17 Years: Cicada Dreaming?

I bought Shaun Tan's great, but creepy little Children's book 'Cicada' when I saw it on the 'Avid Reader' bookshelf when I went to David Cohen's 'The Hunter' book-launch -
Lance: Synchronicity and a Bad Omen?

I first found out about 'Cicada' when I picked up the above brochure from 'The Book Room Collective' down at Byron Bay when I was there for the Byron Writers Festival.

Doh!
I should have bought my copy of 'Cicada' from 'The Book Room Collective' and then I would have gotten a free badge.

I bought 'Cicada' for a number of reasons, but I have to tell you that the cover art drew me in like the time in the 80s when I saw the cover of Whitley Strieber's novel 'Communion'.
What Are the Eyes Actually Seeing?

Pickman's Model/Strieber's Communion?

Probably just my imagination right, because that one ain't as good as the one on the 'Communion' cover?

But flicking through 'Cicada' reminded me of a post about the cicada life cycle which I wrote about in 2013 -

Cicada Dreaming: Life Cycles

That was when I found out a cicada's life cycle is 17 years long.

Shaun's story takes place in an office building where the cicada works at a dreary office job in a big high rise in a city full of high-rise buildings until the cicada gets its wings and is able to fly away back to the forest. 

September 11 attacks, 2001

Which made me realize that a cicada that got its wings this month would have started its journey in September of 2001 and of just how much has gone down since then ... pardon the pun.

Oddly enough, this morning when I was reading Sarah Wilson's book 'First, We Make the Beast Beautiful' I read this passage -

"Uge used to have an office job.
But seventeen years ago he started getting up at dawn to sit and watch people on Bondi Beach and take digital pictures of them surfing, running, meditating.
He'd post them on this new contraption called a blog, which fellow desk slaves could access when they got to their cubicles in the morning.
The message spread and soon enough he was able to toss in the day job and turned his site into a full-time gig."  

Aquabumps

Uge (Eugene Tan) from 'Aquabumps'

"The idea for 'Aquabumps' came about in 1999 when Eugene Tan, a frustrated Creative Director combined his three passions: photography, surfing, and the web.

In the nineties, blogs hadn’t evolved yet, but Eugene, better known as ::uge (yooj), thought he’d provide a nice daily break for his mates to see a bit of surf at work."

From Shaun Tan's book 'Cicada'

I also saw this newspaper story about cicadas in France and couldn't help thinking how most humans are so out of touch with nature's ways.

I think I can hear cicadas chirping outside my window right now (unless it's just my ears ringing) and I like the sound they make.
Then again it might actually be crickets that I'm hearing (unless it's just my ears ringing).

17 years is a long time, that's for sure.

UPDATE: September 2018

17 Years on and it's a Tuesday, Too?