Volvation – The action of an animal, for example a wasp, curling her body into a ball to protect herself.
It feels like this is what I have been doing. Insomnia from the bipolar mixed state, headache and fever from a post-chemo treatment1. I figured it was best to just wait, curled up, for the threat to pass.
But I did leave the house today. For the first time this year I could smell the green of the thawed lake.
I walked Leonard up to the dog park, but it was empty. When I threw the tennis ball for him, he sniffed it where it landed, then went to the gate to wait for me. He wanted to walk farther along the lake instead.
We walked off the main path, and I looked for a wasp nest in the area where I’d found a fallen one last November. But it’s still too soon; I haven’t even seen a wasp yet.
We did see a fat bumble bee wavering low, near to the ground. In terms of Laban’s movement analysis for dance: indirect, slow, heavy, sustained. Kind of. A series of small, sustained flows, punctuated with little jerks to change direction. “What do we do with the drunken sailor…”
Now I have an earworm.
The small, still-brown fiddleheads of new ferns are everywhere. Bark bits fall on my head, and I look up to see a great spotted woodpecker. She plays hide and seek around the tree trunk before she takes off. A robin lands on a thin birch branch along our path. Silent.
There are a pair of grebes in the reeds. A small gaggle of greylag geese nearby. And at the entrance to the trail, a single black-headed gull among all the common gulls competing for bread with the ducks. I swear one pair are Rouen ducks. They are surreally large. Like a trick of forced perspective. I’ve checked, and iNaturalist doesn’t have a registered sighting for them here. But since only one person has ever registered a mute swan spotted in the entire county, I’m guessing iNaturalist isn’t that popular with local ornithologists. And I know the local ornithologists are very keen on introducing new species of duck here.
I’m procrastinating.
The wasp material is much more difficult for me to process than I anticipated. Sometimes I feel like the crests of the waves of my writing and my health meet like two currents. Like a seventh wave, the surge catches my ankles unexpectedly, knocking me off balance, sucking the sand out from under my feet.
I learned seven things on Friday.
My oncologist and my psychiatrist aren’t on the same page in terms of my medications.
The European honey buzzard eats wasps.
So do praying mantises.
The wasp nest I saw last fall may have been that of Dolichovespula norwegica, the Norwegian wasp.
There is a species of wasp that does not have a common name. It’s the Dolichovespula adulterina, which I think sounds like the title of a Russian/Italian porn film, if you’re not paying rapt attention.
D. adulterina is a parasitic wasp, and a kind of cuckoo wasp, that will take advantage of the Norwegian wasp’s hive. The larvae, specifically, but they’ll also take over the hive.
There is a genus of wasps called Lithium.
Lithium wasps are aphid wasps. Solitary, some females tunnel underground to nest. All of them lay their eggs in or on aphids, which the larvae eat before turning themselves into what the researchers call mummies. As adults, they chew their way out.
And then they try to survive as an adult. Like all of us. Escaping our childhood by the skin of our teeth.
Yeah, I know, that was a metaphor too far.
This whole time I’ve been uncertain about how much of this collection would be rooted in memoir and how much in pure, imaginative zoomorphism.
You’d think that the fact there’s such a thing as a lithium wasp would read like a prescription. But it doesn’t. I don’t want to document my life, or specific generational traumas with these poems2. The idea of pinning memories down—even trying to—summons fragments of a high school biology class on dissection. Isn’t it funny how memories work? I can, and I can’t remember the smell of the formaldehyde. The thick pins—surprisingly dull—puncturing a bit of worm and pushing into the wax. I do remember the sensation of resistance.
That’s a good title: Sensation of Resistance.
I’d like to just throw everything in a potter wasp’s nest, seal it, and see what comes out. But blueprints are comforting. Everything has order, whether we see it or not. There is so much to learn from the order of the natural world.
A wasp has two compound eyes, each with thousands of individually functioning lenses. It sees from thousands of perspectives at once, processing them with such a tiny neural network.
Though these eyes aren’t great at catching the details, they are excellent for observing movement. Threats.
Red flags.
A wasp also has three single, oblong lenses (ocelli) in the center of its head. A mysterious triptych, of whose purpose absolutely no one is certain. Perhaps light and shadow. Perhaps an organ for spatial navigation.
Very likely for seeing in the darkness.
And now, back to work.
Thank you for being a sounding board for me. I welcome your comments. Have a good day, and a good week!
References:
http://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/18374/stri_Warrant_et_al._2006.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://entomologytoday.org/2014/04/30/some-wasps-developed-better-vision-to-recognize-other-wasps-faces/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolichovespula_norwegica#cite_note-Edwards,_R._1980-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemphredoninae
https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn17162-wasp-eating-animals/
My second book mixed states, (Wigestrand forlag, 2005) included a long poem that was so close to a memoir, it may be all I have to say on that topic.
A word about paid subscriptions. This week, I mentioned to another poet on substack that I’m on a purchasing freeze until I’m out of debt (incurred due to complementary treatments during chemo that weren’t covered by universal health insurance). I’m not claiming poverty, but I do stick to a monthly allowance that just about covers coffee with friends.
This poet I exchanged emails with was incredibly kind, and offered to comp me a while, so I could take part in the benefits they offer paid subscribers.
But I wondered if it might be a better idea to pledge here that every subscription I get I will use to invest in another literary substack I choose. Up to 100 subscriptions, or until I am out of debt. (I’m hoping neither of those goals are a pipe dream.)
You would essentially be giving three gifts in one. I get confirmation that my writing is valued. I get access to read great, inspiring work. And another writer gets money to support their work.
I hope you’ll think about it.
Spread the love. ❤️
Have you considered the title of your book might be "Lithium Wasp" or something to that effect? I too am always interested in the crossover between our personal lives and ecology, science, objective reality. Sometimes I think nature is shouting metaphors at us, and we need to pay attention to get them down.
Your voice delights me and inspires me to look closer at alllllll the details around me. I’m so glad we’ve met here.