I don't know what all the fuss is about with insects, some days I simply wish I was one. People would leave me alone, I could go about my business without concern or thought and death could come quickly in the beak of a beautiful bird.
Then again, observing and documenting the micro / macro of our universe before us through our art is probably the most valued gift of life itself and in the end being human enables us to do this – I regret those melancholic 'wish I was an insect' days and only loath those days when I’m not sure which I am 'insect or human' more.
I've always been fascinated with bugs. My father was a professional gardener and I would learn from him what they were and did in the garden or our greenhouses. Sadly dad spent altogether too much time trying to figure out how to kill the nasty ones that people didn’t want eating their beautiful flowers.
I on the other hand find it much more entertaining to photograph them and have no compunction about squishing the ugly malicious ones under my feet but stop at all out chemical war with them. Not all bugs are malevolent, just like not all people are good and we all have a place and a function in the warp and the weft of creation.
It’s easier to love the beautiful such as a butterfly but as a handicapped individual I learned long ago that there is also beauty in truth and even a spider, a snail or a slug has its own unique qualities.
I’d like to dedicate this insect gallery to my father Martin G. Pas for teaching me the wonder of invertebrates. I miss him dearly, thanks dad!
| As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly stay in place and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes...
... Gregor's eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky—one could hear raindrops beating on the window gutter—made him quite melancholy. What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself toward his right side he always rolled onto his back again. He tried it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never felt before.
...The devil take it all! He felt a slight itching up on his belly, slowly pushed himself on his back nearer to the top of the bed so that he could lift his head more easily, identified the itching place which was surrounded by many small white spots the nature of which he could not understand and was about to touch it with a leg, but drew the leg back immediately, for the contact made a cold shiver run through him. |
"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage."
"All abilities are paid for with disabilities. Perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. Insight into one area involves blind spots in another. i could not have done what I have done as a writer had i been a gifted mathematician or physicist. Honesty wrung out of him by pain, he cried out with a loud voice."
(My Education: A Book of Dreams)
"After the shot he collapsed on the bed and lay there inert, but something was stirring in his spine from neck to the tail - and now pieces tore loose in the eggs and then a red, glistening head emerges in reeking yellow slime - and then the whole centipede crawling out quick."
(Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs)
Gerard Pas and William S. Burroughs in Belgium 1979
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