Ego ImagoBy Dina Rivera
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Still slightly crumpled by the early hour and the recent darkness of sleep, anticipating another melancholic workday, the nymph—Chloe, as they call her at home—plies the digital waters as she awaits the dark liquid to froth within the tall silver pot. In single file, images of celebrities and catastrophes, of brutalities and four-door sedans crawl up her arm like bits spawned by the shiny black rectangle nestling in her hand. Skipping from link to link, distracted, her feed populates with updates regarding the emerging broods of periodical cicadas (Genus: Magicicada; Order: Hemiptera: Family: Cicadidae) typical of the latitude and season. A lover of both the sciences and the arts, she recalls the old tale, noting that in English reference is usually made to grasshoppers, while in Spanish one speaks of the “Fábula de la cigarra y la hormiga,” even if various encyclopedias and Walt Disney himself have made clear Aesop was probably thinking of an ant and a beetle, or of many ants. Anxiously shuttling between old versions and possible futures, the nymph conjures a myrmex à la mode, most likely kitted with several permits and assorted side hustles, hmmm. Closer to her own vital experience, the current-day chicharra would probably till the ravaged fields of comparative literature or hand-drawn animation until that fateful day when the wily critter finally completes training the AI, flips the studio or something along those lines which often does unfortunately tend to culminate in other’s displacement, qué barbaridad, unable to afford the rent no more in this quickly gentrifying neighborhood. One must note the waspiest among them often manage to catch on much quicker, though, focusing on the brand and migrating to Instagram en masse…
Squished by anxiety, hungry for alternatives and carbohydrates, the white-armed nymph sights and straightens her clypeus, solacing in the upcoming weekend’s plans as she reminds herself that such manic-depressive fugues often prelude some kind of molting, the compulsion to dive into the viscous vibrations of music at the venue, to break into the night air gliding over baritone waves that summon her to pleasure, pushing her to leave the chrysalis in one final surrender to the dance. Thirsting for the dark nectar she’ll yet season with another nutritious sap, she gives herself over to succulent daydreams as the thing brews, the endless reports about the rare simultaneous emergence of the two broods (13- and 17-years) fueling dramatic sagas of hopeless romance vaguely inspired by reality TV, manga, and a couple of Mexican telenovelas. Thus, a properly tragic pair of lovers is summoned; sundered by centuries and unforgiving generations, time travelers crossing paths only by chance, coming together for a magical instant as their bodies emerge like wet ghosts from the depths at the end of a cycle during which, miraculously, they will coexist while the rest of the population dries in the sun by the thousands, all dangling from tree-trunks and branches when suddenly! the unmistakable pheromonic signature of one’s own twin soul wafts gently over—see there, under that leaf!—, then the endless coming together, tenderly, in the breeze… But no, the Other belongs to XIII Capulet or XIX Montague, seven or eight generations needed before their metempsychotic spirits can reincarnate as distant greatgrandchildren, two hundred and something years into the future… Cackling, the nymph registers the sharp whistle now rending the air: finally one can have a proper breakfast. Soon the dim nectar’s drunk, the rostrum dried, delicate hands thoroughly rubbed at the sink. Once again she recalls the incoming shift, the darkling way back in the evening, the pending bills, the news from the bloodsome world. In an instant, her arms begin to lose substance, folding back and enveloping the torso as new limbs sprout from the sides, the whole body thickening and elongating aerodynamically as the eyes, grown larger and redder, move toward the temples. A gentle trepidation convulses then the whole anatomy, a strange intimate vibration that displaces the fuzzy dust on the ground, the little bits of grit and sand that hurt ever so slightly the tender surface of the still-brittle thorax as one sinks softly into the
warm sweetness of the deep soil, sitting on the subway, soaking in the echoes of ten million fellowships, so easy to recall what poets describe as the material forms of memory old selves cast off after each molt, dun crinkly specters scattered on every corner, rock-candy sheaths leaning casually against walls… At that exact moment, self syncs with the drowsy army stridulating its message across centuries, the sleep of years measured by the gentle lactation of sap that will only end that enchanted evening when it’ll be time to crawl toward the surface again and crash against the light, to seek the others and mate frantically, screaming, only to better ensure the continuation of the species and then, weeks or decades later, to close the cycle and die lying on the ground, face to the sun, not without remembering first, in the final seconds of consciousness, that in another life she used to prepare café en la greca and that whenever one surfs the internet in search of quaint animal stories, it is extremely important to read beyond a single entry of the encyclopedia.
“Our own bodies too are changing always and without any intermission,
and to-morrow we shall not be what we were or what we now are.”
- Ovid's Metamorphoses, 15.229–230
Dina Rivera currently teaches Spanish and has worked as an editor. She has written some essays on Octavio Paz, Rosario Ferré, and the history of Science Fiction in her homeland.
