The Little Ant with the Criminal Mind (11/10)

(11/10@11/9) The little ant loved his goodies.  The world began to revolve around his goodies.  All his efforts were either directed towards using his goodies or in the production of the next batch, which he tended with loving care.  His goodies never really got him anywhere, except later in time, but he loved them dearly all the same.  When he wasn’t with his goodies, he was thinking about when the next time would be.  His goodies made him feel apart and special, instead of apart and broken.  Even if it were possible for the other ants to know what he was doing, he wouldn’t want it.  It was his secret.  His secret vice?  He didn’t know – in a way he had forgotten what virtue and vice were anymore so he didn’t even really ask the question anymore.  Could he stop using his goodies?  He didn’t even know – he couldn’t seem to ask himself the question.  The details of the pebbles and roots and the bumps and curves of the earth and the way the glow mushrooms illuminated them all became this familiar wallpaper on the back wall of his brain, the place where he enjoyed his goodies, the alcove where he kept and prepared all of his substances and fermentations.  He thought sometimes about how far he had come, how he got to this place where such and such mushroom or variety of bark he collected and from where he collected it, and how he had to chew it up and then ferment it in water combined with other things he had collected and stored.  It was all a process.  It was as though the process owned him, he was its instrument, its slave.  He was like a farmer who spent all of his waking hours in the production of some harvest, some final product, and yet he himself was its only consumer.  He was his own and only customer.  He didn’t feel trapped – he felt blessed.  What a blessing that he had been gifted with or had been able to acquire this knowledge, these seeds, these materials, this place in which to work on them so that he could finally gain some hitherto unknown measure of control over his horrid moods and their cruel caprices.  It was a mitzvah.