Rustication
At a certain point, the cricket chirping merrily outside one's bedroom window becomes indistinguishable from a car alarm.
posted by greg rappleye at 5:27 AM
Monday, September 22, 2008
About Me
- Name: greg rappleye
- Location: Grand Haven, Michigan, United States
I am a writer who lives and works in West Michigan. I am a graduate of Albion College, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. I have published three full-length collections of poetry: Holding Down the Earth (Sky Books, 1995), A Path Between Houses (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000) which won the Brittingham Prize, and Figured Dark (University of Arkansas Press, 2007), which won the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series. I have also published three chapbooks: Eros, Psyche and the Death of Narrative (Candle Creek Press, 2006), The Afterlight (WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2006), and The Divisible Field ( WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2008), and have completed a fourth manuscript, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds. I am working on a novel. My work has received a Pushcart Prize, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Review Literary Award in Poetry, and the Arts & Letters Prize. I was a Bread Loaf Fellow in 2002. When not writing, I work full-time as corporation counsel for a local government and also teach part-time in the English Department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
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6 Comments:
Maybe it is the car alarm. Maybe the panic button on your remote delivers a small shock to a cricket tethered in your glove compartment, and the cricket's reaction is to chirp. And the chirp is broadcast through small, powerful speakers designed to mimic the surround-sound effect of what is generally thought to be our natural environment.
I have spent many nights in search of crickets in the bedroom. Worse are the tree frogs that cling to the window on summer nights to sing their desperate love songs . . .
When we moved to our current residence two years ago, it took me a while to figure out that the squeaking I would sometimes here after 11 p.m. was the brakes of the bus stopping at the nearby bus stop.
I set a cricket free the other day. I found it in the middle of our bedroom floor. I was surprised the kitties hadn't gotten to it first. I picked it up and turned it loose in the back yard. Of course, it has now become bird bait, but...at least that's a more natural death I guess. *shrug*
Well, the car alarm is, at least, easier to find and silence (I recommend baseball bats and angry calls to owner) than a cricket is.
Certain birds can cause that distraction as well.
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