Blog 1 - Grasshoppers

            I slid into my car as I do every morning, leaning over to place my backpack on the passenger side floor board. Rising back up, I saw the brilliant green grasshopper affixed to my car windshield. Its wide-spaced black orbs stared directly at me with only the slightest shifting of antennae forward and back. It seemed peaceful. “Hey there”, I said out loud and listened for its response. It remained smack dab in my vision as I turned from the side road onto the main street. I thought for sure it would have flown away by then but it continued to hang on. As I increased my speed up the freeway acceleration lane, I was coaching it to, “Jump now!” It finally flew off into a bamboo grove as I merged into traffic and breathed a sigh of relief.

            The next morning I saw a cricket at the base of my bedroom door and I said, “Good morning dude. What’s up?” It just waited in silence for me to make my way past which I did. I decided to write about him that morning in the form of a poem. I called it “Choice.” By the time I had finished the poem and gone back to read it to him, he was gone.

            But the next day, when I got out of my car in the parking lot at work, I noticed yet another grasshopper atop the ski rack of my car. I leaned my face into its face and it didn’t hop away. It just stared me down, there in the parking lot’s dappled sunlight. “What are you here to tell me?” I finally asked, and we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. I know the guys from the liquor store next door thought I was deep in thought so they never interrupted our reverie, not that they could see the grasshopper from their vantage point anyway. I finally walked away to make it on time for my first appointment, leaving the grasshopper still staring thoughtfully as I disappeared around the building’s corner.

            I went online at lunch and researched the animal totem symbology for grasshoppers and found out the Chinese see them as a symbol of good luck and abundance. People with this power animal possess the power to take chances, to switch directions on a whim, and to jump right into any situation. They also only leap forward, never backward. I finished my last bite of apple salad and on the way back down stairs from the break room, I jumped from the sixth step down to the main floor and smiled.