“Sometimes at noon down South on the hottest of days, when everyone is shivering inside their arctic offices, I go outside just to hear the metallic whirring of the cicadas start up in the trees on the edge of the parking lot. Their tymbals pulsate against their abdomens and the thick air reverberates with the loneliest sound in the universe.”

In addition to the music of Blythe's lush language, I love how he captures this brash paradox--that a chorus can make us feel so lonely. Furthermore I love how, like a quintessential writer, he stations himself on an edge between two groups--one, his own species, pent up in their chilly offices and the other, the cicadas, living by their own administration, oblivious to his attention.