the old-school guestbook archives
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la cucaracha ~ March 25, 2003 - 6:32 p.m. so I fixed the thing with the house, went to school and laid out my sad story about needing rent in advance, and we made it work. the house on the mekong is now officially mine, and I can move in on the 31st. I really can't wait to start settling in. ever since my housemates moved out of my current digs, I've been rattling around this too-big house. it's a kind of like camping, except all of the nature is outside. I have no dishes, no cookware, not much furniture. no music, no tv (a plus), no distractions to speak of. I think I've been going just a little crazy there. I began to suspect when I started talking to the cockroaches. now, you need to understand, roaches are more or last standard in a southeast asian home. it's not any kind of comment on my housekeeping. I knew there were roaches, because one day I came home and a rather large one was sitting on my bed. I mentioned it to my housemate, susan, because I was looking for some type of container for roach-extracting purposes. I have this thing, see, where I don't willingly kill any living being. not even roaches. not even mosquitoes. it's a thing, you know. so, susan came into my room with a rolled up magazine and brushed the roach off the bed and on to the floor, where it quickly scuttled under the bed. there, she said, and smiled. all better. I didn't see much of the roaches until everyone moved out, though. Then, since they outnumbered me, I guess they decided to act as the primary homeowners, on whose territory I am clearly trespassing. there were two at first, two that I saw. and then three. now, when I turn on the bathroom light, there's likely as not to be six or seven scuttling around. startled, as always, that I haven't yet had the good sense to take the hint and go away. some are big and some are small, which tells me that they are happily reproducing. I saw one with some kind of bulbous extension off its rear that called forth the word "ovipositor" out of the entymological archives of my can't-forget-a-damn-thing mind. so what the hell. I can't kill them, and I'm not quite ready to move out, so I've been talking to them. "hi guys!" I call out, when they scuttle across my path. I explain, again, the necessity of regular bathroom usage on my part. they really seem to think I'm intruding on their private hangout. I've been thinking, too, about just why it is that we, as a culture, are so horrified and disgusted by cockroaches. I tried to figure out what my own reaction was about, and I could only sum it up as kind of a sub-verbal they're gross! eewie! I mean, when you think about it, a cockroach is really just a very big beetle. okay, sure, they eat garbage. but a fly's favorite meal is a rotting carcass or a pile of shit, and they don't make our skin crawl the same way. and roaches tend to breed awfully quickly, so there's often a whole family to contend with, and not just an isolated roach. BUT, what it really is that freaks us out is that a) they really are very, very large-- and b) they are from outer space. I'm convinced that cockroaches are space aliens. like I said, I've been living with them for a while, watching them, talking to them. they are much too powerful and muscular and spiny and well-armored to be an average beetle. what kind of beetle lifts up its head and looks around? I mean, really? they can fit their armored bodies into impossible cracks and crevasses, and they really do just seem to be smart as hell. way smarter than beetle-hood calls for. and sometimes, I swear to god, they charge me. I'll interrupt their pleasant bathroom reverie, and they will run directly at my feet. you can almost hear the tiny battle horns blowing. this is not bug-like behavior. and that whole only-creature-to-survive-the-holocaust thing? doesn't it just give you the willies? so. I think that's why they creep us out. we sense, on some deeply buried level, that they're of a superior evolutionary inter-planetary caste, and that they are watching and waiting and analyzing our garbage. biding their time before they enslave us or just blow the whole planet up for scrap. they are, after all, everywhere. crazy, just a little. I told you.
(((rings))) |