The ants went marching two
September 09, 2002
The ants went marching two by two. The little one stopped to tie his shoe and they all went marching down into the ground to get out of the rain. It has come. Threatening first and blowing eddies of cold moisture around your bright lawn furniture and sun umbrellas. Looming hollow over your burnt brown lawn and newly washed car. Swelling. Leaking. Dropping down and making all you’ve left out look pathetic. All just symbols of failed optimism. If you leave them there just one more day then the inevitable may be driven back? No you quaint thinkers. Some say we need the changes of season to exercise our spectrum of moods. I could do without the gray taking up three quarters of my spectrum.
The heat may fade, bleach and crack the summer things but the rain comes to make them rot, mold and smell. One is a cleaner erosion. I choose entropy through heat rather than cold water. Steal my energy with pleasant heat. Make me soporific and lethargic the nice way. Don’t drag me to the ground by soaking my wind breaker to my body, using my tube socks as sponges and turning everything around me into one dark indistinct gray mass. All I want is perfectly bright spring and fall days forever. I am losing my immunity to the dank world and this will save me from donning a silver toupee and pastel cardigan and buying into a gated retirement community in California.
If one is there you want the other. I know I know I know. Who wants to be in Arizona in the summer. Pray for rain. The farmers love it. I know I know I know. Watch everyone’s face change when the rain comes. There is the initial “cozy” feeling if you happen to have pleasant shelter and nothing scheduled that requires outside activity. The “cozy” people can enjoy the first downpour. Their faces will change. Nobody stays in the “cozy” phase. It is transitory. It can last one or two days at its maximum. At that point you are ready to reach up and grab the throat of the sky and squeeze it ‘til it has paid for what it has done to you. I scare myself enough to start looking into some gingko or melatonin or eye of newt or whatever new seasonal depression remedy they have going out there. Is that smarter than moving to a different place? Is it less complicated? Got a headache? Take a pill. The modern way. Most recreational remedies I employ seem to be classified as “downers”. Soaking up the water with a wet towel. A bottle of merlot at the end of each dark gray day makes Jack a goth poet with a short life span. Conversely, the “uppers” (on the harder side of coffee) would shred my heart muscle, grind my teeth to tiny stumps, make me increasingly annoying, and drain my bank account in a matter of weeks. I’d make it one season counteracting the pall of the wild northwest coast with amphetamine treatments. I will run, skate and scream my way out the other end of this gauntlet once again. Endorphins are my only hope for survival. I will make myself strong enough to change the weather. Global warming. It was me.
Sorry about not riffing on the beautiful words that describe horrible things. The notion was more interesting than the full exercise.