The Illusion of Real
The Illusion of Real
Finding Freedom in the Limitations of Poetry
This morning, waiting for the dog to do his thing in the front yard, I saw a bee and two species of wasps hovering over the goldfinger blossoms. I realise how much I have changed in a year. In little ways like this. I’m calmer now when I meet them.
I try to remember things I’ve read and noted about the different species: whether these might be stinging wasps. One probably, one probably not. I figure the yellow flowers are far more interesting than I am anyway.
Later E. and I ran on the beach. According to the long-range forecast, it might be the next to last weekend of summer weather, so the shore was crowded. I did qi gong in the dunes, among the rosa rugosa (an invasive flowering bush). I always feel a little conspicuous, so I close my eyes. It demands all kinds of focus to get past unnecessary fears: wasps, bees, thorns… judgement.
Walking along the trail back to the car, I passed a woman with a little girl. I saw the woman slip her hand between the child and a wasp. Easily. Calmly. She sort of guided the wasp away: the little girl none the wiser. Though, maybe she’s already learned her mother’s tranquil caution?
A friend sent me an Instagram reel that explained how wasps are necessary for some species of figs. I knew a bit about them, but not that when the female wasps emerge from their eggs, they are already gravid. I looked up the details and they are more uncomfortable than I wanted to find1. The tiny, male “siblings” hatch first inside the fig, and tunnel their way into the female eggs to fertilize them before they die. For the first time I notice how projecting the cultural qualities of human relationships (the article describes them as brother, sister), and therefore projecting the practice of incest onto these insects, is a powerful way to vilify them. We compound our fear with an irrationally-placed moral disgust.
Earlier this week a woman struck up a conversation, telling me about how important it is for us to take care of nature. When I told her that I was currently learning a lot about wasps for a book I am working on, and that I had a new appreciation for them, she told me that they need to be eradicated from the suburbs where people live because they were too dangerous. I started to counter but stopped. I stopped because only the night before, I’d seen a theater production where the monologist talked about nature. Nature as a balm for all the stress we have in our lives. You know the trope: clouds, flowers, the sound of winds in the trees. That kind of nature. The kind of idealised version of things worth protecting because it is useful to us. Nature as kitsch. The idea of nature.
I’ve learned that there is a time and a place for real discussions, and it was not the time nor the place to try to scratch into something covered with so much varnish. Let her save the nature she holds at arm’s-length.
That matters, too.
During the 1800s, the Romantics created present nostalgia, with their soft monsters, and softer comforts. Ibsen went from Peer Gynt to Ghosts, riding the pendulum of contemporary art we saw in the 1900s. Naturalism: Antoine projected films of maggots in rotting meat onto bodies on the stage in order to “get real”. But it was the idea of real.
This week I’ve been thinking about “getting real” and what that means in art. Is it even something to aspire to? Anything filmed, photographed, staged, framed, is removed from what is real. Denis Dutton argued that this kind of special focus is what defines art as discrete from real life.
A wasp pinned on a specimen board is not—not really—a wasp anymore. Neither is a single memory, a real life.
At this point, I’m finding this thought freeing.
I’ll be back later this week with Wednesday’s Poem. And again on Sunday with another Process Journal Entry.
Until then, have a great week!
Warmly,
Ren Powell’s Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen
Writing against Melodrama by Engaging with the Natural World
Give some love. It only takes a little ❤️.
An interesting read Ren. My son asked me last summer " what is the point of wasps?" I didn't have an answer but I knew there was a point, as with all things in nature in which we are all interconnected. 💚
A simple answer is that wasps eat aphids. We'd lose so many crops! And then there is wine. No wasps, no wine. Thank you for reading!