The Little Ant with the Criminal Mind (11/12)

(11/12@11/11) The little ant, when he got quite gloomy, actually pined for the times he was back at the red ant colony, his nominal home.  All of the bad memories faded away somehow, leaving only light and purposefulness and good times.  All the loneliness, the anger, the imagined snubs, were gone.  Even if strained he could not recall them.  Life among the black ants was constantly difficult.  Every attempt at communication was a strain.  Fellowship was impossible.  It had been somewhat possible, in his rose-colored memories, among the red ants.  He was a red ant himself, so as long as he made the effort, he could be accepted into red ant society.  But he had always felt like a fraud.  At least among the black ants his pathetic little inroads into their trust were somehow genuine.  But when he got very gloomy they meant little or nothing.  He simply didn’t want anything, no place, no work, no job, no place to live was suitable to him at these times.  Everything was out of place and out of joint.  It made no sense to try to fix any one part of it or even all of it because nothing could be set right and one thing fixed would not sit right with the heap of things that were still broken.  Nostalgia.  He couldn’t say that he’d left the red ant colony and never looked back, because he sometimes did.  He’d had miserable times there just like he had miserable times now, and he had okay times like that now. (?)  He could not go back.  Even if he could go back, back to the red colony, would he want to?  Would it be better?  Would everything be perfect?  Would there be ranks of welcoming, smiling red ant faces to welcome him home, to offer him hospitality?  Sometimes in his darkest most distant imaginings he imagined this, yes, and more.  They would have goodies there too, only better and more of them. The moods, the damnable moods.   How could he get by them?  Everybody seemed horrible and mean, places and things grey and drab.  Only the nostalgic recollections seemed to have any color, and they became like an obsession, an obsession to get away, to get back, to reject all things now in favor of this luminous elsewhere.