Agents of the Intangible

Photo by Marek Piwnicki

Moving together as if one solid mass they veiled the sky. Engulfed in howling darkness we huddled together. Our trembling bodies tethered by terror. Pelting my back like hailstones their frenzy was relentless. Riving and screeching, the cacophonous whir of their undulating form stifled our screams. Caught in the eye of that black blizzard, we drew even closer. . .

A flickering flame.

We’d been playing with the other kids when we heard it. Turning to face the thunderous din tearing across the oval, we found ourselves enveloped in an instant. He screamed. I froze. And then, without exchanging words, without any conscious thought at all, somehow, we ended up wrapped in a two-boy ball of dread. . .

A refraction of light.

I was his older ‘buddy’. A title given to me when our primary school had decided to connect the younger grades with the older ones. I don’t know if that’s why I curled over the top of him like a human shield when that swarm surrounded us. All I know is that as those creatures whipped past my arms and legs it felt like the vortex they’d created had thrust us into a different dimension. . .

A dancing shadow.

Teeming with an energy entirely its own that swarm surged about in a furious barrage of blacks and browns. Obscuring the light, that frenetic spectacle skewed our sight. Devouring all sound, it warped our hearing. Robbed of our faculties, and rendered catatonic by our fear, we were trapped. . .

A plume of smoke.

As quickly as they appeared, they were gone. Streaming to the far side of the oval, that cyclone of cicadas vanished into the bushland across the road. It’s seemingly solid mass dispersing into the trees as if it had never been anything at all.

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Sometimes I feel like that swarm of cicadas: a haphazard collection of obscure parts that momentarily move together to create the illusion of solidity. See, the truth is – I don’t know if I’ve ever actually been surrounded by a swarm of cicadas. The memory I just shared seems to suggest I have. But my faith in that memory is tenuous. I’m not sure if it’s based in reality. Or if I dreamt it up. I don’t know if something like that did happen, and I’ve just embellished it over the years. Or if I saw a movie about some such thing and just imagined that experience in my head so often that I now think of it as something that happened to me. In fact, all I know is that I have plenty of so called ‘memories’ that occupy a similar space. They’re vague, warped, and questionable. They make a mockery of the line that supposedly separates fact from fiction. They shift and change, swirling around in my mind like their own dimension bending vortex. And since these memories are a large part of what informs my sense of self, I often wonder what that says about the solidity of my identity. I mean, how solid can a house of cards really be?

When such thoughts threaten to take hold, I often find solace in watching agents of the intangible: a flickering flame, a refraction of light, a dancing shadow, a plume of smoke. Each one elusive, immaterial, surreal. And yet, there they are. Like swarms of cicadas that appear out of nowhere and disperse just as quickly, these jesters of solidity wink at me as they frolic in and out of existence. Their nebulous nature reminding me that certain parts of myself also inhabit phantasmagorical realms.

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