the ant

Waiting around me is a vast stillness that gently breathes to faintly please me. And as I washed my hand with soap, it is a heavy rain for the ant that almost drowned in it. Crippled but struggled a few steps then fell upside down and stood as still as the stillness around me. I stood still only to hear someone so still that even the stillness played a silent whisper.

I took the ant, dipped in fresh water and kept on a soft white tissue. The water soaked quickly in the foggy softness of the paper and it shines on its smooth black surface that I almost saw myself in it. I breathed warmth into the little thing and again I did as if it felt a warm gentle breeze from a misty ocean on a warm sunny afternoon.

I moved it to a drier place on the white surface of the soft paper. Again I kept it warm until it slowly moved its legs for the second time with great expression and almost on the eleventh hour like the beautiful notes of Beethoven’s “con molt’ espressione” (sonata no. 11, 2^nd movement). After a while it turned on its legs and slowly gained bearings to turn as if to look at me. None of us moved in the next few moments listening to the stillness of the sonata. The music felt like an unplayable debt of thankfulness dressed in a white one that is layered a little more than a dozen times.

Note:           I read about the ant and how they live for the betterment of togetherness rather than the self. A self which is so weak that even a falling drop can bring an end to oneself. How they communicate, cooperate and even guide one another to at times of survival. This little creature survived through millennia only by the strong cooperative principles of strength of unity. Togetherness and understanding within one’s own community and those who surround them. Together they build great nesting places and together they inherited a tradition of survival and beauty that very few can master like the great master who play the sound of stillness.