To the Editor:

You asked what is bugging me. Bugs aren't. There aren't any.

People of a certain age will tell you about the Sunday drive. Twenty minutes out of town, you pulled over, got out, and looked at the windshield, and it was covered. Every drive was a census. Now you can go hundreds of miles and the glass comes back nearly clean. My eyes are each about the size of my brain, and I can tell you: there is less to see.

That is what is bugging me. The absence.

Meanwhile one insect arrives, and everybody loses their mind. The spotted lanternfly is an invader, a thing to stamp on, and that is the whole conversation. Nobody asks how to live with it. Some doctors have started treating some cancers as something to manage and live alongside, rather than only something to wipe out. We could try that with a bug.

What else. There are 195,000 people here. How many of them voted? How many of them have a voice? What about the things that actually matter: each other, the roads, the trash pickup, the bridges, the highways, the water coming out of the tap? That bugs me.

Dogs and cats get all the attention. Birds hardly get any. That bugs me.

People going through the motions. People talking about how the end is coming, and how little anybody does to change anything. That bugs me.

What I would like is for people to bug out more. Be weird about who you are. Take off the mask. I have never once worn one, and look at me.

— A Tarsier