michael-dean-k/

I had a horrific dream last night. We were in an oversized living room, and there was an inter-dimensional parasite that would one-by-one, burrow into each person’s ass. Whether you then exploded or not was somehow a testament to your character. It went up mine at least twice. I survived, and the second time the parasite coiled up and turned into an egg. I think I won this tournment? Was this a Harry Potter dream? Actually no, this thing was slimey and shadowy and probably from the Stranger Things univese. Actually, I probably had this dream because Season 5 of Stranger Things just dropped.

Stranger Things features possessions, ghosts, monsters, and every breed of supernatural evil, but all packaged in a way to be maximally accessible. It is a cultural juggernaut, the beast of Netflix. It gets billions of views, and is the #1 show in 90 countries. It is cross-generational and nostalgic for both kids and parents, resurrecting songs from the 80s back onto the billboards.

Is it weird that a hit show normalizes paranormal and grotesque violence? I mean yes, in the end, I’m sure the kids will win, but are we not poisoning our subconscious? I guess this reflect a general hesitation to the whole genre of horror. I do think there is something valuable to virgin eyes—if you see CGI evil, even once, it could haunt you eternally. Many other cultures see Halloween as soul-damning (my sister-in-law, a true Orthodox Christian, recently went upstate to visit a monastery on the night of Halloween, to avoid the inevitable images of teenagers dressed as cadavers).

I am subscribed to a r/MantisEncounters, and just came across “do you think the Mantid Beings have connection to the Praying Mantises on earth.” Many believe that a mantis encounter is not random, but a visitation from a higher-dimensional being (ie: they can see through the eyes of their earthly counterparts). Of course, very woo.

But it gets me thinking on how my last two apartments were baptized through insect visitation.

The last one was welcomed with a massive cockroach at the last step entering the unit, which to me symbolized the poverty of the artist (as rendered by Burroughs, Ed Sanders, and others of that generation). In this apartment, the day Fios was being installed, there was a praying mantis on the front door. The symbols that come to are MC Escher and the DMT realm, high insectoid weirdness of which I've never experienced firsthand.

Both bugs are (relatively) rare—sighted either a once a year or once a decade sighting—but what's more interesting to me is the act of narrativizing and mythologizing a place that has no associations yet. An empty apartment has no experience, no memories, and so the first few remarkable moments feel more significant since your meaning-making apparatuses are active.

On r/praying_mantis, someone reposted an image from TikTok of a killed mantid with limbs severed and guts on concrete, with the caption, “One praying mantis down. Cause of death: beaten with a stick and took it like a good girl. I flung it around a bit and all it did was stand there looking at me, and then I decided I didn’t want any mantises in MY pretty pink plants so I killed it.” The comments—in this forum of mantis caretakers—were obviously appalled, treating it as if someone had just confessed to killing a dog on social media. I agree that a praying mantis is weirder and more majestic and probably worth respecting more than other bugs, but I can’t exactly articulate why. Why are there no roach collectors? Disease? Something about the mantis feels exotic without feeling threatening.

I am undecided to the degree that I want to write about cockroaches.

First, obviously, they are skeevy. Roach prose is definitely less gross than a Google images search, but still, it’s far from a feel-good topic. I don’t want to put my readers through thinking about them too much, let alone myself. But I feel intrigued to write about them; there’s the Burroughs-like writerly obsession with roaches in Naked Lunch—which feels like an honestly twisted curiosity that is nothing to aspire to—but it would feel insincere to mimic him. Still, experiences with roaches are uncomfortable and memory piercing and physiology altering and I guess I want to freeze them in text.

I am the exterminator because my landlords are very nonchalant and I wouldn’t be surprised if they just crushed them with their hands (I have seen them do this once, at our lease signing). I have a new habit of applying Indoxicarb near the radiator with a syringe; the theory is that, since they are scavengers, they will grab the bait, bring it back to the nest, and poison their families. I’m skeptical of this. In any case, this my 2nd time finding “roach droppings” under the radiator. Does it immediately expunge everything in their intestines? This time though, I looked at the underside of my Clorox wipe and saw what seemed like a microscopic baby roach, dead or alive I’m not sure, and I couldn’t tell if it’s legs were wiggling so I pinched hard just in case, but now I am in this ethical haze of seeing my self as a roach abortionist.

When falling asleep I felt a tickle on my leg, turned on the light, saw it was a roochie (disgusting). Flicked it off, and had something like a 2-minute battle with it before I trapped it in a corner and gave in my 5” thick “Interpreting the Renaissance” book (so far the only practical I've found for a Marxist textbook). Showered, walk back into the bedroom and immediately see another one, same size, in almost the exact same spot. My first thought was not “we have a problem” but more like deja vu or irreality or dream logic.

Reminder to future self: this only really happens once a year, and it’s usually on the day/week when it first gets abnormally hot/humid—need to apply bait in the radiators before then.