You’ve got to scrub them off. Every last one and every last inch of them. Florida’s love-bugs are delicate and always joined with another. They float and land easily, lovingly. All would be well in Florida if love-bugs just stayed out of the way of cars. Their unending deaths on the front of my car and rear view mirrors leave remnants of love that can best be described as a god-awful mess. Not a benign one.
Their black bodies are made of something more tenacious than tar. If you let them stay on the car your paint will be indelibly stained. From what I can tell, if they’re left on long enough of, whatever was in them and their love-making starts eating away at the paint.
So why isn’t there a product to keep them off my car? I have lived peacefully with each love-bug season for the past twenty years, but not this one. I’m driving more.
I’ve ventured out to set up a writing retreat, which means camping on a tile floor in an empty house, close to the ocean to spend glorious mornings and evenings with sand between my toes and sweeping my feet into tepid waters.
I now commute between St. Augustine and Alachua. For two days a week I’m in Alachua to care for Meena (that’s pretense I just have to be with her), stock up on water, do laundry, and pick up a piece of technology, a sweater, or whatever I need in at my campsite in St. Augustine.
I’m relocating to St. Augustine to write. It might kill me but I’m going to write. Okay, I shouldn’t make that statement publicly for many reasons.
Anyway, after making the one-and-a-half hour ride between St. Augustine and Alachua, I have to—sooner or later—remove the love-bugs from the car.
Why is there nothing we can put on cars before leaving our driveway that inhibits or prohibits love-bugs from attaching themselves to us?
I have spent the better part of fifty years trying to find such a product I can use on me. For what sticks on me. I’m a walking magnet looking for love and so desperate to have it that I’ve subsumed myself, on more than one occasion, as a “gift” for another. Does anyone else have this wild idea, or pressing passion, to find love, oh! so that two could exchange together? It does exist. I’ve felt it.
The Three Dog Night’s lyrics, “One is the loneliest number that I’ve ever heard,” was circling around in my head as I swept the entry to the house after scrubbing off the love-bugs, as I did my heart opened up.
It’s damned hard to get into my heart often, but I can will myself there. I keep practicing so I can take larger and larger doses of opening fully with surrender to the world. I can only take it in mediated doses. It seems that in this world pain is not separable from deep love, whether for another, our earth, or a political party. But as I repeatedly open up, I feel more of only the excitement and wonder of an open heart, not the pain. Interesting. It’s not intuitive, but it’s true.
I didn’t want to sweep the entry. I wanted to sit and write. But when I took the moment and the broom to care for the gift in front of me, I felt respect for where I am and what I have. Everything seemed quite enough and perfect. The act of caring for the belongings induced respect which incited gratitude. I’ve experienced this before: the more I see and feel with respect the more gratitude wells.
A final point on One and being lonely, inspired by the free song in my head, “ONE is the loneliest number . . . ”
(no I’m not dancing to it, though I’m thinking about putting music on and dancing for a few minutes).
Alone is not lonely when opportunities to be with another remain. Therefore, metaphysically, in my opinion, the Three Dog Night got it right: one is the loneliest number. If there’s only One after death that would be lonely and unfulfilling. Even if relationships deliver pain there is no other vehicle for intense love.
But in the way the Three Dog Night intended that phrase I think they got it wrong. One is not the loneliest number.
The loneliest number is two when one of them is absent. In all my twos I feel that way: with God, my loved ones, and myself. When one of them is absent I go a little wild inside. It’s that psychic angst of wanting love more than food. Don’t ask me why I’m so strongly wired like this.
Sweeping the entry to this house and cleaning love-bugs brought me here. Not feeling lonely, immense gratitude, and off to do an internet search for love-bug cleaner or inhibitor or both.
Hope your Friday evening brings moments of connectedness with yourself and those you love,
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