Day 66

I hadn’t told you this, my faithful journal, for fear you would find me repulsive, my habitat squalid. I told you once long ago that ants had tried to come into the house, and we had dispatched them. This is true, and remains true. Sometime later they invaded the Emergency Command and Control Vehicle. I have fought them there with merciless devices, but they bring great armies against me. They will not be defeated. Neither have I surrendered to them, but my vanguard has become disorganized. I fight skirmishes with them, yet I do not repel their advance.

Most probably I made some error in my visioning exercises. My application of the universal laws of attraction has gone awry. Clearly I should have read The Secret all the way through to the end.

What’s happened is, my relationship with the ants is exactly the one I wanted with the crows.

They come and sit with me while I’m working. They’re so at ease in my presence, they perch on my forefinger and my shoulder. They bring me trinkets. They climb into my lap and cajole me to tell them stories.

I’ve fed them their last meal, of sugar and borax, enough times that I’m doubtful they understand they’ve been poisoned. They tell me it was spicy. They ask if I have any more.

We do have a shared fascination, they and I. They’re drawn to the wood paneling on the ceiling of the ECCV, like I am. They walk along the grain, the way I walk along it with my eyes. They walk on the chins of the faces there. They draw my gaze upward.

I haven’t made my peace with them. I still mean to mount a final assault on them, as soon as stronger weapons arrive from my supply lines. They will cede the territory they’ve gained. They will draw my portrait in their tiny books, and under my picture they’ll write the word “Despair.”