Hello, reader. How are you? I was bitten by some little gnats. Spring is really here, in this part of Oregon. Some tiny winged insects woke up. I guess they were hungry for me.
I don’t actually know if they’re gnats, but they look like that–tiny flying insects. Where’s an entomologist when you need one? (Probably at the university, hanging out with an etymologist just to be confusing.)
orchards
Gnats were flying all around me at this hiking place. I was resting on a bench in a small hazelnut orchard surrounded by large hazelnut orchards. I didn’t think the gnats were a problem. Ming and I pretended they were fairies.
Well, as you probably know, fairies bite. Ouch! I didn’t feel it till the next day. These bites on my arms and left hand got really bad. They got worse over the next few days until I was afraid it was actually poison oak, like I had brushed against a sparse twig without knowing it.
Holy crap–I never met gnats like these. The marks on my arms got darker and more dramatic looking. The bites on my fingers were the worst. My left ring finger swelled up and was red and painful. I was afraid it was infected. The whole experience was confusing.
spring
So ironic–I yearned and yearned for spring. I need sunshine. Now I’m like–how many bugs can there be?
Wet places have lots of bugs. All this moss and plants and fungus and lichen means bugs grow too.
The long hours of light always throw me, in spring. It happened in Las Vegas, and it happens here in Oregon too. The veil is thin, though fall has the reputation for that. Often I feel fall feelings in spring, and spring feelings in fall.
feel your feelings
Just grateful to feel feelings at all. So many people are trying to deaden and deny themselves. Truth is so painful–more than the bite of a gnat.
Grateful I can cry, celebrate, laugh, rage, adore and cherish, fear, long for, lament and despair, love, honor, detest, and spurn. I feel a full range.
