Friday of the locusts

 Friday of the locusts 

First thing I woke up this morning, I checked my phone. In the middle of the night I’d sent myself a text, and I wanted to make sure I remembered correctly what I’d said: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Accept what Fortune brings; rest in God’s love.”

And “May God forgive you,” I found myself saying to the text, meaning (God forgive) its syncretism, its jab at Divine sovereignty: Fortune with Whim and Absurdity working both lackadaisically and diligently under her direction.

    “When there is time,” I thought instead of rolling over and swinging my feet to the floor, “you need to study the Thrones and the Dominions, the Principalities and the Powers of the air, who they are – by name, rank, and serial number – and what each can do.”

The upstairs hallway taken this morning. The bathroom door
is just out of the picture to the left. The back stairway to the
kitchen is somewhere ahead of me. (The cellphone camera is
balanced on the bookshelf invisible to my right.)

My own swarm of hissing wasps, humming hornets, buzzing, biting deerflies – I could hear them, the air outside the room dense with them even if invisible since the days of Brueghel and Bosch and x-ray glasses, the beelzebugs that ride and fill the air, reason enough to stay in bed, though not even in bed can one escape Fortune herself, who may not be omnipresent but is ubiquitous; she may not be everywhere always, but she is able and liable to be anywhere at any time.

     There’s nothing for it but get up, swat your way through the swarm in the hallway,  slam the bathroom door against them, brush the bugs out of your teeth, blow the gnats out of your nose, shower in insect-repellent, dress for work in beekeeper’s helmet, jumpsuit, gloves, and boots, and go out there.

     Thank God, it’s Friday.

09.30.16