It Happened To Charlie: Death of a Firefly

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Hello, weekend lovelies!

It feels like it's been a lot lately. Right?

Continuing in that vein, I have some stories for you coming out this week that are also a bit much and that I am dying to get your response to. One article that you may love or may hate and I can't wait to hear which. Another that’s controversial - but you know that’s my comfort zone, so yeah. Plus the debut of our highly unusual AJPT book club. And more!

So for this final weekend day prior to all that, I'm giving you something a little less chaotic: A ditty from your (and my) favorite Charlie.

Enjoy and relax and see you for more craziness coming up. I love you!

Jane

PS We are so close to the next level of paid subscriptions that will get us some kind of differentiated check color, but actually matters because it will let us keep going with AJPT and giving you the stuff you love (and hate!). So here's an offer: if you get three friends (or enemies, or people you don't care about one way or the other) to subscribe to AJPT, then you yourself make out like a bandit because you get a free month every time you do that. So we all win here. Except maybe people you get to subscribe who then don't like it but that's on them. They can always cancel. Let's do it and let's get those remaining 180 paid subs and then let’s all celebrate how amazing we are! Xox

Yeah, I know this photo looks like shit. This ain’t National Geographic, this photo was shot by a sorta drunk guy with an iphone while bawling his eyes out, so maybe lower your expectations, pal.

By Charlie Connell

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about trying to make room in my psyche for righteous hatred and, more specifically, the little things I do to keep from wanting to spend every waking moment screaming about one thing or another. I shared one of my stranger idiosyncracies and invited you into The Shire. It’s my special little place I like to go to turn the world off and it works wonders for my mental health. Perhaps, I may have even inspired you to find your own personal shire (please sing that in the Johnny Cash cadence).

Well, dear friends, I’m here to inform you that there are no safe places in this world, not even on the side of a busy road in New Jersey.

The illusion was shattered this past weekend when carnage came to my happy spot and all I was able to do was stare slack-jawed at the bloodshed as I watched a spider devour a lightning bug.

Perhaps it was because of the various chemicals tinkering with my brain function, or the heavy cloud that follows me around these days, but regardless of the cause, I’ve been unable to shake the sight from repeating in my brain like a DVD menu screen on a TV that’s been left on all night¹. It’s many days later and I’m still fucking shook by it. Here, watch for yourself, and please excuse my poor attempt to become the foul-mouthed, American version of David Attenborough.

Did you know fireflies are the only bugs who can scream for help?

OK, it’s not a scream, sure. And yeah, on a biological level, the statement is probably not even remotely true, but I’m not an entomologist, just a soft lil’ guy deeply in his feels anthropomorphizing an insect to further a narrative of despair. Given that context, it shouldn’t be surprising how much this whole thing messed me up.

First, I got to thinking about how we as a culture pit “good” bugs against “bad” bugs. Fireflies are whimsical and wondrous; spiders are scary and dangerous. Thus making the firefly the hero and the spider the villain here, but in reality, the spider just wants to grab a succulent insect meal, is that a crime?

Then I was considering that maybe it’s the simple fact that it’s never easy to watch something die, even when it’s an essential part of the circle of life. Watching the firefly’s light flicker on and off felt too intimate, too personal. I shouldn’t have been there, especially since there was nothing I could do. It was an intrusion.

But nah, that wasn’t it. Just like with everything else in my overly sentimental brain, it was the symbolism attached to the event that was gnawing away at me. The Japanese hold fireflies in high regard, believing the insects represent love, war, and the souls of soldiers lost in battle, among other things. That last bit always resonated with me.

As I’ve grieved losses over the years, I’ve attached my own personal meaning to the insects, a bastardized version of how I understand the Japanese symbolism. Anytime I see a firefly, I like to think that it’s a loved one, winking at me with their light, saying hi from the other side. Since I don’t really subscribe to any religious beliefs, I’ve put a lot of stock into this, especially in the seven years since my mom passed.

Now, I’m not going to go and fight a child trying to catch a firefly, screaming at them to stay away from my mom’s soul (now in insect form!), that would be insane. Plus, there are a lot of better reasons to fight a child…

But when I’m feeling loss heavily, I take comfort in seeing their light. I spend a ton of time outside on summer evenings for this very reason. I know there’s nothing original in this — everybody likes fireflies — but I don’t just get excited for purely scientific or aesthetic purposes, I’ve placed enormous importance on the little bugs and their fleeting time on this Earth. I spend most of May and June irritating Kim (my wife) by asking her over and over again if it’s time for the fireflies yet, like the precocious 44-year-old that I am. When they finally get here, they’re never here for long enough.

Being a human is hard. The simple day-to-day existence can be draining, even in the best of times, so we make up distractions to get through it all. Silly, trivial things that push the crushing reality of existence into the background… like seeing a firefly and feeling as if the loving hand of my mother was resting on my shoulder, assuring me it’ll all be fine.

So yeah, seeing a firefly entangled in a spider’s web, desperately crying for help with its light, struggling to free itself to no avail is gonna stick with me. It was sad, frustrating, symbolic, fascinating, mundane, unforgettable. It was brutal and it was beautiful.

I joked above that seeing the firefly massacre ruined The Shire for me, but that’s not true. It validated it. I go there to take a time out, to forget the world around me. Watching that spider catch that firefly drowned out every headline, every unpaid bill, every nagging worry. Poof! They were gone. The Shire did its job perfectly. Naturally, I filled the void with a cocktail of existential dread and emotional open wounds, but whatcha gonna do? That’s just Charlie being Charlie, and that’s OK.

1. There are at least 25 movies I can identify simply by listening to five seconds of the DVD menu music. How do I market this skill?