Saving beetles

The bugs we find at night

There is a certain time of evening in Elysian Park when the beetles come out. And maybe I say this because this is the time that I am in Elysian Park and I think I am a beetle beckoner, or I think the sun revolves around me, what I mean is: maybe the beetles are always out and I am listening only for the sound of the trees falling in the forest at the time that I am ready for the trees to fall.

Beetles have hard shells and soft underbellies and eyelash legs, and once while I was running, I saw one flipped on its back and I went five steps past before I tracked back to kneel down and flick it over because I felt a pull, I felt incriminated, something in me related — the helplessness of being on my back and having my stomach showing, being silent, feeling small. 

Something inside me was recognized when that beetle walked away, maybe the part of me that wants to walk away too, maybe the part that’s still lying on its back. 

Now, when I run in Elysian Park, I am searching for beetles, perhaps because I enjoy the rush of feeling like a savior in private, or because on these evenings, I am looking for myself.  

Beetles have shown up a few times in my life: in history classes in the form of amulets, a specialty shop in Portland (frozen in resin), on hiking trails, crawling between teeth inside nightmares, misspelled and mistaken for a certain favorite band.  

The beetles I find on my summer evenings are, after a little bit of research and a disclosure that I by no means see myself as any sort of insect expert, often called “head-stander” or “clown” beetles, because they point their rears upwards when they sense danger. 

I wonder if the beetle I found that day — weeks ago — had landed how it was because it had been startled, or if a dog or stray foot had knocked it, I wonder how we all end up on our backs, and if it is in that state of not being able to see the ground, not being able to find our feet, that we wait for some wind or a gracious hand to turn us around again — whether fate or conscious effort, we wind up standing, again. 

I wonder what it means to be named after how you react to threat, to have your means of survival compared to circus, I think of these beetles and try to imagine what it would feel like to have them crawl on my skin, how that would be different than the feeling of them uncontrollably beneath my feet, to cause hurt on accident, and to walk away with legs on my shoes, head-standing and foot-bent, threatened. 

The Elysian Park trail is littered with beetle carcasses — remnants of a life made collectible, where something that can be taxidermied can also be helpless, complex, a dancer. 

Sometimes, these summer nights in the park, I find myself laying on my stomach on the dirt path, imagining what it would feel like to have my entire being the size of an eye ball, to live in a kingdom, to have people in contention over whether or not I feel pain.  

Elysian, I learned recently, means “relating to or characteristic of heaven or paradise:” a place where beetles go to die. 

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Hello, my friend. As I approach the week of my 22nd birthday, among other big life changes including a new job, new apartment, other newness that escapes me right now, I find myself thinking of you. I’ll be honest, by you I mean this space here and the people I feel I am letting down by not filling it, and so I cross my fingers that I’ll write something I feel strong enough to share.

There’s a pile of essays I’ve been waiting to publish, all of which I don’t feel ready to hit send on yet, and the hesitation of which reminds me that you have been so patient with me, and I should be patient with me, too.

I often find myself rushing into writing (as I did with today’s musings — sentences scrapped together with one hand while I was on this run I spoke of, a habit that has not treated me well in the past, evidenced by the raised scars on my knees). I rush because I have this fear inside me that someone else is racing me to tell my own story, that if I don’t share my deepest secrets, my great 20-something reflections, my words, now, someone else will do it first. I forget that I’m the only one who has lived my little life, and I forget that the belief that there is only room for one of any kind of story is something I refuse to subscribe to, anyway.

For 22, I hope to remind myself that I’m the only one who will tell my story, that life (especially as a 20-something) is not a race, and that there is room for all of us on the page.

Thanks for joining me for another year of living and learning <3

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Question to ask your mom:

What is something you would tell your 22-year-old self?

sorry for the typos I wrote this late at night :)