Insect Tutelage

January 2009 Update

2009-01-24T12:49:00.004+09:00

Hello!

It's been years (years?!) since I've posted here. Thanks to all of you for reading the ant poems faithfully; my plan is to one day bring them all back in book form. In the meantime I've taken down some ants, left a few up, and will be back in a few (hours? days? months?) with a new project. And thanks to anyone who submitted work for the long-ago "call for insects"...I apologize I failed to ever make anything happen with that.

Some updates on what I've been doing can be found on my website, or you can also find me on Facebook.

And as for my beginnings in blogging (this blog used to be called Texture Notes), those poems will come out in the form of a book with that title, in November of 2009 - from a brand new press, Letter Machine Editions.

Ahoy!

Sawako

Huge Shadow

2006-11-25T17:54:00.000+09:00

Caused by a very low light upon a very small ant, its elongated legs move not slower, just taller, with a weightiness akin to that loaded gun over there on that table. Beside the ant is the trigger, but only in shadow. In shadow the ant meets its lover, angles in for a kiss, passes right through her, unless, perhaps, is devouring her instead.

Homeowner's Competition

2006-10-09T07:58:00.000+09:00

Or, evolution of the floor. That time and place where floor meant not linoleum, carpet, hardwood, or even dirt, but ants. A bad floor has roughly a 40% mortality rate, most likely due to the additional bad luck of high heels, entertainment centers, and cats. A good floor would be extremely well-organized: the uniformity and tightness of the grid can, at best, create an ant surface tension of 65 Dyne/cm2. All of which is contingent upon the floor having recruited sufficient numbers of ants to begin with. That said, the value of an ant floor depreciates in a sharp slope along the axes of time and wear, while a brand new one can be purchased only on the black market, and only by people who have been carefully screened for ant-corpse allergen sensitivity.

Sufficient Gravity 3 (The Surface Tension Challenge)

2006-09-05T19:37:00.000+09:00

Things have evolved as far as this. Once every summer in a nondescript beach town in Southern California, a contest is held. On a smooth, very smooth surface, a puddle, very large puddle is formed. Local ants are invited to the puddle, all with the understanding that the ant who breaks the surface tension, and thus the puddle, shall be the winner of a brand new Chrysler Crossfire Limited. The task looks easy enough that it lures a few ants to jump on first, not realizing the inadequacy of their body mass until it is too late. More ants then pile on quickly, so that the judges are forced to keep a sharp lookout in order to correctly identify the ant that breaks the water surface. When the mass of ants atop the puddle starts approaching critical mass, the ants grow restless and the whole puddle quivers.

It turns out that the puddle attracts quite a bit of attention, and ants, whole colonies of ambitious ants and poor ants and lonely ants with nothing to do, seeking a little friendly jostling, hopeful ants and soon even the random passerby ants with no ambition whatsoever have joined in on the action, having been lured in by all the ongoing excitement. It is just this kind of unambitious ant who finally ends, by winning, this mad contest of jostling ant matter, and is presented with the car. At which point the ants are now returned to their senses, reminded that this game was a human invention after all, the car a human-scale car.

The winning ant is now faced with the Herculean task of gathering enough fellow ants to band together and form a massive huddle, a complex collective large enough with which to operate the car. A pair of ants nearby loiter around the butt of a not-quite extinguished cigarette, taking turns inhaling, and exhaling statements about how overrated winning is.

Color

2006-05-16T18:28:00.000+09:00

I leave the house for a couple of months, and upon my return find that a gang of ants and a gang of cockroaches have been having turf wars in my home. I don’t actually see any ants or cockroaches there, but I can tell by those little tiny colorful bandanas they have left behind.

Ladybug

2006-05-10T20:33:00.000+09:00

for Takako Arai

I am looking for my friend who promised to meet me on this street at a time that’s right about now, except we failed to specify exactly at which part of the block we would meet, and even then it should not be a problem because I know exactly what my friend looks like and I am not seeing her at all anywhere on the block. I ask around, to the local shopkeepers, but they haven’t seen her either and I look around some more and I still don’t see her but fortunately we are in Japan and everyone has cell phones and right then she calls and says to look behind me, and I do and I still don’t see her, and she says look down, and I do and I still can’t find her, and she says she is under that pile of swarming ladybugs right there and I am horrified but she says she is having a good time and that I should come and join her and I walk away and that was the sad end of our friendship.

No Collective

2006-05-08T02:31:00.000+09:00

for Yu Nakai

Believing themselves to be quite progressive for their species, a group of ants get together and decide to form a collective. They gather the necessary documentation, fill out all the proper information in the correct little boxes, get photos taken in appropriate size and dimension and angle, and step precisely through every single hoop required of them to become an officially recognized collective.

Their application is denied, however, on the grounds that ants are an inherently collective species, and this designation would be redundant and downright unnecessary.

One ant is so upset by this verdict that it begins to cry, thereby forging a breach in the collective emotional unity of the group. This very breach, however, makes the officer falter, reconsider for a brief moment, entertaining the possibility of a radical change of heart, but this very possibility of a change in the officer’s heart makes the ant’s tears dry up, which lands them all back at their original, inherently collective state, and that’s the end of that story.

Sufficient Gravity 1

2006-05-06T01:15:00.000+09:00

What people don’t pay much attention to is the fact that during the summer, and all the seasons, for that matter, there are an infinite number of festivities and contests that take place throughout the land over, but for today’s installment we’re going to be featuring summer at coney island, live from under our feet.

A large number of ants.
And one human.

The ants are divided by class, which is measured by their total volume. This is tabulated by the displacement method, with a small measuring cup half-filled with water. Some ants never make their way out of the cup, and that is one way of weeding out the contestants.

In the name of fairness, the ants are allowed only to compete against other ants of the same class.

One class at a time, the ants line up, with sufficient room on every side. At the sound of the whistle, each ant releases as much personal gravity as is antly possible, at the same time that a person blows, as hard as is humanly possible, right over the line of ants. The last single ant who remains, while all the others have blown away, is the winner.

At the end of the day, there is a complicated algorithm that determines which ant from which class is the true winner of the entire contest, and often, it just so happens to be that the winner is an unsuspecting ant from the main isle of Japan, as it also happens to be that the only witnesses to the whole event are the delicate flowers, who look on with bemusement at the thought.

Sufficient Gravity 2

2006-05-02T23:27:00.000+09:00

from Susumu Kihara

A place where ants, small ants, can go to have fun; some refer to this as the New Kindergarten for Small Ants. The main attraction is an ant-sized slide, where ants can slide down one by one. The neat thing about this slide is that it is set at the exact pitch of the sound made by an ant as it slides down, and so as the ant goes down the slide, making a sound that increases at inverse proportions to the intensity of sound made by the slide, at the exact point which corresponds to the half-life of the decay of the sound of the slide, the ant feels a little pop. Now this moment of pleasure is available only to those ants of the correct ant-weight – not too light and not too heavy – and this, ladies and gentlemen of all shapes and sizes, is at the root of many of our contemporary social ailments.

Fear of Cold

2006-03-17T12:09:00.000+09:00

For some reason, I am stranded in an extremely cold environment without my coat, and beginning to wonder if my life is in danger. After what seems like enough suffering has already taken place, I am fortunate enough to find a house, into which I break in and find a marginal amount of relief. There is nothing at all in the house, there is no power of any kind, and there is a large pile of dead ants near the bathroom door. I am a direct descendant not of MacGyver but his old-fashioned sister, and so I end up using my Other-MacGyver skills to weave a blanket out of the dead ants, which I finish in an extremely quick manner, and then throw it over my body, begging it to bring me warmth. What happens is that I am so grossed out at the fact of having a blanket of ants covering my body, that I soon enough grow both very sick and intensely anxious about the situation, all of which nervous energy serves to cause the blood cells in my body to vibrate vibrate vibrate until I am quite warm, and stay warm until the weather goes warm and I am saved from dying.

Desert Ant

2006-03-09T08:17:00.000+09:00

Says “and” with every step, so that it sounds like this: “and and and and and and and and and and and and and,” and so on. By the time I make my way to the same desert, I have been collecting and carrying an accumulation of nouns over the past, oh I don’t know how many days, and so I insert them in between the steps of the ant. Cilantro, tennis, phone, hand. Needle, rock, hair. Mingus. Monk. Mouth. I have been ignoring the dirty looks the ant keeps giving me, but finally I cave in, which means I stop to listen carefully. I am informed that I have thrown off the rhythm of “and and and and and.” I am informed that this shall not continue. I am given several options. I choose Monk, so for a while we do “monk and monk and monk and monk and monk and monk and monk.” I thought we were doing okay, but before I know it the ant is out of sight, and then before I know it, the ant has made a decision, and then before I know it, the ant is in my mouth, and mouth, and mouth, and mouth, and mouth, and mouth, and mouth.

Battery

2006-03-03T17:47:00.000+09:00

for Jill Maio

We get lost in the desert, lost very lost, and although we aren’t going to tell anyone that we can’t possibly be any more than two miles from civilization, the fact remains that we are lost very lost in the desert very desert, and the car very car is having a hard very hard very hard time getting started up again, and so we kick it very kick it in its ass very ass and the car is still having a hard very hard time and we are feeling lost all the more lost very lost in this desert very desert, and there is no one around us no no one very around us at all very all and there are birds very birds of which there are many very many, but the birds very birds don’t know don’t know how to help us and us and us help start the car very car and we are more lost more lost and we need help need very very help need very very help help and there is no no no one aroud us except if you count count count those ants in the ant hill that is all we have all we have are the ants very ants and then we wire them up yes wire them up yes I said wire wire wire and with the force of all the ants all wired all wired up and then on the count of three we all yell “CHARGE!”

Girl Talk

2006-02-22T05:23:00.000+09:00

We are sitting around the table eating and drinking and exchanging stories about flashers, gropers, underwear thieves, your general assortment of urban perverts. When I tell the story about the man who came up to me and opened up his bag and offered me one of a teeming million wiggling ants in his bag, the whole table goes silent and I am reminded all over again how hard it is to get along with the women in this country.

An ant in the mouth of Madonna behind locked doors

2006-01-29T12:31:00.000+09:00

for Reiko Hagiwara

is there, is there, is there but can’t prove it to anyone, is small, is glistening and black, is determined, is hanging on, is at a loss for a good perch, is wet, is blown by the wind when she takes a breath, is happy, is uncertainly happy, is ardent, is devoted, warm and plenty full of courage, is going to write a Moby Dick-length book about this upon returning, is unsure, is still looking to perch, is unable to see its own feet, is developing a relationship, its first adult relationship, is in a wet place or a hard place, is not strong enough to hang on, not even to the backs of her teeth, is hardly noticed, is tentative, is shy, is timid, is sweet, oh if only it could prove it, is waiting for its chance, is waiting for a big break, is going to show those folks back home, is feeling the slightest bit homesick, is determined to make it, is determined to go down in history, is determined to beat the odds, is casually hoping to make it into the Guiness Book of World Records for the Longest Time Spent in Madonna’s Mouth, is an optimist at heart, is fearful at the moment when her breathing gets rough, is shaking, is shaking, is shaken, is having a once-in-a-lifetime experience, is, after all, an ant with a fairly short lifespan, is gay, is not gay, is female, is black, is uncertain, is nothing compared to the giant scale of all the people who surround her, is everything relative to the other organisms inside her mouth, is big-hearted, is open-minded, is sweet, really, all it ever wants is for her to, for her to, oh, and then she comes, and the ant is, and isn’t, and is as it ever was.

We the Heathens

2005-11-11T15:43:00.000+09:00

Last night we go to have Chinese for dinner and my friend who is visiting from another planet is horrified (and perhaps a little excited also), until I explain to her that we are having Chinese food, not Chinese people. We go to a place that serves not dumpling soup, which I love, but soup dumpling, with which I am unfamiliar. The soup is actually inside of each dumpling, and everyone develops their own system of eating. As we poke our chopsticks voraciously into the folds of the Crispy Fried Whole Exploded Fish, which is delicious, it becomes clear to me that we would have no right to be shocked or mortified or outraged or even surprised or upset, should some creature from another planet descend upon the earth, pluck our people off the ground, fry us up, tearing away at our flesh with relish.

My friend Morton, a sweet and gentle man, is sitting quietly beside me with his uneaten hamburger. I don’t know how he managed to get himself a hamburger in a Chinese restaurant, but there he sits, and there sits his hamburger, with the top off. Morton says he wants live ants on his burger but does not want to go hunting for ants himself, so he is waiting for the ants to come to the burger, at which point he will put the top bun back on and eat. I tell him that he will probably have better luck with that outside, and he says that’s a good idea, thanks, and then goes outside with his hamburger, and that’s the last I ever see of him.

Couch

2005-10-24T03:47:00.000+09:00

for Maggie Siegel

After countless days and nights of living together, a couple decides to get divorced. It takes a little over a few hours of negotiating over their material possessions before they give up and decide to call the ants. She gets on the phone and calls up her ants, he gets up and calls his ants from his cell phone. The ants arrive at 8am on the following Monday, and quickly set to work. Around 4pm, the two return and enter gingerly, wondering if any progress has been made. While questions still fly about the room as to what will happen to the refrigerator, the records, and the television, they find that the couch has been broken down into small chunks, neat little couch chunks, all thanks to the his and her ant set they had received as a wedding gift.

new post

2004-12-25T04:16:00.000+09:00

Hi everyone, this is new. Texture Notes ended, and there was nothing I could do about it. This new blog is about - I don't quite know yet. But it is dedicated to the four shelves of 'poetry by women' in ぽえむ・ぱろうる(poem・parole) , one of the biggest bookstores for poetry, in Ikebukuro. And to the woman discount at all-you-can-eat places. Female dancers who beat the cliche. It is not dedicated to the strippers-gone-awry that I recently paid good money to see. A world where everyone is in their element only when out of their element. Merry Christmas, to those of you who have it. I'm not leaving Japan until I see Santa Claus-on-a-cross with my own eyes. Strangely nostalogic for hot-dog-on-a-stick. Not for the thing itself, just the concept.