Scratching Itches

"To grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." John Henry Newman

In the South, some of the earliest signs that Summer is indeed slowly moving towards Fall, are the poplar trees and June bugs. Poplar leaves begin changing up near the top of the tree from a deep glossy green to a bright, clear yellow in August. That is also when June bugs discard their outer shells and leave them clinging lonely and solitary to the undersides of picnic tables, railings and on tree trunks.

When I was little, one of our summertime activities was to capture June bugs which were slow and ponderous and tie a thread to one of their legs so we could hold on to them while they flew. It sounds terrible now I know, but it was rather wondrous. The bugs are large and the legs pretty meaty, so it wasn't all that hard to do. After a while we would tire of them, cut the thread and off they would lumber. It was always considered a special treat later in the summer to find the discarded outer shell, so perfectly intact save for the long slit from head to tail where the insect had emerged. One time we found a shell with the remnants of one of our strings still attached….

A great number of things in the natural world get shed in order for growth to occur. Snake skins, deer antlers, feathers. We are for the most part completely oblivious to the inestimable amount of shedding going on all the time around us, all of which then becomes beneficial in some way to the ongoing process of something else. Nothing gets wasted. Eventually it is all necessary and valuable to the flow of life. That's a good thing to remember.

Have you ever seen a deer rub it's antlers to remove the downy velvet from its new horns? I've always thought it must itch. Or a snake as it slithers and ripples, inching its way out of the raspy shadow of its old skin? Shedding takes work. How do they know it's time to do it?

I would hazard to say that of all the members of the natural world, we humans have the greatest difficulty shedding. Maybe we think about it too much. We get our insides all worked up about the pros and cons of whether we should instead of surrendering ourselves to the instinctual understanding that to grow, requires change. We don't seem to always remember what Rilke was talking about when he wrote: "In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us." Perhaps our fear of change is that we will not be able to know what our new form will take, much less where it will lead us. Following the yellow brick road was okay for Dorothy, but doesn't seem so assured when it rolls out in front of us.

I've thought a great deal this summer about this concept of knowing. It is a fascinating subject. We like to know things: facts, figures, what's for dinner. Some of that is simply the result of living, none of which necessarily portends a change in our lives. No, I'm talking about the kind of knowing we prefer not to always address about our jobs, our life choices, or our relationships with others. We can talk endlessly about why we are vegetarians or vote independent, yet manage to stay acres away from listening to what our insides know is no longer good for us. Somehow, we know that to listen will involve a change in the status quo. We will be asked to shed. All the compromises, settling and elaborate self deception we have been using will have to be put aside. At this point I think it is a good idea to recall those lines from G.K. Chesterton, "Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be…You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important—such as sex, death, and religion(and can I add, by no means do I find this list definitive)—you must have mirth or you will have madness." Our inner courts have much need of a jester. There is a great deal of courage lining the halls of laughter and available after a bit of poking fun at ourselves. Easing up is sometimes all we need to relax, take a deep breath and "Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know" as Shakespeare counseled in Measure for Measure. Isn't it wonderful how many good things that man said?

I'm thinking that the velvet on the deer's growing antlers does indeed itch, and so does the snake's old skin as well as molting feathers. I think it is the same for us. We get itchy. Finally at some undeterminable point, the old will no longer suffice. We have to scratch and scratching leads to shedding. Sometimes we do it rather elegantly like the snake and other times, it is simply a long drawn out messy process. All we know is that how we are, is no longer who we are. Allowing ourselves to move one letter two spaces can open up the possibility of a whole new way of being in the world. Arthur Miller has that great line, "One must finally take one's life in one's arms." or better still, that great prompt from Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?"

I watched a Junebug once struggling to free itself from the shell of its former existence. It took a lot of work to pull itself from the rigid framework. Afterwards it clung to the carapace of its old life a long time before suddenly opening the shiny new sheaths of its beetle wings and buzzing away. I must say, to me, it seemed relieved.

Come to the edge,
No, we will fall.
Come to the edge,
No, we will fall.
They came to the edge,
He pushed them, and they flew.
Guillaume Appollinaire