How did we end up in these elf outfits exactly? Well, the race entailed putting on costumes stuffed in a colorcoded bag and then we had to run about 50 meters to unstack some plastic cones and then race back to tag the next group of lucky nursery school parents/child. I think my husband is the best elf of us three.
I am not an enemy of ants. As a child, I was a pro-active ant advocate: I would save their homes when the rain fell by frantically hopping with a battered black umbrella from ant hill to ant hill on our front sidewalk.
I have never willingly scraped an ant hill with my shoe, or stamped on one to death for fun either. I believe insects–even the creepiest of crawly ones–have a right to live, just like anyone else, as long as they keep off me and my family.
I am not a saint. I have had my episodes where I’ve single-mindedly slaughtered colonies of insects, such as my month-long battle with cockroaches in my shabby studio in Tuscaloosa. The time for war has (sadly) come again. I think the key factor is this: if they have invaded my living space in droves, then I transmogrify into a cold-blooded insect assassin.
Ants attacked us about a week ago, big ants, those black ones with the dusty three-piece shellac suits. We responded in two ways. I would pick them up and throw them out the window (this was not murder, I rationalized). My husband would trap them in a cup, slide a postcard underneath and then knock them out the window. Again, we chose the non-violent approach, and then kept the windows on that side of the apartment shut despite the heat. Victory was ours…
for a few days…but now we have an infestation, not of the large ants, but of tiny reddish brown ants, the kind that follow each other in swarmy lines across the window ledge, carpet and tatami mats. They are on an exodus into our home. My husband thinks they are the spawn of the big ants, and if so:
This is the revenge of the insects.
We are no longer potential peace prize recipients. My husband’s technique is to douse them with watered-down dish soap (I find this method disgusting due to the carcasses abandoned in pools of sticky fluid) or he sucks them up the vacuum cleaner and dumps them into the toilet and flushes repeatedly. My starting technique was the usual, pick them up and throw them out, which soon escalated into death by large human pinchers.
After they invaded my son’s toy room, however, I got mean, real mean. Now I swipe as many as possible with a wet paper towel and I have set out ant posion for them at night (when my son is not going to be interested in the pretty orange plastic squares that look like candy). The ant poison doesn’t seem to be tasty to these ants after the first unlucky few entered and keeled over, sigh, so the battle rages on.
Now, I am really not a fan of war (I despise group-think and the stupid lies told by rich people to justify killing poor people off for their insatiable greed), so the irony that I am now a mass-murderer of ants hasn’t escaped me. My question is: how did Buddha do it? Did he really just let those mosquitos have their fill? Did he let the ants gorge on his ricewater soup? Then why isn’t his bald head and lips depicted as they should be, with red swollen bites?
Andre ate about a quarter of a moldy pot pie ordered from a natural foods store before he realized something was odd…this is the other bad pie that luckily noone ate…replete with mold. Yech!
Remind me to never watch movies, especially violent ones, at night. Yesterday evening I went to the cinema to see “Bourne Supremacy” (alone) and I shared the experience with less than five other strangers.
In Japan, since the English language is supplementary to the sound and the music, the volume is increased to the extreme, and with the digital surround sound, I found myself imprisoned in thousands of squealing tires, crashing cars and was repeatedly shot through the heart, lungs, head, leg, shoulder, enough to turn me into a sponge.
Yes, I enjoyed the movie. The director of photography had some nice in-the-face, realistic, camera work, and with the sound that loud, I couldn’t escape immersion into the story…which is the crux of the problem. I often get too immersed in a book or a movie so that I stop distinguishing it as fiction; at least while I am reading or watching: the story is happening and I am there.
Last night I had two separate nightmares where people with guns were haunting me and my family. There is no fear greater than the fear that someone wants to harm your child. Wide-eyed, in the middle of the dark, I cursed men and war and guns…how can people possibly do such things after they have held a child in their arms? I came to the conclusion that the only real reason a human might naturally kill another would be if someone had killed their child.
Thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan and all the places on this planet where people kill each other, I pictured all the parents who have lost children to guns, tanks, knives, bombs, tasers, and landmines. These people must feel their hearts were torn out with bare hands. I cannot fathom such first-hand grief, although I grew up in the clouds of my mother’s silent grieving and taste the residue of such pain in my bones.
George W. calls some of these very parents terrorists, but I would call them humans who have suffered and wish revenge. I think, laudably, few parents who lose their children turn to revenge, but some must. I know not all so-called terrorists lost children, but many have lost someone they loved, or why else would they willingly die? Faith? Maybe, but I doubt it. Loss distinguishes those who fight as a job, for pay, and those who fight due to a history of death and pain.
I don’t justify either’s choice, both are delusional to me and both do not understand how violence begets violence. I suppose both soldiers and so-called terrorists (whom, recall, the media calls ‘freedom fighters’ whenever they are good for US business) eventually turn into the same sad, broken humans–but I can understand better the latter who began killing out of the loss of someone they had loved.
Reaching over to check my son last night, who felt as warm as a fresh loaf of bread, I wondered if I could ever live in the US again. That sinister fear invades every gesture and sentence on the TV and movie screen until people start to think no one can be trusted, not even your doctor, your neighbor, or your spouse, or your own self.
By the shape of the movies, by the actions of the US government, by the coiffed glee the news reporters report their wars, the respect for life–as a precious, beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime force that enriches us with each breath–dissipates into plastic consumption and necessary entertainment. The media, and perhaps eventually the general populace, have justified erasing others’ lives. What makes humans reach such a point?
I am not saying I don’t enjoy Hollywood movies, I do, but I wonder if I should? The barrage of fabricated metallic and human sounds and the bloody images of countless acts of violence submerge into my subconciousness, maybe even into my unconsciousness, and I am gripped in a panic of fear. Twice in the night. Such fear never would have visited me had I stayed home. Oh please, remind me never to watch movies late at night.
On my way to work, the wind tried to peel me from the bicycle more than once, sudden gusts in the shape of two square hands pushing occasionally and forcefully against my right side, but I prevailed and remained balanced…as I think I must be part circus acrobat.
Inside the wind a spray of rain showered down on me as well. You know the type of rain that happens even while the sun is still shining. A mysterious mix of weather this morning, maybe the sort that meteorologists enjoy staying up late studying….
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