Only the ants know my name

 The ants are truly industrious. Their lives are pointed in color-strokes of Nine Inch Nails and Ramstein. If they don't get their daily quota, you feel, they will die of regret. That's how it seems with the way they move. I would hate to kill them for that reason. When they are in my house, they are very endearing that way, carving their way in pheromones across the dead marble landscape. The ants live to work. When I work to live rather than live to work, I fear that I'm growing older in the ranks of the ants and without the hope of a partner, and for such reasons I am sad to kill them, my only comrades.  I also relate more and more to the ants. So I must work to take this off my mind. It is bitter, endless struggle against the sanitary chambers of the world. If I die I want to leave behind a furrow in the marble that Carved my story.

We live with the steel and the blemished cement of rusted frames cut short by time. We live to please our mothers and our friends, but we seldom if ever please ourselves. There are some who do. But these are either miracle workers or plain witches. They don't think too much. Yet. And yet they are in the know, and their lives are truly enchanted. They are loved for doing very little. They keep the ball rolling like dung beetles. They have never had to confront an immovable burden. When you are ugly you can pass through life like Cain. When you are ugly like a rotted apple, once beautiful, ugliness is your maelstrom and your mark. If I am ugly, I am ugly like the ants.

"Go on then, you winners of all" goes the lesser known quote from Franzen's freedom. You are no good for me if I cannot share my life with you. Perhaps I'll have a heart attack in the interim. For as of now there are perhaps no real poets or musicians but only those who interject themselves within the poetic spaces of the world; only those who are good at fooling the rest of us. Better to do a good job with love in your heart than a bad job of it while expecting high praise praise. Better to push and strain at the immovable marble beast..

Yesterday I went to the city of Nakhon si tammarat. I learned that the Thais are a hard people with a hard industrial aesthetic wherever you go. Quite good to know. Now I understand the kids I teach and their behavior much better. They are a lot like ants. One does not wish to crush them or force them along a certain path. Much less learning Enlish. They are too endearing for that, if acrimonious at times. Merry Christmas.