Dragonflies Swarming
On Symmetry and Possibility in the Chaos
One day a couple weeks ago, as I was sitting on my couch with my cup of coffee, I looked out of my window to a strange sight. A flurry of dragonflies were flying erratically around my front lawn–landing on the grass and lifting off again, their flights elliptical and unpredictable. They spun out in layers from one another. There seemed to be no pattern. It was chaos.
After doing a search, I found that dragonfly swarms are quite common.
Static swarms happen when dragonflies feed together in a group. Hundreds may dive over a lawn, field, or pasture in figure-eight patterns to catch insects.
Migratory swarms occur when they fly in large masses. They can be so dense as to be detected by weather radar. These swarms take place when they are moving south or gathering to feed on pest insects.
Hunting swarms involve dragonflies gathering to eat other insects who are also swarming.
Years ago, a close friend told me years ago that she loved dragonflies because they are a symbol of transformation and rebirth. They appear, she said, as harbingers of change. Her interpretation has stuck with me.
Every year for my birthday, I pull tarot cards. And it wasn’t until later on the swarm day, when I looked at my altar on the way to another room, that I remembered that the animal card I had pulled for this year was the dragonfly.
Here’s what the book said: “Dragonfly is the essence of the winds of change, the messages of wisdom and enlightenment, and the communications from the elemental world…Dragonfly medicine always beckons you to seek out the parts of your habits which you need to change.”
I struggle deeply with change.
I feel terrified and clumsy in the face of change, always worried that I will make the “wrong decision.” My anxiety tells me that it is better to stay cramped and boxed in rather than risk the freedom of the open unknown. I can understand logically that change is necessary for survival. But my body and my mind have other opinions. They want to protect me from any possible danger and, in the face of the unknown, everything carries a risk.
I began writing this the day after the news of Biden leaving the presidential race and the endorsement of Kamala Harris by him and others. Change is certainly here.
The day before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had done a long video on Instagram Live talking about the dangers of Biden stepping down without a clear plan in place, to change this late in the process.
But what we’ve witnessed in the immediate aftermath is a strong movement by many to support Harris and a resurgence of hope by some who have been disillusioned. This isn’t across the board, of course, for many reasons. But it did feel that a moment that felt leaden was suddenly a little bit lighter.
The day before Biden resigned was Saturday, July 20, 2024: the date of the first entry of the protagonist of Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower. The Parable of the Sower, published in 1993, is a work of speculative fiction that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth reeling from climate change and inequity. The protagonist is an African-American empathic teenager Lauren who must navigate this world.
The book opens with these words:
All that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.
The only lasting truth is change.
God is change.
The only lasting truth is change.
On the day of the dragonfly swarm, I watched an Instagram Live between adrienne maree brown and Malkia Devich-Cyril (which you can watch in full and I strongly recommend). In it, these thinkers and visionaries talked about so many potent things.
adrienne maree brown spoke to this moment saying: “I am moved by the energy I feel in the pivot…something just opened…the part of me that feels into the collective was like, whoa, something that just opened…I think we can find some way to make use of the opening.”
Devich-Cyril spoke about embodied grief. “We are in an era of mass loss,” they said. “The world has not experienced this level of simultaneous emergency. At a time when the world is more connected than ever, it’s more separate than ever…having simultaneous emergencies at a time when you feel you can’t do nothing when you feel powerless, the stress on the body, the individual, the collective body, its profound.”
This resonated in my bones. An era of simultaneous emergency. Where to turn? What to do? When the sirens are blaring, when the devastation is everywhere.
“When we root in grief and our understanding of grief as a process,” they said, “it helps us to be more embodied, when embodied can be in greater understanding of what’s true. I wish we would remember that we are defending each other not a political system of neoliberal democracy. The presidency is not a vehicle for transformative change. I care about whether the presidency can give my people more room to defend each other…Presidential election is not where we fight for liberation, its where we fight for space.”
I encourage you to listen to the whole interview. I’ve listened to it twice.
I’ve been thinking about grief so much these last years and, particularly, in the last few months. When we talk about grief, we so often speak of it as a personal experience related to individual, familial, or communal loss. But what about the massive grief that comes from living in a world on fire? What about the collective grief that we are all holding in our bodies? Grief that stills us into inaction or quakes us with rage. What about grief that keeps us separated from one another–unsure of how to move forward and afraid to admit we are struggling? What about the grief of watching genocides unfurl in real time? What about the grief of witnessing our earth become more and more affected by climate change or having our bodily autonomy and rights stripped away from us or watching as marginalized communities’ humanity is put up for debate by politicians proposing legislation that would cause tremendous harm? This all on top of our individual losses and griefs.
I told a loved one recently that life right now feels like walking into an ocean full of white-capped waves. I see one, try to lift up enough to escape before being bowled over and pulled under, my nose filling with saltwater, my mouth stinging. I pull myself up and have only a few seconds before another wave comes to knock me over again. And as a conscientious observer, I can see I am not the only one in the water. I am not the only one facing these waves.
Referencing Prentis Hemphill’s video on Instagram, Devich-Cyril said, “Chaos doesn’t have to be bad. Chaos is simply the condition. Sometimes disruption is needed. We’re in a period of disruption and we need that.” They described grief as not an emotion, but a process.
Devich-Cyril said “the moment is trying to push us towards pessimism. We are mandated to resist that” and “the right action is to take action, the wrong action is to do nothing” and “don’t give up before we try.”
As I viewed the conversation between adrienne maree brown and Malkia Devich-Cyril, I watched the dragonflies swarm outside my window. What looked like chaos to me was actually careful orchestration. This coming together for sustenance or to move homelands. What was happening was a swarm of action, a swarm of creation, a swarm made of tiny creatures taking flight.