Bite.

We are all made of the same stuff. billions of years of stars being born and exploding has somehow  included us in the astronomical, gastronomical digestion of the universe. Of course this doesn't extend only to humans but to all living things. Including the huge trail of ants crawling across my kitchen floor. When I was younger I would sit for hours and watch ants. I would try to imagine what it was like to be an ant, what it felt when the tiny reward centers lit up in its tiny brain.

Now with what appears to be over a thousand of them creating a line from the trash can to a hole under the sink, I was feeling a bit less empathetic.  I related this to the person who Iwas talking to on the phone.

“Kill them” she said matter-of-factly. As if it was obvious that the arrangement of star shit that me and her were made up from was vastly superior to the slightly smaller simpler arrangement that made up the ants. I grabbed a bottle of dish soap and spilled it on the hole under the sink. It swallowed up the ants like a dam breaking over a small town. I then grabbed a spray bottle and sprayed the line from the trash to the sink like a plane dropping bombs on fleeing refugees. And the tiny moving black dots turned into not moving black dots. I was a little disturbed at how I felt almost nothing while doing this. Was this how dictators felt when they killed people? Was it because I was literally  so high above them that I could simply turn them off forever without a second thought?

I pulled out the trash and began to clean the whole kitchen. As I mopped the floor I felt something on my bicep. It wasn’t  pain. More of a feeling of slight discomfort. I looked at my bicep and saw a single ant trying to dig its mandibles into my skin. Without thinking I said “good for you”.

The ant reached me. It made me feel something and I had to acknowledge it. I then put on the sink. It was already partially poisoned from the cleaning spray I used. It wriggled in a way that I could not deny was pain. Yet I hesitated to kill it. If I put it out of its misery i would have to acknowledge that it was capable of misery. That I was a source of its misery.

I ignored it.

I cleaned off the counter around the ant. Sweeping crumbs into my palms that were 10 times bigger than it.

when I was younger i would take some bread to the ant hills and sprinkle crumbs on them. I would watch them dance excitedly as they collected the crumbs.

I wiped up the trail of dead ants on the floor and tossed them in the trash. All while the single Ant on the sink counter writhed in pain. Finally i couldn't take anymore and I pressed on it hard with my finger, ending the ant’s pain. I flicked it into the trash with the rest of them and continued living the rest of my life.

To and Fro

I try to do one thing, and I end up giving up and starting something else, either because it is too hard or because I have lost interest in the thing I was doing, or sometimes it is because something more interesting has popped into my head and I will suddenly divert all of my attention towards this new exciting project!

 Until of course I am distracted by something else. the cycle seems perpetual unless I'm medicated.

I no longer have issues with the fact that I'm only functional member of society unless I have amphetamines running through my veins. I no longer take issue with the fact that I will need help sometimes to get what I want. I'm less irked by the fact that defining factors of my personality are easily redefined and "remedied" by a pill.

what bothers me is that I'm naturally ambitious, 

and it is a quality that I have learned to tie down and strangle with a thread of past failures and disappointments. I ride on a seesaw of passionate enthusiasm juxtaposed with numbing crushing disappointment. the ups and downs of life are chafing me. 

and apparently talcum powder causes cancer. 

some people are better at making chafing look like a swagger, I am not one of them now. but on the next swing up I might feel differently.

Temporary Center

I stepped out of a hot shower this morning  to find light coming from the window making all the steam in the small bathroom glow.

It moved and rippled with every move I made, and as I raised my hand the steam around it floated off and away from it, pushed away by my body heat. Suddenly I was a Poseidon at the center of a vast ocean. Every breath I took caused a tide, and with the smallest gesture little hurricanes burst from my fingertips. As I dried myself off and began to dress, specks of dust came floating from my clothes. the dust mingling with the steam created small solar systems before my eyes, I gently spun and the tiny stars spun around me. I became the center of a galaxy in my aunt’s tiny bathroom.

The world does not revolve around me. I allow my insignificance to be a factor of liberation rather than discontent to counter  my egocentric mindset. But all the points on a scale are  subjective. Everything is subjective except facts. Facts are like physical objects, they can be buried, crushed, or burnt, but their mass will remain constant and they could never truly disappear or change. Truth on the other hand, is a concept, Truth is pliable, personal, perishable, part of how we see ourselves. And while the fact remains that I am an insignificant speck in a vast, cold and uncaring universe. My truth changed for a moment today, and I enjoyed being me.