Commune with Nature

Shooting Star Savannah (THIN, NO VISUAL)

A gnat buzzes in my left ear, overwhelming for a split second, yet inaudible the moment it is swatted away. Now it is quieter. I can hear the constant faraway screeching of cicadas, occasionally crescendoing, decrescendoing, always in unison. Steadily, under them, there is the low hum of the Johnson science building's heating and air-conditioning unit. Every couple minutes these sounds are interspersed with the sound of birds chirping - high tweets, not sedate birdsong.

The log I sit on is rough and leans to the right, so my right leg curls up in the grass, while my left perches on another part of the log, bifurcating away from the center. My shoe is thin enough to feel the log's roughness and grip accordingly, but thick enough that the bark does not chafe against my foot. My pants are thinner than my shoe, and thus my ass is not afforded the same luxury as my foot.

Shooting Star Savannah (INTERNAL)

I am antsy. My girlfriend Amy is waiting for me back at my room, and I feel awful having her wait for me while I'm in class. She's up visiting from Sugar Grove and I always want to make the most of the time we have together, since we have to be an hour and a half apart so often.

. . .But there's always so much to do. There's that damn job at Outback I want to quit (but hey, I need the money), there's school, there's the band, there's the play I was just cast in . . . It's true, I love many of those things, but when Amy's here, they can quickly turn from responsibilities to distractions.

Shooting Star Savannah (Internal/External Combo)

A gnat buzzes in my left ear, overwhelming for a split second, yet inaudible the moment it is swatted away. I am antsy, and do not welcome its distraction. Now it is quiet, and I am left to my thoughts. I worry about my girlfriend, Amy, alone and possibly bored in my room while I'm in class. I worry if she resents coming all the way up from Sugar Grove just to wait around. I worry about my job at Outback, and how I'm going to make money if I quit as much as I desperately want to. The screech of the cicadas intrudes, an army of sound, rising and falling in strict martial unison. I re-position myself on my log, trying to get in the sort of comfortable pose that will allow me to clear my head, block out the worries, block out the cicadas, and meditate - commune with nature.

. . . Not all of nature, though. Fuck those cicadas.

And fuck this log. I do not want to commune with this log. The bark of this log is rough and uwelcoming. My shoe is thin enough to feel the log's roughness and grip accordingly, but thick enough that the bark does not chafe against my foot. My pants, though, are thinner than my shoe, and thus my ass is not afforded the same luxury as my foot.