Ant Farm

Hi Y’all,

I’m continuing to toil with revisions on my novel and, at least for now, it feels like I’m in the homestretch. I shared Chapter One a while ago. This week I’m sharing Chapter Eighteen. I hope it amuses you.

Have a great week. Love, Uncle Spike

Chapter Eighteen: Ant Farm

One day, late in November, Bunny and Terry were sitting on the porch of the museum. The air felt more like early summer than winter’s cusp. The sun was shining, the rambling rose bushes were blooming and grackles were in abundance. A particularly bold grackle sat on the porch railing, facing the street, and casually loosed a shit that landed quite close to Terry’s feet.

“Grackle spackle,” Bunny said, pointing at the gooey mess.

“Gross,” said Terry.

“It sure is a beautiful day in Austin, Texas,” Bunny said.

“It sure is,” Terry said. “Thanks, climate change!”

The heavy equipment at the construction site across the street, which had stood silent for a glorious hour while the orange vested workers ate their lunches, fired back up. Loud crunching and creaking and the sounds of deep digging, punctuated by the ceaseless beat of the safety alarms alerting the men of machinery moving in reverse. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

“Christ,” Bunny said. “It’s never ending in this town. You know they’re building an eighty story monstrosity there? Tallest building in Texas they say. But guess what?” She was nearly shouting to be heard over the racket.

“What’s that?” Terry asked.

“Our little house here? We’ll always have the most stories. Because we have three hundred and eighty-one of them.” She slapped her knee.

“That doesn’t even deserve a groan,” Terry replied.

“On the bright side, at least until they get that fucker built we get a nice view. Look at those old buildings,” Bunny said. “Nowadays they’re the back of the businesses facing Sixth Street, but back in Will Porter’s day? That was a bustling little row of storefronts.”

“I wonder if, when those buildings went in, people back in the day thought it was too much development,” Terry said.

“I’m sure they did,” Bunny said. “At least some of them. I’m sure it was business as usual for the politicians and the builders, yapping on about progress. Did you know the idea of progress is one hundred percent pure fabricated bullshit?”

“Here we go,” Terry said. “It’s time for another lesson on Doom and Gloom from Uncle Bunny.”

“It’s not doom or gloom,” Bunny said. “It’s just the way it is. I have this theory. I call it The Ant Farm. Do you know what an ant farm is?”

“I have no idea,” Terry said.

“Well,” Bunny said, “Way back in the olden days when I was a kid, you could buy this toy called an Ant Farm. It was a slim rectangle box made out of clear plastic. With a little red stand to hold it upright. Kind of like an aquarium, only no water.”

“So, a terrarium,” Terry said.

“Something like that,” Bunny said. “It was filled with this white stuff, kind of like fake soil. And it came with real, live ants. Though come to think of it I have no idea how the ants stayed alive in the mail. Except I guess ants are pretty hardy. Anyway, you stuck the ants into the ant farm and you could watch them running around, making little ant trails through the mystery white stuff, building little ant condominiums.”

“That sounds pretty boring,” Terry said.

“Oh, but it wasn’t,” Bunny said. “It was pretty cool. At least for a while. But then at some point, it dawned on me, that’s it. That’s their whole life. To live in this little plastic box and move around. Some of them were at the top. Some of them were at the bottom. But really, they were all in the same place—the ant farm. The plastic coffin. They couldn’t escape. They were going to die in there.”

“Jesus,” Terry said. “How old were you when you stumbled on this nightmarish epiphany?”

“I don’t know. Maybe eight?”

“That’s a lot for an eight year-old.” Terry said.

“Oh, it gets worse,” Bunny said. “I was so freaked out, I decided to set them free. So I took my ant farm outside and I opened it up and I let them go.”

“And they lived happily ever after,” Terry said.

“I don’t think so,” Bunny said. “I realized after they scurried off that in a way, they were still in the ant farm. That the entire world is just one big ant farm. That they were going to die regardless.”

“Uncle Bunny, you are so bumming me out,” Terry said.

“Sorry, kid. I’m just telling you what occurred to me. Which brings us to today. You see all that machinery?” She pointed to the construction site.

“Yeah,” Terry said.

“Ant farm,” Bunny said. “They’re moving around in the dirt just like those ants. They’re going to build dwelling places. Just like the ants. But it’s not progress. Humans are just big ants pushing shit around until they die. Doesn’t matter if you’re Elon Musk or Donald the Cunt Trump or the shoeshine guy on the corner.”

“Wait, do they still have shoeshines on corners? I saw that in a movie once.” Terry smiled.

“Whatever,” Bunny said. “You know what I mean. We’re all in the ant farm and there’s nothing we can do to escape that.”

“Well that sounds pretty horrible,” Terry said.

“Quite the opposite,” Bunny said. “It is so freeing. So fucking freeing. It’s wonderful!”

“You lost me,” Terry said.

“Think about it like this,” Bunny said. “It’s just another way of admitting that we’re not in control. Of anything. The idea that we’re in control of anything  is so laughable.”

“You’re sounding like my crazy religious grandparents,” Terry said. “They had a theory like that, too. They were always telling me to let Jesus take the wheel.”

“Yeah, that’s where we’re different. They got the part about no control, but then they assigned control to some imaginary Sky Daddy. Sometimes I thought about shaking my ant farm, just to see what the ants would do. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If I had though? I’d be like their god, that would have been my act of god, raining down chaos upon them.”

“I thought you said there was a positive side to this story,” Terry said.

“There is,” Bunny insisted. “It’s like, as long as you keep in mind we’re all in the ant farm and nobody is really going anywhere that’s more special than anyone else, you can relax into doing whatever it is you want to do.”

“Can I stop recycling?” Terry asked. “Like, if nothing matters, can I just run around and stop caring and do whatever the fuck I want?”

“Technically you can,” Bunny said. “But something else I figured out is that even though we’re not in control of anything, pretending we’re in control of something can have a pleasant, anchoring effect. I read an essay by this guy who picks up trash every day on his daily walk. He knows he’s not going to save the planet doing this. But it helps him feel like he’s at least doing something good. No harm in that. In the end, it all comes down to the same advice that Buddha spoke. All we ever have is the moment we’re in.”

“You’re mighty philosophical today,” Terry said.

“I admit,” said Bunny, “that there’s not much I enjoy more than sitting on a porch in the sunshine bullshitting the day away. Want to hear another theory?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You could go inside and dust and vacuum,” Bunny said.

“What’s the other theory?” Terry asked, settling back in her wicker chair.

“Sometimes I think that the role of our species is to do exactly what it’s doing. Destroying the planet.”

“I’ll be right back,” Terry said. “I’m just going to go kill myself in the bathroom real quick.”

“Look,” said Bunny, “I know it all sounds like nihilistic doomsaying. I get that. But hear me out. Nature is an incredible thing. Incredible beauty. Incredible devastation. Every everything has some role. Bees pollinate flowers and birds shit out flower seeds so more flowers can grow. Vultures eat the dead.”

“Any idea what platypi do?”

“Nope,” Bunny said. “But platypi would be a decent band name. Anyway, maybe it’s possible that Mother Nature brought humans into the picture to purposefully destroy everything, finish out some cosmic cycle, clear the way for whatever comes next. Do you know what an Etch-a-Sketch is?”

“Is it related to an ant farm?” Terry asked.

“Well, it’s also a plastic rectangle. It was this sort of sketch pad with two knobs and you could turn the knobs and lines would magically appear on the screen. Then, when you were done with whatever you were drawing, you just shook the whole thing really hard and the lines would disappear and you could start all over, fresh start.”

“You really think our role as humans is to ruin everything?”

“I know it sounds harsh but it’s the best I got. What else could explain the stupidity of humans except for some biological programming? Can you name any other species that regularly, actively, brutally kills its own? Can you explain why so many humans would refuse to do something so simple as to wear a mask to reduce death? And what about this—at the start of lockdown, when everything shut down and no one was driving or flying? Pollution cleared out almost overnight. You could see LA—the smog disappeared. But did that inspire people to change their habits when things opened up again? To say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be more mindful.’ Not at all. Instead they do this thing called revenge travel. Exactly who are they getting revenge against? Themselves?”

Bunny had gotten so wound up that it took her a minute to notice Terry was staring at her feet, looking very somber. She had stopped listening. It dawned on Bunny that her Covid rant had gone too far. Clearly Terry was thinking about her mother.

“Shit,” Bunny said. “I’m sorry.”

To their mutual relief two women came walking up the sidewalk.

“Is this a museum?” One of them asked, resting her hand on the sandwich board that said THIS MUSEUM IS FREE AND OPEN.

“It is,” said Terry. “Would you like a tour?”

She stood up, stepped over to the front door and held it open for them.

NOTES:

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