make bottomless love--
there follows a bottomless sadness
which is not despair
but its nameless opposite.
It has nothing to do with the passing of time.
It's not about loss. It's about
two seemingly parallel lines
suddenly coming together
inside us, in some place
that is still wilderness.
Joy, joy, the sopranos sing,
reaching for the shimmering notes
while our eyes fill with tears.

Liesel Mueller
poem included in Christian Wiman's highly worthwhile anthology, Joy: 100 Poems.

That’s all for this time, my friends. Thank you, as ever, for reading, subscribing, sharing, but mostly being.

With joy,

Rebecca