It’s altogether unclear why Kafka’s hero became a bug. Presumably he retired one evening, suitable for the dinner table, and awoke, yes, a bug.

Perhaps he had had his heart broken. His broken heart was the catalyst for his blighted chemistry. Perhaps, however anachronistically, he was a computer nerd. Perhaps he started a blog. Perhaps he made himself into an exile and, as to bug’s feet, his exile stuck. His exile, his bugness, stuck to him and covered him and became him and he came out of his wretched exile, exposing his unshakable insect soul.

I’m afraid I might wake up a bug. Or rather that I might already be a bug. I might turn off my computer, I might shut down my blog, I might leave this space, I might walk out my door down my hall and outside, I might walk down the street and realize I’m a bug. I could be a bug for all you know. I could be a mean nasty bug with a hairy labium and big round stereo speaker eyes. I could be a bug for all I know. Perhaps it was a slow transition that I didn’t really notice and that my dog has forgiven. My mirror doesn’t tell me I’m a bug because I’m a bug and my vision from my six, or is it eight, from my compound eyes has cheated my recognition. I’m not quite Kafka’s bug. I am a bug who doesn’t know he’s a bug. As abhorrent, as distasteful, as squashable as any bug.

I have a bug’s soul, perhaps, sitting in the dark. Shutting myself out. It’s funny that blogs are for attention, for the most part, for waning hungry egos. This blog is my moth’s flame, then, isn’t it? It’s so pretty. It might just kill me.

There is no warmth in the light, no beauty in the light, no soul in the light, no ghost in the machine. And still the flame, and still the flame. And the flutter of dry insect wings.

And then comes the zap, my snapping electric insecticide.

SS