Night Watch -- Chapter 12
She is walking through the Lucas place and the ground is full of grasshoppers. She says, “Every step I took detonated the grass,” as she wades through the bursts and whirr of wings and clips of snapping hopper legs. She tells us about the transformation that is possible, from grasshoppers to a plague of locusts. “Swarms of locusts are ordinary grasshoppers gone berserk.”
What I wonder is, does this happen to all of us when we are restless, or when we are thrust together in close proximity, or when worked into a frenzied state? Do we transform from a state of harmlessness into a destructive plague? I even wonder about the biblical plagues of locusts (Joel 1:4). Could that really be about us?
Oh, the wonder of it all. That is the point. The world is wild and we with it. It is full of wonder if we will but pay attention. Wild life is all around and through and within. The fact of it says something.
Quotes:
A bobwhite who is still calling in summer is lorn; he has never found a mate. When I first read this piece of information, every bobwhite call I heard sounded tinged with desperation, suicidally miserable. But now I am somehow cheered on my way by that solitary signal. The bobwhite’s very helplessness, his obstinate Johnny-two-notedness, takes on an aura of dogged pluck. God knows what he is thinking in those pendant silences between calls. God knows what I am. But: bobwhite. Yes, it’s tough, it’s tough, that goes without saying. But isn’t waiting itself and longing a wonder, being played on by wind, sun, and shade? (220)
I didn’t know, I have never known, what spirit it is that descends into my lungs and flaps near my heart like an eagle rising. I named it full-of-wonder, highest good, voices. (224)
She is walking through the Lucas place and the ground is full of grasshoppers. She says, “Every step I took detonated the grass,” as she wades through the bursts and whirr of wings and clips of snapping hopper legs. She tells us about the transformation that is possible, from grasshoppers to a plague of locusts. “Swarms of locusts are ordinary grasshoppers gone berserk.”
What I wonder is, does this happen to all of us when we are restless, or when we are thrust together in close proximity, or when worked into a frenzied state? Do we transform from a state of harmlessness into a destructive plague? I even wonder about the biblical plagues of locusts (Joel 1:4). Could that really be about us?
Oh, the wonder of it all. That is the point. The world is wild and we with it. It is full of wonder if we will but pay attention. Wild life is all around and through and within. The fact of it says something.
Quotes:
A bobwhite who is still calling in summer is lorn; he has never found a mate. When I first read this piece of information, every bobwhite call I heard sounded tinged with desperation, suicidally miserable. But now I am somehow cheered on my way by that solitary signal. The bobwhite’s very helplessness, his obstinate Johnny-two-notedness, takes on an aura of dogged pluck. God knows what he is thinking in those pendant silences between calls. God knows what I am. But: bobwhite. Yes, it’s tough, it’s tough, that goes without saying. But isn’t waiting itself and longing a wonder, being played on by wind, sun, and shade? (220)
I didn’t know, I have never known, what spirit it is that descends into my lungs and flaps near my heart like an eagle rising. I named it full-of-wonder, highest good, voices. (224)
