Moojinorbit

I’m going to write this toward the left side
of the page, in hopes that it doesn’t cut off the
right side. I realize there is a problem for some of you
related to reading the blog. I have put in a request
for tech support to blog.com, but from what I
can tell, the problem is linked to the Internet
Explorer browser. On Firefox, which I use, and Safari
it reads totally fine. So you might try Firefox.
Meanwhile, I’ll try to get the problem fixed!

Thanks for your patience!

N

Two days ago I had an epiphany that it was time to dedicate a post to my dear friend Kris Ann Mattingly, otherwise known and loved by many of you as Grandpa, who is indeed a Mooj (and whose nickname will not be explained in this post because it takes too long). Grandpa:

Bear with me and I’ll tell you why the time has come. See, Tuesday Grandpa and I were planning to have breakfast. My mom was flying in from LA for a visit later that afternoon (about which more in a subsequent post). G. called in the morning to greet me with her typically cheerful, “What’s up, Ass Monkey?” We confirmed we were on for breakfast (and she agreed to buy this time), but once we were in her car she informed me that we first had to make a trip to Home Depot for her to pick up some supplies for her latest home improvement projects. Great. With her buying breakfast, I doth not protest.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been to Homo Depot with Grandpa. It usually involves slapping around in flip flops, her cursing and trying to find stuff while I play the continually distracted, annoying toddler–and none more than this time, when I spied a floor sample of an easy-assembly picnic table that I suddenly realized was the answer to all my backyard prayers. The table costs $99, dirt cheap for the miracle that it is and the problems it solves for my backyard, but not money I should be spending when I’m trying to save up for the next Atlantis Cruise we’re leaving for in a few days. Does this stop me from convincing Grandpa it’d be a good idea for her to front me the table and let me pay it off with a future bartending shift? No. And G. kindly agrees, even though that means loading the heavy m.f. into her car, hoisting it into my yard, and getting it out of the box.

After breakfast, G. goes home to focus on her project, and I set to work trying to assemble the table that the instructions tell me will come together in “less than five minutes.” Riiight. But I do okay until it comes time to fasten the benches to the frame of the table and something’s just not working. I call G, who drives back over to grunt and pry metal with me in the blazing sun until we finally slide the benches into the ill-conceived brackets, announcing our victory to the world.

She returns home and I spend a couple hours painting the happily assembled table–which, as you will see when I take a picture of it, is indeed perfect for my yard. Did I mention I had had caffeine? Yeah, I believe it was an iced latte with our breakfast burritos at Geez Louise on Colfax. In my case, that’s the equivalent of a psychic nuke. I’m so into my manic painting that I’m boldly shooing away the wasps that seem unusually interested in my activities. So focused that I pay no heed to the virtual halo of stinger-bearing insects encircling my sweaty head.

That is, until while disassembling my former, sunburned, piece of crap table for to throw it away, I flip it onto its back, and see the little wasps’ nest that is making the critters so agitated. The proverbial clouds part and I scream so loud I’m sure I scared the neighbors. I do the rational thing: throw whatever is in my hands on the ground, run in the house and lock the door. Now a semi-hysterical call to Grandpa. Much squealing, angling, whining, and outright begging ensues. Could she please help me, could she kill the wasp larvae or whatever and get that disgusting thing out of MY YARD???

And so because she loves me, Grandpa agrees to come over for the third time in a day that she does not have to work, but not before pouring herself a Vodka cranberry. And because I am a freak, while I wait for her I peer out the window and observe that the wasps are ingeniously performing incredible triage on their endangered nest/nursery; thus, I decide, it is unfair to kill them. Which means, now, that Grandpa must not use the Raid she brings with her when she arrives, and we are morally compelled search for an alternate, murder-free solution. That turns out to be Grandpa throwing an old sheet over the nest, the wasps, and the table, and the two of us hauling ass to the alley, around the corner, and to the dumpster, where we heave the entire table and its deadly contents in and race full-speed home, me blathering the whole time about what if the wasps regroup in the form of an arrow and have their revenge?

In short: Grandpa is my hero. In a single day, she has saved not only my backyard and my checkbook, but also my sanity-in-assembling, my reputation as an innocent wasp-killer, and my life itself. And, frankly, such feats are routine occurrences in our 17-year history together.

Now, she may be stubborn as a mule and ornerier than a warthog. Her veins may circulate more alcohol than blood (though that does make her spit the most effective glasses cleaner I have ever seen). She may have a history of throwing incoherent, teary meltdowns in the middle of my theme parties and passing out in her locked car in the carport. And the things that pass for friendly greetings in her vocabulary would make most children cry. But what are a few idiosyncracies among blood sisters? Sure, she makes me go to Fright Night haunted houses and face down guys with chainsaws on Halloween; she snores like a gargoyle; she smokes Marlboro lights even through Welbutrin; and every other time I turn my kitchen faucet on I’m met with the sprayer in my face thanks to her. Thanks to her, I find myself invested in who’s going to win American Idol every year. But she loves me like a rock, she has a heart of gold, she makes me laugh, and I’m going to love her and bug her and bicker with her until the day I die.

Grandpa, with whom I have sung all the words to Evergreen while waiting for a guy to buy her motorcycle in 100 degree weather. With whom I have ridden many a motorcycle, been bucked off two horses, and eaten many bowls of green chili that were way too hot for me. With whom I have watched Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, Best in Show, Terms of Endearment, and Monster too many times to mention. Who loves animals with every cell in her body, talks to herself constantly, and never turns the t.v. off. Whose company I have enjoyed at a dozen Melissa Etheridge concerts, in half a dozen cities, and under the stars on a mattress pulled on the back porch.

To Grandpa: Mooj of the mundo, heart of my heart. Thank you, G. Thank you for being one of a kind.

Personally, I don’t think the state has any business being involved in the certification of marriage–any kind of marriage. I don’t think the state deserves that authority. However, in a land of way too much of this:

I’m really happy to know that this is happening, for as long as it lasts, in my home state:

Mom, remember a few years ago when you said it wouldn’t happen in your lifetime?

For all my animal lovers out there, and apropos of the whole “do animals feel” conversation we were having:

http://www.cyberthing.net/video-play.php?id=105

Also, the Aerosmith is a nice touch.

Speaking of old folks, as I did in my last post, I had to laugh Friday night at the geezer I’d apparently become. Since Bad It had bailed on me for roller derby, and Katie was playing bridge with her monthly bridge group, I decided to opt out of cards and cake and instead dig out the quilt I had begun working on about three years ago. Last I remembered I’d had a run-in with my grandmother’s sewing machine and put the whole project away. So I went downstairs to what I’m calling my basement “Creativity Center” (all the Ts crisply pronounced) and replaced all the painting materials with the bright patches of batik cloth that will someday be a quilt for my niece from China (if she ever gets here!) Then I tinkered with the sewing machine until–miracle of miracles!–I got it working smoothly again. I proceeded to blast the first Erykah Badu album and merrily sew squares together. Victory, indeed.

Katie came by later in the night and drove me to her place.
In the car:
“So, how was bridge?”
“Pretty good. I had all no-trump hands. But we had fun. How was quilting?”
“Quilting was awesome. I think I can get backing on the thing in a week or two.”
“Cool.”
“Are we really talking about bridge and quilting?”
“Yep. We seriously are. On a Friday night, at ten o’clock.”
“When did we hit seventy?”

***

I also cleaned and straightened my home office so it’s all nice for me this Monday morning. I scrubbed down every inch of the refrigerator, threw out old stuff, and made everything tidy. I picked up some plants for my side planter, and hope to put them in tomorrow. Fed and watered the salad garden at Katie’s. Weeded. And swept a lot. And gave myself a pedicure.

Finally getting to these domestic things makes me calm, calm, calm. I’m looking forward to the work week ahead, spent mostly at home. And to quilting!
 

Chloe, my mom, is fond of repeating this phrase. Actually, she likes to say, “There but for the Grace of God go YOU!” By it she generally means, “whatever you’re mocking now, you could easily have been or will someday become.”

Which reminds me of my talk yesterday.

Six months ago, back when June seemed like an ocean of time, I accepted this little paid gig to speak to, it turns out, older folks through this thing called the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) that my university partners up with. Wednesday, prepping, I wondered for the second time what the heck I was thinking when I told my colleague Tom what I was doing and he pretty much burst out laughing, in a “ha ha!” way.

“I took that bait too, a couple years ago,” he told me.
“How’d it go?”
“Ach! DisASter. They can’t figure out the technology, half the people are taking naps, and the other half are gonna argue with you the whole time, and most of them can’t see a Powerpoint. Here’s my advice: don’t prep at all, don’t spend any time on it. Just go in there and talk off the top of your head. They’ll love it.”

It sounded like a decent idea, but I’m not too comfortable standing up in front of an audience I’m not familiar with and talking out my arse. With students, I can do that; I’ve learned to improvise lectures, but I wanted to be pretty prepared especially if it was going to be a tough crowd. I’m figuring if Tom did this years ago, they’ve worked out the technological kinks.

So at 9:30 a.m. I get to the address I’ve been sent to (a church) and am ushered right into the main sanctuary where apparently I’ll be speaking in the minister’s position–ironically, since this talk is about race, religion, and politics. Steve, the fellow who was supposed to meet me out front, is trying to set up a projector, which apparently involves hooking a twenty five foot orange extension cord to a side wall, and this through a tangle of wires and music stands, guitars and mikes on the “stage” that haven’t been taken down from whatever concert occurred the day before. It’s not exactly a modern megachurch. Indeed, there is no flat surface upon which I can set my laptop–no lectern, no table, no flat piano lid. This strikes me as strange, since these folks have been meeting for lectures in this site for a couple of years now. Steve doesn’t know where I might get a lectern, so I take the initiative and find my way to a choir materials room in the back and search out a simple wooden stool.

I find a way to hook up my computer to the extension cord and to the projector, but the picture is blurry and about twice the size of the portable screen that’s been set up. So because Steve, my so-called tech support, seems  to have no clue how any of this works I spend some time figuring out how to get the picture down to size. But it’s still almost impossible to see because the projector light is so dim. A new helper, Nancy, is fiddling with the lights and we figure out that if the room is entirely pitch black you can see the screen–but now I can’t read my notes. Oh well, I figure, I’ll improvise.

The sanctuary is filling up now and I realize that the woman I checked in with yesterday about how many handouts I should make lied. She told me there’d be about 36 people and so far it’s looking more like 60. Oh well; people can share. Steve, who was supposed to introduce me tells me he didn’t get the bio I sent, so I introduce myself and make some preemptive cracks about not being responsible for the technology. I speak loudly so everyone can hear and tell them that despite the rumors about this crowd I expect there to be no napping! They take it well, thankfully.

Now there are probably 70 people in the room, which is (or feels like) maybe three-quarters of the sanctuary and I’m kind of getting into this feeling of being in the minister’s spot. I circulate the handouts and though people keep asking for their own “to write on” rather than share with their neighbor, they seem like an otherwise friendly bunch of 60-80 year-olds.

I get them to tell me what they’re hoping to learn about race, religion and politics, and they have great questions. I’m feeling confident that they’ll feel like they got their money’s worth, so I launch into my Powerpoint. And all goes well until three slides in, the projector suddenly turns off and we’re in the pitch dark. Lights go on, Steve comes and starts fiddling, I joke and continue the lecture without visuals. Steve gets the projector on again, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

This turns out to happen approximately every 6 minutes throughout my 90 minute talk. I show them slides, statistics, pictures, major ideas in my argument about the intersectionality of race and religion, and just when we have great conversational momentum, the projector shuts off. Steve comes by, turns it on and off, and we get picture again. Eventually Nancy, who’s sitting near the projector, takes over Steve’s job from her seat. I figure the best thing I can do is keep talking, not break the momentum by fiddling with the thing myself, but, yeah, it’s pretty much the stuff a professor’s nightmares are made of.

We’re almost done with the lecture now (Part 2 is a roundtable after lunch, Good God) and we get to the Q&A. A few people are, in fact, enjoying naps, but I figure this can be forgiven as they’ve sat through the lightshow that was my presentation, plus a couple of them are hooked up to oxygen and there doesn’t seem to be much of that in this sanctuary. In general, people have smart questions even if they take awhile to articulate them, and it mostly goes well. Then a woman in the back announces, “evangelicals all want to destroy the First Amendment and create a theocracy, and I think you’re a little naive to think they don’t.” I do the best with that one.

My favorite part was afterward when a neatly coiffed woman with a thick accent was asking me a question and another lady came up pointing her finger and muttering enthusiastically, “Superb! Superb! Superb!” The accented woman bruskly shooed her away with a firm “Excuse me!” and I thought she was going to slap the intruder for cutting in.

After a freak sandstorm that blasted the inside of my car with debris, and quick shopping with Katie during ‘lunch,’ I returned for the roundtable, which mainly involved people arguing with each other about religion (good) and asking me questions along the lines of “why do you think people are stupid enough to be religious” (a surprisingly secular crowd!) I used some stats to guide the discussion and people seemed to enjoy it. After they filtered out and I was gathering up my stuff, Sterling, an octogenarian gentleman who seemed keen on befriending me, told me that the one thing he thought could replace religion in the world was music. Then he proceeded to regale me with the entire history of jazz in Denver.

I wake up this morning to discover I am bleeding, per my monthly ritual.

Still have foregone all the tasty and comforting carbohydrates, and have cramps, so am mildly cranky.

Per the monthly ritual, I am knocking over, breaking, or running into everything in my path.

Stepping into the shower, I see that there is a layer of dust on my floorboards.

I have sudden and powerful urges to scrub my entire house from basement to roof.

I resist such urges because I have a lot to do today. I promise myself a cleaning frenzy as reward for work completed.

Did I mention I have to prepare a 90 minute talk to “retired and semi-retired” folks–i.e., seniors, which I’m scheduled to present Thursday morning? What was I thinking.

The little piles on my desk are intensely distracting. I want to fix them but resist.

I read and surf the net in preparation for talk.

Remembering something I wanted to double-check, I make a call to an administrator at school and am told that the money that my letter said would be available July 1, 2008 is technically available; however, it will not actually be available for me to use for the salary I REQUESTED for until August 1, 2008. That means I may have no July paycheck, which is unacceptable.

I’m scheduled to leave for Spain in July. The trip is free, but I still need to pay my bills and be able to eat in the cities we visit.

I try not to freak out. I will try to figure out something through the Dean’s office.

Oh no, another summer of intense meditating on opening the money channel. I thought I’d opened it!

I reach lunchtime, make a meal that makes a very large mess.

I obsessively clean the mess trying not to freak out.

I go outside to read my pile of papers in the sun. Go inside to answer the phone. The wind blows the papers all over the backyard.

Fucking-A.

Someone’s knocking on the door. I go get it, knocking over a glass and running into a coffee table on the way.
Two young women. They want to tell me about Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Given that, thanks to lucky genes (and to Lucky Jeans!), I’m a mostly slender person, people generally shut me down when I complain about my BFI (Back Fat Issues) or other weight-related whining. And I get it; no one who’s ever struggled with real weight issues wants to hear a size 4 person with no hips talk about wanting to trim a few pounds off. (In the area of facial hair, however, I do indeed have room to speak.)

This being my blog, I get to blather about topics of my choice, so I’m gonna let loose.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been doing Phase 1 of the South Beach diet, the ultra low-carb and low-sugar phase, and the cravings are killing me. Why am I on the first diet of my life? Well, basically because this winter, and more or less for the last, I don’t know, eighteen months, I’ve been on enough of a food rampage, and my body’s been in some kind of age 40 slowdown, such that the waistband of all–and I mean all–my clothes with waistbands has been cutting uncomfortably into my belly. We’re talking, the first button is almost always undone when I sit down. As the scale at my gym corroborates, I have in fact been gaining weight.

Now, putting on a few pounds would not be a big deal for me but for the following facts: 1) If anything is tighter than my jeans it’s my budget, so I flat can’t afford to replace my wardrobe; 2) I know that weight put on around this point in life that is generally referred to as “middle age” (can that possibly describe me???) does not easily go away; 3) while my mid-section has never been the leanest part of me, I don’t like the look of cellulite on my belly, back and now SIDES; and 4) perhaps most importantly, I have to be on another cruise ship with 3,200 ultrafit and hypercritical gay boys in three weeks and it’s much more pleasant if I look fierce for that. When I found myself surrounded by mirrors in my stateroom on the Rio trip I realized that my bedroom mirror had been much too generous.

So I’d been wondering what to do about it (besides stopping eating my favorite Sees Scotch Mallow eggs that Jules had sent me FIVE boxes of) when I saw the South Beach Diet on my mom’s bookshelf a couple weeks ago. I read the book on the flight home and decided it was sensible and would be easy enough to do, since I generally like veggies and protein and you can have lots of that. Leaving sugar, even fruit, and pasta and bread behind for the first fourteen days? No biggie, I thought.

No: Biggie, as it turns out. I had no idea what an addict I had become. Nevermind the fact that almost immediately my energy levels balanced out and I had a much clearer head for thinking after the first sugar- and (“bad”)carb-free day. Nevermind that I no longer felt like I needed to pass out for an hour at 3 p.m., or that I remembered how much I like veggies and almonds and cottage cheese. Exercising daily made a big difference in my state of mind. In short, I feel better than I have in a long time. But WHERE THE HELL WAS MY CHOCOLATE? I WANT A TORTILLA WITH MY SCRAMBLED EGGS! WHY LIVE IF I CAN’T EAT THE BUTTERSCOTCH CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES THAT HELENE BROUGHT TO WORK??

Oh, the cravings I have seen. This weekend I had to pass up my favorite green tea frappuccino, pizza, oatmeal, my favorite Cape Cod potato chips that Katie’s mom had out for her party, chocolate chocolate chip ice cream (thanks a lot, Katie), sweet homemade banana bread, beer, and cruelest of all, Terry’s red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I know this won’t last forever, and tomorrow I get to reintroduce low-glycemic fruit and careful grains, but IT HURTS. Yes, my pants already feel a lot better around my waist, but IT HURTS.

I’m thinking we really don’t talk enough about the sweet, sweet drug of carbohydrates. There has to be no cultural addiction more epidemic than this. Right now I’m the equivalent of the heroin addict barfing on the walls, banging my head against the locked doorknob while my conscience stands outside encouraging, “you’re almost there, honey; just hang on a little longer.” The only difference is that the recovered heroin junkie will allegedly stay away from their drug for the rest of their lives, while I and the rest of us will try to have a more moderate and healthy relationship with carbs.

Sweet Jesus, that’s a lot to ask.

Ah, another rare rainy morning in Denver. I woke up with the weight of two black cats, one entirely wet, cuddled at the foot of my bed. My alarm wasn’t set to go off for another half hour, so I turned on the light and read a Nabokov story in the New Yorker before I got up. A lovely little luxury.

Other blessings: Obama is the nominee, a strong woman won the votes of eighteen million Americans, my newly planted green things must be purring, school is out, and I get to hang with Dubber tonight.

A follow up on cANTaclysm, because I chewed on Andria’s comment for a day. She wrote:

May I be so bold to point out that the brainless ant has no conscience- no method of determining a disaster from a triumph. We mortal beings have to live with choice and outcome. We have to FEEL. Sometimes i wish it was as easy as having [your] entire life uprooted, dumped to the side and happily falling back into line to do what you are equipped to do- just keep on living- without missing a beat.

I agree with the latter part of her point, that we’d be better off sometimes if we quit howling about everything and just did what we needed to do ‘without missing a beat.’

To the conscience thing, though, I think we humans are arrogant to assume we know what ants or any other beings do or do not feel based on their anatomy or anything else we think we see. I’ve marveled since I was a child that scientists could presume to tell us that other animals don’t communicate or don’t choose, don’t know or don’t feel. Such explanations have always felt like an excuse to me for mistreating other creatures, for refusing culpabiity. Ants don’t know, they just focus on surviving, but we alone have a moral sense, we tell ourselves, puffing up. We shouldn’t feel guilty; we’re not to blame. If so, why are we so entirely destructive of each other, other creatures, and the earth itslf, while other living beings will not naturally destroy their own environment or even enemy species unless something has fallen way out of whack? Why isn’t it possible that many animals–dolphins, whales, ants, horses, and who knows what else–have a more sophisticated system of communication than we could ever imagine and we’re the idiots? It may not be conscience exactly (they don’t have to make up Adam and Eve in Eden stories to instill it) but it’s an elaborate system of collective care for survival. They know that what happens to one could happen to another; that caring for the whole, not just the individual, matters. It’s the whole elephants cry thing. They (elephants) also apparently have greeting ceremonies, grieve, laugh, remember and live in intensely social communities. And even scientists know this now.

I’m also pretty sure by its behavior that the morning dove that got stuck in my basement yesterday felt intense distress about it (yes, it was about survival, but feeling is a link to survival) and that Rico, for his part, felt that I had made the wrong choice by freeing the bird.

Maybe the only reason we have a moral sense, if we do, (and I still reject the premise that we alone do) is that as a species we’re so utterly stupid, so tragically removed from the instinctual values of our animal nature, so entirely prone to self-absorption, fear, and devouring urges, that compassion is the only quality that gives us half a chance not to ruin everything for every being on the planet. So, even if in the wake of their holocaust the ants turn uncomplainingly back to the business of surviving and I have something to learn from that, I should think twice about what I’ve done, about what my actions caused to an unsuspecting society that did nothing to hurt me. My little act of unintended distruction, like my potential to willfully annihilate (as with nasty flies), links me to all the other sorts of devastation my fellow human beings are wreaking in the world right this very moment. If I fancy myself separate from it (oh, those Africans are killing each other but we educated urban hipsters are all about peace, man) then I don’t see my responsibility. If I only shrug about the ants, something in me is shut off. If I don’t see culpability, I won’t take it. If I don’t recognize it in me, I’ll put the burden on the other to deal. But if I were hungry, desperate, diseased, living in social chaos, or even just penetrated with fear I’m pretty sure that I, too, would be capable of ditching morality for viscious survival.

Something like that. Perhaps this is what Caryn meant with “Pema Pema Pema,” though we’re not all living in your curly head, girl, and therefore can’t automatically interpret your mantra.

Anyway, how’s that for only semi-coherent philosophical ramblings first thing in the morning?

How ’bout the beautiful sky over my head on this lovely, warm evening? How ’bout the pink queen of a rose on the rosebush that’s blooming in my garden? Will wonders never cease.

How ’bout getting to picnic at Jazz on the Park yesterday with my cousins Steve & Eric, their wives Julie & Jen, and their collective FOUR kids? (I’ll send pics of that milestone when K. gets me the disc.) How ’bout how sweet and mellow it is tonight, with the beautiful light basking the neighborhood in happy green, and the cats lolling about outside (though I think I just saw three gang members meet up in the alley across the street)? Oh, and the fact that I’m done teaching undergrads for, um, SEVEN MONTHS while I’m on summer, then minisabbatical, then winter break. That’s what I’m talking about. Life’s feeling pretty sweet. I’ll put off the worrying about money and book and productivity until later. No use ruining the moment.

Given the onset of summer, recent travels, and the fact that I’ve been too busy to get my hands in the dirt until now, I plunged myself headfirst this weekend into the back-breaking and infinitely humbling experience of gardening. I transplanted five plants from my backyard to a side planter, added five more new plants, put in tomatoes and peppers at Katie’s and started shoveling out a veggie garden space in the corner of her yard. That meant digging, oh, THIRTEEN holes, loading up several heavy wheelbarrows full of sod and dirt, yanking a gazillion stubborn weeds, and maybe weeping a little about how much it hurt at the end of a session. The word “arthritis” is starting to present itself to my mind, as my hip feels like it’s grinding into my sacrum and my elbow is curiously sore. But banish the thought! Arthritis be damned; gardening is too darn rewarding to give in.

So, the good news is that pretty living things are taking root and will be bursting brightly forth in the coming weeks and months.

The bad news is that I wrought what can only be called a disaster of epic proportions on a colony of ants yesterday. And I’m feeling moral reverberations about it. I reflect not to justify, but to at least pause and consider what damage mine own hands have done.

See, there was what appeared to be an ideal strip of dirt along the south side of Katie’s house. South-facing and therefore bright as hell in the summer, it struck us both as the perfect home for peppers and tomatoes. Plus, it looked like it had perhaps served a similar function in the past, clearly carved as it was into a long rectangle, and barren of anything but a couple weeds. So I harnessed my hose, then my shovel and pitchfork, and began the process of turning over and fortifying the dirt.

All was proceeding nicely until I flipped over a shovelful of dirt and noticed that it was moving. Harriedly. Blackly. I squinted and they came into focus: ants, running every which way. Worker ants, ants with wings (ew), mommy ants (I can only suspect) carrying little whitish green dots that must have been eggs, big ‘ol queen ant (did I see two?), swarming collectively faster and faster as their carefully constructed caverns caved in around them. Oh shit; oops. My first reaction was to “save” them by dropping shovels full of them and the casings of their homes into a new pile several feet–perhaps territories, for them–away. I piled them, trying to avoid the fact that I was surely only creating more havoc (not to mention making a fresh mess for Katie in the form of this jerry-rigged anthill). But looking back at the dreaded hole of holocaust, where the intact were now tending to the wounded while other survivors searched out the missing, my stomach sunk at the futility of my efforts. I tried to shrug it off–just ants–and worked on continuing my efforts around the disaster area without disturbing it further. No dice; I hadn’t the heart. I then tried to get into the slaughter and follow through on the carnage–only ants, after all, and in my way!– but my snivelly conscience kept reminding me that I had blood on my hands. Then I just felt sad, so I walked away and tried to trust that the survivors would sort it out and build a new colony somewhere else. In short: I abandoned them in their time of need, after inducing their time of need.

Here comes the existential aftershock: They’re beings, we’re beings. They’re a lot more productive and efficient than we, a lot more Marxist, I suppose. Their worlds seem like gigantic kibbutzes. Maybe with the exception of those nasty red army ants in Africa that Barbara Kingsolver described in Poisonwood Bible, they don’t do nearly the damage to the earth as we do. They seem to take care of each other. They communicate through a complicated pheremone system, which strikes me as pretty badass, though they don’t technically have brains. (If you think I’m making this up, check out these incredible ant facts.) They’re amazing collectives. And, as I demonstrated with one fateful shovel placement, they experience disasters of epic proportions.

China being our most recent reminder, colonies of humans get destroyed, in earthquakes, in hurricanes, in tidal waves, in wars that we commit on each other. Pull back a mere couple hundred feet above the ground and we look no different from ants. (I’ll never forget seeing the human ants swarm from atop the World Trade Center when I visited six months before it fell; I kept thinking of that odd view from above during 9/11.) I saw the caverns those ants built; it was a giant underground city. An underground city where thousands are now buried. Pull forward a few feet and you’re watching a great tragedy unfold up close. We humans somehow fancy ourselves undeserving of these random acts of mass violence. How can nature betray us so? How unlucky we were to be living along the coastline when the storm hit! We didn’t know! Life as we knew it was over. We suffered, we suffer, not just as humans, but as beings. As do the ants, as beings. Perhaps when we’re on the other end, our hearts can find compassion for both species.

Flies, on the other hand, I’d be happy to slaughter en masse. Flies are nasty. Fly Armaggeddon I am happy to lead.