As part of my initiation into the secrets of Los Angeles, which are many and storied, which has taken place over the years of my exile here, I have found that there are these bugs in LA that the population calls "water bugs" which look much like cockroaches but are twice as big. Unlike your standard East Coast or European roach, a down to earth proletarian who makes an honest living in your home stealing your left overs, these bugs live under the city by the millions, but not in the homes. They only come into the homes to find water during the dry season, such as now. They are unknown to science and assumed to have been living here since the dawn of time, and now living in harmony with mankind, without biting or infestation. When there is a drip somewhere, they come to drink of it. It is remarkable how essentially medieval an average person's knowledge of their world still is, outside of those areas in which he or she is proficient.
But that is not that bad, you are probably thinking, water bugs don't merit a diary when the debt ceiling is in play. Indeed, the majority of the population thinks little of this issue of the millions of water bugs moving silently beneath our feet at all times, except maybe the for the parents of the infants who are sacrificed to the giant Water Bug of North Hollywood (naturally they are bigger and more aggressive in the Valley). What makes this story special to me, and perhaps for a fleeting moment to you, my dear reader, is that they have apparently chosen me as their king, or they may believe that my body contains a fluid they think of as holy ambrosia. Or morel likely they believe in something far different and fantastic.
They will often come out at night and just stare at me. One came to my pillow last night, which creeped me the fuck out, just crawled as close to me as it could and stared longingly into my eyes, as if trying to tell me something. A few months before one laboriously crawled toward me through the closet as I sat by the computer. I could hear his tedious shuffling, becoming progressively more and more disturbed by it, as if being sucked into a David Kronenberg film. Finally he fearlessly crawled out into the light, and came to sit by my chair, looking up at me. At first I though they were cockroaches and was severely unnerved by this behavior, so unnatural to any of the cockroaches I had known before. But now I mostly just wish I knew what they want from me. It cannot be assumed that they are here as simple messengers to relate something to me about my life in terms I can grasp. That seems to be an absurd anthropomorphism, a solipsistic self-delusion. The bugs have their own world and their own understanding of it.