Cicada Hill
originally created: 26/11/2023
last updated: 15/12/2023
Update: "The Flesh Bag, and Cicada Hill's serial killer
The best shortcut between me and my common destinations is a very steep hill that I call Cicada Hill. I call it so because, the way it's laid out, with huge trees on both sides, interconnecting at the top, forming a roof of leaves and branches, is the perfect habitat for the tettixes that come around every year at the end of Spring. By then, the sound of their choir is deafening, and going up that hill becomes a nauseating experience. It stays as such for only a month or two, and then they're gone again. But the experience is so unique, and that place is so strange, that it had to be labeled as a sanctuary of sorts, celebrating a natural Shangri-La.
Furthermore, Cicada Hill isn't only a place for cicadas, but also the epicenter of weirdness in the area. Every day brings a new experience —a new object, a new sound, a new smell, a new presence—, and you can never know what will come up next. It's mystical, terrifying, and a gamble. If somebody dies there, it'll be hours before the body is found; and its "geopolitical position" makes for a perfect place to commit crimes of any sort (even though, of course, you will find mostly misdemeanors being commonplace.)
From trash burning, to public sex and street tagging, all the way to body dumping, I've seen a bit of everything up there, and am not afraid of taking the risk to see what else new that place is holding for me. Especially now that, having the means, I'm recording and cataloging the weirdness, in various mediums.
This album is a logbook, presenting my various experiences (from a specific point, that is, when the logging started) with Cicada Hill; both as a local passerby just trying to reach my destination faster, and an investigator of crimes that have affected me in a deep, personal level.
Because of Cicada Hill, I watched my friends die; I made a film; I carry a weapon with me at all times. Below you'll find stories of serial killings, of supposed cults, of the cycle of life, and the biggest irony of all, portrayed in the brightest spotlight: death.
Once again, heed my warning: this stuff is graphic. I'm talking gore, I'm talking dead animals, I'm talking murder. This page is for infotainment purposes, cataloging and informing about the dangers of Cicada Hill, but never letting go of the way of the storyteller. After all, this is my journal.
Eat, Sing, Fuck and Die
This is the mediocre film that spawned my obsession with Cicada Hill. I produced it, stitching together various scenes of my life recorded with my trusty old Samsung Camcorder [the HMX-F900, read more about it here], and it was my second ever attempt at making a movie. It shows, very clearly, since the editing is all over the place, and the pacing only makes sense if you watch it in loop. But the message is there (if you pause and, in some cases, go frame by frame), which says "cicadas are pretty cool".
My fascination started with a sort of epiphany. Walking up Cicada Hill one day, I felt a sudden urge to learn more about that animal, and the reason why behind such an event as the deafening yearly choir, that annoyed the locals for a really long time, on a routine basis. But instead of eating up science books, I opted for more literary answers, which took me to Hesiod's "Works and Days", and the many, many haikai of Matsuo Bashō.
"Works and Days" is Hesiod's attempt of writing a textbook on agricultural arts, and that means, considering the context of time, talking about the relations of men and nature, although diverging us from animals, but describing our place exactly in the grand scheme of things.
My favorite verses (it is a very long poem) are these (retranslated by me), which talk about the presence of the tettix in the cycle of seasons, as a herald of Summer. It says,
"When the golden thistle is in bloom
and the tuneful tettix, perched on a tree,
pours forth from under its wings his shrill song,
in the season of Summer, with all its labors,
then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest;
women are most wanton, but men are feeblest..."
This excerpt opens the film, along with a recording of the said choir. (Although loud, it is not even close in decibels to the real thing.) It is supposed to start the comparison I attempt to make of the human philosophy in its life cycle, to that of the cicada.
The title, "Eat, sing, fuck and die", is a rude oversimplification of a cicada's life cycle. Basically, they come out of the ground (or wherever else is their place of rest/birth), ravage the place, drinking the sap of every plant they find; sing all day long to attract partners (the male sings to attract females), then fuck as much as they can to make as many eggs as possible (later on, lay the eggs, which I'll talk more in depth soon); and die. When the cycle recommences, what we see is a whole new generation of insects, because the previous generation lived the whole of their lives and are well dead in the ground long before the babies are born. The new generation will now have their chance of living life at its fullest, while also giving a chance to the generation that will come after, to do the same.
It's simple, the existence of the cicada, but not lacking. They do everything there is to do, and live life as it should be lived, without worrying about the great beyond, or the meaning of life, or whatever. And for that reason, I think they are the happiest animals on Earth, even though their existence doesn't differ so much from all else. We as humans, for example, have a life cycle exactly the same as theirs: we're born, we live, we reproduce, we die. This is, once again, a rude oversimplification, but the simple way is always the best way; that's Occam's razor, that's science. If only we lived like them, however, think about how less damaging it would be to live, per se.
I have the feeling we did, at some point, in a society that escaped the technologies of the modern world. Maybe the cavemen, maybe whatever else came after the cavemen, living "more like animals than humans". A world without philosophy and all the issues it entails; that's a Shangri-La, that's Cicada Hill for the tettix.
What follows is a rapid sequence of memories. It's me, looking at my life at that point, seeing in me a cicada. It is meant to be fast, because that's how cicadas live; it's supposed to be unintelligible, because what knowledge of the world do cicadas have?; and it is supposed to be licentious (in a mostly asexual way), because that's just how life works through me.
After that, there's my literary part in the texts presented:
"of manners blasées, absent of offal
unusual maiden overruling nature
flies at dusk breaking glass
spews in cut bark
it's a heartless coda
"to eat, sing, fuck and die
no need to bother the agenda
wanton is all that lives
regretful is all that loves
what good is a heart?"
It speaks to the idea of feminine. The female cicada does much of what the male cicada does, but there's an extra step: they're the key for the continuation of the cycle. They bear the child, they lay the eggs, their success in the instinctual process is what will determine the future of the species.
The pregnancy works like this: they fuck, get some eggs in their bellies, then make slits in the bark of trees, and lay their eggs in there; the bark protects those eggs for the coming year.
In a way, they are the only ones who have to work in that society. And in a place of little to no responsibility, it is on their backs the most important act in this whole play; they are the conductor who will bring up the coda and set the conclusion. This is no easy feat.
And then we get to me. Me as a cicada; cicada-me; and my challenges in existing as "unnatural" in a world that needs naturality to function. I am a trans woman, and because of that, I'm always walking on the wall, wobbling around, never actually falling to either side. I identify as a woman, but I know I can't ever give birth; I know I can't ever bear a child; and it is this supreme role of the feminine in the cycle of life, that makes me doubtful about the reason behind my very existence. Why do I even exist? What good am I in this world? I know I'm not a man, but will I ever be a woman?
To deal with that, I learned to be stoic. I am the bald-head girl. "Of manners blasées, [...]unusual maiden overruling nature." The part which says "Flies at dusk, breaking glass", refers to the non-conformance of my existence: I don't live in daylight, but at dusk; that's where I make my sound, breaking glass, not singing like I'm supposed to. When I spew into the cut bark, "it's a heartless coda", there is no future in my actions. The second part is a reinforcement of the stoic mindset, as a critical view on the cycle of life: "what good is a heart?" Again, instinct; I try to live with my head, not my heart.
Next up, we have the poem that Genji wrote to Utsumemi, in "The Tale of Genji":
"at the foot of the tree
where the cicada
shed its shell,
my longing still goes to her
who left it behind
It is so beautifully poetic in its original form, and I highly encourage anyone to read this blog post right here, which explains it more in-depth. But what I meant to represent with it, along with the last verse of the previous text lingering on the screen as the scene transitions, is the fact that I cannot escape my heart.
My past is specked with heartful moments, and I can't truly ignore that. I'm not a complete stoic, so I suffer. My longing still goes to her, who left its shed shell behind, even this many years later. I will never be able to live in the comfort of those who don't hope; the nightmare I live in is of constant expectancy and sorry, failed attempts of moving on.
This is all the philosophy of the human life cycle. We're too conscious, so we can't live with simplicity. We're too complicated for that; that's why we're not beyond the human of our past. We linger, we can't accept, we fear. A risible existence of many wonders: humankind.
In the third and last part, we go back to the cicadas. This time, with two haikai by Bashō:
Ah, the silence
Sinking into the rocks
The voice of the cicada
The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die
It reinforces the simplicity in the cicada's life cycle, and has as a visualizer, my favorite sequence: me, going down Cicada Hill, venturing into the pitch-blackness of that area.
Cicada Hill is a place forgotten and neglected by the government, and a shortcut only known by the locals. City security doesn't go in there, there were no streetlights throughout the path [at the time], and it was/is all in all a dangerous, scary, secluded place. The green roof makes it pitch black at night, and that's where you abandon your vision to give full attention to your other senses. You thread carefully, in order not to fall into the eroded holes of the dirt path; you keep your ears wide open to make sure there isn't anybody or anything lurking in the shadows; and you sniff the air like a dog to know if you should turn around and run, or not: the stench of rotting flesh is a dead giveaway that you should not be there.
But for the insects, the darkness is great. In their simple minds, it represents no danger, and crickets will sing, and cicadas will sing, and snakes will rattle, and there will be just such a different place for the opposite worlds of self-conscious intelligence and instinctual-intelligence; the men and the animal.
I will not transcribe here the rest of the text, it is not necessary. Go watch the film.
"Eat, sing, fuck and die" is pretty great once you're aware of its message, but can be really confusing if you're not in the cut. Symbolisms are all there and whatnot, but who gives a shit, honestly? Who's reading all that text or watching it more than once? I know I ain't.
In conclusion, there is no conclusion. We don't learn, we persevere in error, we're naive and assholes. I present, with this movie, simplicity as an answer to [even] my own problems, and not even I am courageous enough to act on it. Facts are not real when we don't want them to be, it's incredible what we're able to get accustomed to. I wish I was an animal.
February, 2023: "As sunset hits the roof of Cicada Hill"
As the sun begins its way downwards, beautifully it shines on the always green leaves of Cicada Hill's living walls and ceiling. Trees can be seen sprouting from both sides: to the left, fron the urban farmstead that extends for a whole block; to the right, as spawns from those on the left, infant trees that grew over and past the abandoned airport's walls, to intertwine with their parentals many, many feet above the ground, forming a natural roof of branches and leaves.
Life under sunset
Taken a half-an-hour before sunset, in this picture we can see life from Cicada Hill (as observer), and how it is arranged within (per se) Cicada Hill as symbiotic organism. It is a dirt road, but the walkable path (lower left) is shortened by the erosion from the running current when rain falls (lower right), as well as trash of all sorts, since Cicada Hill and the clearing it leads to, are known to be dumping grounds, where people do not hesitate in throwing out their trash. Further down the road (as seen on the picture), cyclists going up the hill; even further, the clean part of the lake and the road —and sidewalk— around it, with its denizens: people and cars. The airport wall also can be seen (left).
Cicada Hill after dark
In the latter half of 2023, as part of a project to change the streetlights of the city from sodium-something-burning to LEDs, certain places that didn't use to have lights now do. Cicada Hill sort of is one of these places, but due to how dangerous it becomes during rain season, with landslides and potholes and all that stuff, it's impossible to illuminate the whole path. So, they put up lights, but only at the top of the hill, which severely worsened the feeling of venturing into the darkness. Now it is much easier to know where safety is and where isn't; and the way to the "portal", so the venture inside it, is not gradual anymore, but the border between two opposite, absolute forces, crossing it.
View from Cicada Hill during the night.
The flesh bag, and Cicada Hill's serial killer
Every month, in the time leading up to the full moon, a dog goes missing, sometimes two. All of them stray and from the same neighborhood: my neighborhood. They all have names, they are all dear to me, and they're all decently cared for by the locals. Although there isn't enough food to go around and feed every stray dog that comes by, there also isn't a necessity to send them to the guillotine by calling animal services. (Rumors proved true by the news show that a government-funded animal control agency has been sending stray dogs to the ropes.) Nonetheless, despite all the community efforts under daylight, when night falls, the dogs have nothing but themselves to keep safe, and that's when it happens; that's when they so suddenly vanish.
Every morning, when I go for my walk, I make a headcount. I know each and every dog from my street and always make sure to baptize new ones that show up from time to time. It is normal for some of them to go missing for a couple of weeks or so, only to show up after a while, and I never count them out until their fate finally surfaces, be it as a new member in other dog gangs or as a hollow carcass in Cicada Hill's dumping grounds.
At first, I didn't associate their vanishing or demise with any deliberate wrongdoing. Unfortunately, it's usual for street animals to be run over, especially around these parts, where cars are not even given a speed limit. And when there are no resources, it's necessary to make scavenging trips or even find new life somewhere else in order not to just die of hunger. Stray animals are also seen as not deserving of Christian burials, so they're given to the carrion-eaters, their bodies dumped somewhere hidden from the eyes of the common people, left to rot and surrender to oblivion. When I'm watering my plants and see a vulture flying over my head, I know exactly what it means, another baby has bitten the dust. And as I have written about before, death walks side by side with the days around these parts, and to this sorrowful minority of street animals, the dirt and concrete jungle is as wild as nature can be. Only the strongest survive—or maybe the luckiest. After all, what kind of monster runs over homeless dogs willingly?
Well, my positivity has dwindled as of late, as I believe something darker has been happening around these parts. I have learned this year that it might not even be traffic accidents that have been afflicting the lives of strays in the area. Sadly, evidence shows that some of them might have been assassinated by a serial dog killer acting in the Cicada Hill area. Point in case, the flesh bag:
DESCRIPTION: A makeshift fabric bag drenched in fresh blood, contents unknown. An indescribable mass of flesh protrudes from it. The blood that spewed out when the bag was dumped made a puddle of mud around it and also specked the immediate surrounding area.
The "Flesh bag" is a thing I've found in late Augustus, coming home near dawn one weekend. The liquid that seeped out of it made fresh bits of mud here and there, and the smell was one I'd come to be very familiar with in the coming weeks: the fetid stench of death. I don't know what's inside, and I don't know who left it there, but I know I missed them by very little. I snapped the picture and walked away, switchblade in hand.
By morning, it wasn't there anymore. I saw the vultures making rounds above Cicada Hill and imagined the flesh bag was a rare feast they celebrated, but instead I found something else when walking there that afternoon: the bodies of Romeo and Solomon. The two were part of the local gang, and I have fond memories of both of them. They went missing in mid-Augustus, and surfaced later in the month, not even a couple weeks later, during a full moon. I mourned their deaths and left them to the vultures. From the flesh bag, all that was left in its place was the dried mud the puddled blood had made, which only the rain would ever clean.
During September's fading Gibbous, I discovered the body of an old boy, good ole Mr. Martins, who had been missing for a little over a week at that point. All the three mentioned were spotted in a clearing inside the airport wall, afar from the field of view of passersby, but not far enough for the smell not to take over every inch of Cicada Hill during the Gibbous and full moon phases of Augustus–September. Fortunately, after that, no dogs went missing and no new bodies were discovered for a good while—that is, until mid-to-late September, when Susan was nowhere to be seen. To this date, now mid-December, no signs of her have ever surfaced, and just like that, she vanished to never again.
DESCRIPTION: The clearing you see as you turn the corner, exiting Cicada Hill. The airport wall and the new anti-flood fences are on the background, over them a set of vultures is perched. On the ground, trash, tall grass, and the body of Mr. Martins (dog) being ravaged by vultures.
During October, there were no new sightings, but a new phenomenon spawned. Instead of the circle of vultures focusing on Cicada Hill, it now covered the area inside the airport walls, in the surroundings of the hill. The reek of death began to affect a new area, one I'm not stupid enough to venture to, so I can't tell if the casualties came from my neighborhood or not, but I know the few missing from the headcount then, appeared alive and well later on, in November.
November had its fair share of missing cases, but during the month, it was rare to easily find any bodies. The stench was a weekly thing, but always at new points, seemingly going deeper and deeper into the abandoned airport's walls in areas I did not feel like exploring.
Now in December, the number of strays has gone way below the single digit. During Junius there were 12 dogs, male and female, a number that oscillated during the next few months with the departure of some and the arrival of others, but which dwindled rapidly since September, and this month found its way to only 5. Part of the reason is the disappearance of many female dogs, like Susan, which resulted in a lower birth rate for the year, and that, coupled with the apparent homicides that have been happening since Augustus, has severely hurt the population of local street animals in the worst way possible.
Interviewing neighbors, I heard a few stories about cats and dogs that have been run over during this semester, but all accounts led to the same 4 that happened between Julius and December, which honestly strengthens the suspicion of foul play by an unknown perpetrator. At least one dog has died from old age, and according to descriptions, it appears to have been Mr. Martins, and one dog has seemingly passed from starvation: a dear pup that showed up not long ago, which I even wrote about in my journal, called Johnathan Edwards. He'll be brought up in a later update.
DESCRIPTION: Dirty bedsheets dumped in an anti-flood drain on Cicada Hill. From it protrudes a little mass of flesh with what seems to be animal teeth.
In conclusion, do I really believe there is a serial killer acting on Cicada Hill? Yes, I do. Is there anything I can do about it? I don't believe so. There is no evidence I can show to put a face to any of the supposed crimes that have happened in the area, and I do not believe law enforcement is the least worried about what happens both in Cicada Hill and my neighborhood as a whole. Even if I called animal control, the stray problem would not be resolved, and the worst might happen to those I deem friends of mine. So, am I so simply alone in this case? Probably so, yeah. Am I endangering myself by using Cicada Hill as a shortcut? Maybe. Will I stop documenting the things I find over there? No. But does this documentation serve any real purpose? I don't know yet, I just feel like it's my duty.
If the same was happening in a more "respectable" neighborhood with more "respectable" people, this would be in the news, and authorities would sure be trying to stop the serial killings from happening. But there is no respect for the marginalized, and all wrongdoing that happens around here is only destined for oblivion. Urban legends and rumors passed from generation to generation display well the neglect of outsiders who avoid looking in. And even I learned as a child to never ask about the people who live inside the airport walls. Boogeymen and unexplained phenomena are just part of life on the margins of society. What can you do?