There are ants in the toilet bowl. In search of water, perhaps. I wonder that they go there. They come by night and by the morning’s first flush they are drowned. They float like so many specks of black fluff on the surface of the water until the day’s toilet use gets rid of them altogether. The following morning the process starts again, and a new batch arrives.
Ants often appear at the turn of seasons, when the rain begins. I imagine their nests have been flooded and they come inside for drier quarters. Why then make their home in the base of a toilet bowl?
I do not understand ant behaviour. I do not understand my own behaviour either.
So often I find myself wishing that something good would happen, as if I need an external jolt to shock me out of my current state. A sort of non-electric ECT.
The other day I tried to talk to my youngest daughter about her state of mind, which she reassured me was fine. She was just having trouble adjusting to the demands of her final years at school. She would learn to adjust, she told me, and then asked why I had been so gloomy of late.
Gloomy was her word and I pondered on this. I have not felt myself to be particularly gloomy. Despite the generally pessimistic tenor of my blog posts, I am a cheerful person; at least this is how I see myself. Optimistic, one who looks on the bright side, nicknamed Pollyanna by my analyst years ago for my tendency to see things in a positive light. How then could I be gloomy?
Maybe, I thought, I have not been making such an effort these days to hide my dissatisfactions. No longer do I pretend not to mind such inevitable frustrations as housework. No longer am I so bright and cheerful about all the things that need fixing, the things my family look for from me. I grumble more. I am less forthcoming. I groan. I grizzle.
A friend had asked my daughter, if she could have her wish come true, what would she want most of all.
‘A good work ethic,’ she said.
Her friend was surprised. ‘Most people want money.’
A good work ethic, my daughter’s wish. I ponder on this. Perhaps that is what I am missing of late. I have not lost it in relation to my professional work, that remains, but I have lost momentum as regards my thesis and my enthusiasm wanes.
My daughter is confident she will develop a good work ethic. I have only to find mine again and all will be well.
‘Autobiographers lead perilous lives’, writes Paul John Eakin. They smash up against the rocks of non-compromise, their own and other people’s interpretations of what they have written. Shipwrecked on the judgments of others, all the autobiographer can salvage from what can sometimes feel like a volley of criticism, is the knowledge that she tried her best to communicate an experience – her experience – and that although others might see things differently, she is not her writing, nor is hers the only perspective. Her writing is but one aspect of her and it changes.
My husband has just walked in with a new wind and waterproof jacket to wear while riding his bike. It is bright canary yellow.
‘Excellent, ‘I say, ‘people will see you coming.’
This slick will keep him safe. It will keep out the wind, keep off the rain and make him such a target that it might keep others on the road out of his way.
If only the autobiographer could clothe herself in such a jacket. If only I could find better protection from the elements. Instead I am like those ants it seems. I keep reaching towards the perilous toilet waters for a drink only to be flushed away next time someone else needs to use the toilet.
I find a lot of ants hang around the mail box. I don't know why, maybe they may have already won $1,000,000 in a contest they don't remember entering, and they're looking for the instructions of what to do next.
I had a good work ethic once. Then I got tired.
I was brought up on the Puritan work ethic, but I wouldn't recommend it for today's youth – and I've given up on it for myself!
I was brought up on the Puritan work ethic, but I wouldn't recommend it for today's youth – and I've given up on it for myself.
your post has given me lots to think about. it's difficult and draining to hide your dissatisfaction with things.
Can she not (clother herself in such a jacket)? Could you not clad your formicidae self with steel resolve and arm yourself with sharp wit? A steel beetle with a razor blade… Would be just as susceptible to flushing as an ant, I suppose.
Well, dogs can be taught not to drink out of the toilet… So perhaps the razor bladed steel beetle would be better off drinking the sweet nectar from honeysuckles instead… ; j
There is work to pay the bills and then there is work to change the world. The former is the easier of the two – you don’t work, you don’t eat (or at least not as well) – but the latter needs you to believe that the work you’re intending to carry out is worthwhile. That’s a hard one. So, maybe none of us are going to write anything that’ll change the world. What about half the world? Or just the country we live in? What if what you’re writing will only change the lives of one person? Does that make it worthwhile?
I have a good work ethic. I’ve always been regarded as an exemplary employee and I’ve never been happy in a job until I see that my bosses feel that way about me. I care a lot less when I’m the boss. The simple fact is that your thesis does not need to get written nor does my novel. The sun will not stop shining, children will not stop laughing, life will go on. And even the one or two people whose lives our writing might affect, their lives will go on. We are not important.
You are not important. I am not important. Not in the grand scheme of things. And yet as soon as I’ve finished this comment I’ll close up my laptop, go into my office, select some nice music, open up the latest draft of my novel and begin again. It’s important that I do, not to the world, not to anyone else, but it is important to me. Not to start what I’ve finished, not to finish for the sake of finishing so that I can say that I’ve written [cue the Count’s voice from Sesame Street] . . . five novels, ha, ha, ha. [Back to normal voice] No, so I can find out what I need to say so badly. Were I the kind of novelist who plotted out everything I’m not sure I’d care so much but the simple fact is that now I’ve changed the roles of the players slightly I have absolutely no idea how this is going to play out. And I need to know.
I suspect you write for much the same reason. The world will change without any help from either of us. What we're doing might conceivably change us though.
I've had similar moments to what you have written, usually when I think I know what I want to be doing, but am not ready in my head to tackle it. I will let all the other stuff, the stuff I have to do anyway get in the way. I decide that I am lazy or pretend I don't care if I accomplish it anyway. On the end, It's the challenge you are really living for, or it isn't. if it is I will eventually get it done.
Ants in the toilet bowl might be a apt metaphor for the human condition.
OK, now I'm sounding gloomy…
My guess is you have a very good work ethic when it comes to working on this blog and perhaps that novel you sometimes hint at. The problem seems to be that damn thesis, as it was in your previous post.
Whatever you do, don't let that thesis be the hand that flushes you away.
Hm…its good to grumble and groan and grizzle sometimes! If it get you
to next stage on your creative journey,why Not?The ants have their own reason why they act as they do,so is with us too,we do not need to know everything all the time! Sometimes you just do things and later on comes the full understanding of all the "whys","ifs ""donts"and than,in the next "chapter" everything does make sense!
Like this what Im talking about right now, :O) Dont be so hard on yourself,give your brain a brake from now and then,and good luck with the rest,OK? Groetjes en liefs van mij!!
i know so well this feeling . sometimes i do think that all the efforts are going to be a total loss , that i am not going to be able to deal with it .
but life hass passed and i am still here ….. so there is a hope inside the toilet .
I like so much what you've written here. You tied the ants, a work ethic, autobiography and academic theses together very nicely. I also like what Jim wrote. You are a fine writer and I do see you as a happy, well-adjusted person toying with life's game rules.
Elisabeth, I've realised that housework and other forms of 'fiddle-arseing' (my grandmother's term) still mean I have a good work ethic.
….Just not, perhaps, the work I should be doing at that particular moment.
As for the ants, maybe the formic acid they're mostly comprised of is helping get rid of the nasty germs that lurk under the bowl? Doing it organically rather than with some over-priced toxic chemical blend advertised on the Kerri Anne show? That's gotta be a bonus, right?
We've got ants coming into the house at the moment. We really need to stop them doing that.
Thanks, Scoman. The ants around your letter box might be a sign – something of value came or is coming your way.
On a more serious note, what happened to your work ethic and what caused you to become too tired. You are a young man, I take it. You blog, you must have energy for that. Or do you find blogging saps you of what little energy you have left in reserve?
Mine was the Catholic work ethic Dave, but I've heard that the Puritan one is worse.
All that horrible abstention. I think I'd prefer a bit of sack cloth and ashes followed by a skerrick of joy and imbibing than the other one – the protestant one, the dour one, the one that says thou shalt not do, have, or eat.
Thanks, Dave. I'm not sure I'm into such privations, Catholic, protestant or otherwise. However, there is some merit in a tad of discipline, neither too much nor too little.
Nancy, I agree – it's hard to hide my dissatisfaction and I suspect in the past I might have been hiding it even from myself.
Or is it that I now find I have better things to do. All these things are relative.
Thanks, Nancy.
Well, Alesa, you are indeed in great poetic form here.
I don't think I have what it takes to develop a steely wit, however tempered my resolve.
Nor have I needed to teach our dog to avoid drinking from the toilet bowl.
Today the ants have decided to move on it seems. No need for retraining or deterring them therefore.
I've lived in this house for thirty years now and I've never seen ants in the toilet bowl before.
It's likely I'll never see them there again but it was and is a terrific image, at least to my warped sense of …humour?
Thanks, Alesa.
Thanks, Jim, as ever, ever so wise.
I agree with you on the two forms of work, the one from which to feed and clothe ourselves, the other less tangible, more pleasurable and also more demanding form that offers something to which it's hard to put a name.
I can imagine you and your good work ethic. I thought of you today as I took myself off to the laundry to put on a load of washing in between several hours of reading and writing, the occasional peek at my emails and several visits from various members of my family in need of the odd word or two.
I feel thoroughly virtuous today for all that. Last night I resolved that I would not look at my blog or emails until I had at least managed a few hours work.
I started at 8.30am, and by 11.00am I was ready for a break. As I prepared another cup of coffee I told my husband that I was at last toying with 'checking my public', as he refers to my blog and email habit.
'Why not go on till midday?' he asked.
And so I did, and after I had checked my public around midday, I went back to work and so as a consequence today by 9pm, I've managed to write around three thousand words of a chapter that I have been avoiding for some time.
I feel as if I am back in the land of the living, at least for the moment and although I know I will wax and wane, at least I have demonstrated to myself at last that some enthusiasm remains.
Thanks again, Jim. I know that the work I do on my thesis and in blogland is not important in the scheme of things but the fact that it is important – vital to me – is enough to keep me going.
Thanks, Jim, as ever, ever so wise.
I agree with you on the two forms of work, the one from which to feed and clothe ourselves, the other less tangible, more pleasurable and also more demanding form that offers something to which it's hard to put a name.
I can imagine you and your good work ethic. I thought of you today as I took myself off to the laundry to put on a load of washing in between several hours of reading and writing, the occasional peek at my emails and several visits from various members of my family in need of the odd word or two.
I feel thoroughly virtuous today for all that. Last night I resolved that I would not look at my blog or emails until I had at least managed a few hours work.
I started at 8.30am, and by 11.00am I was ready for a break. As I prepared another cup of coffee I told my husband that I was at last toying with 'checking my public', as he refers to my blog and email habit.
'Why not go on till midday?' he asked.
And so I did, and after I had checked my public around midday, I went back to work and so as a consequence today by 9pm, I've managed to write around three thousand words of a chapter that I have been avoiding for some time.
I feel as if I am back in the land of the living, at least for the moment and although I know I will wax and wane, at least I have demonstrated to myself at last that some enthusiasm remains.
Thanks again, Jim. I know that the work I do on my thesis and in blogland is not important in the scheme of things but the fact that it is important – vital to me – is enough to keep me going.
Thanks, Anthony. As I have written to Jim above, I have been avoiding getting into a chapter in my thesis one which I finally tackled today and I feel so much better for the effort.
As you say these things nag at you and although you try to defer them with the thought they don't matter anyway, they have a way of tweaking at your consciousness mercilessly, or at least they do mine.
But you are so endlessly productive Anthony, I wonder that you could feel this way, though I remember you have talked before about wasted time in the past.
Maybe, as we get older, these things matter to us so much more. We do not have all the time in the world. We must get on with it now.
Ah the human condition, Kirk, and those poor old ants, doomed from the onset, and presumably they do not know it.
I am not so gloomy that I will stick my head into said toilet bowl, no never so gloomy.
And yes, I do have a good work ethic, at least I do these days. In fact I tend towards the workaholic side of things, at least in some ares of my life, not in the area of housework but in other more laudable pursuits.
Thanks, Kirk. In the end I refuse to be undone by my thesis.
Thanks, Aleks.
I am not good at giving my brain a break. I could not imagine it. there is not one iota of the Buddhist impulse in my veins.
I have never tried meditation, though I've tried a little relaxation. Although I found it pleasant I could not transcend the business of my mind.
I command myself to relax and slow down and sometimes I succeed but often times I do not even realise how rushed I am until a shopkeeper or someone I meet on my travels asks whether I'm in a hurry.
My body language gives it away.
Me? In a hurry? I'd like to say. Me? Never.
It's good to meet you here, Melissa, daughter of Caio, Melissa of the big bosom and beautiful body.
You are so right, there is life in the toilet after all.
Your father's words before he died can attest to this. He is a man who knows much about toilets and hygiene. He and the ants have much in common, but as you say you are still here.
I am sad to see your father is gone, but pleased to have you to talk with instead.
Thanks for visiting, Melissa.
Kass, you are always so kind to me and I'm relieved to say, one who seems to recognize that although I write with much angst, it is not always quite as bad as it might seem.
Perhaps this comes from being able to write about things.
Writing offers a level of objectivity that allows for a distance to develop between the writer and the experience. It is then up to the resder to do some of the feeling, which can be painful particularly when the writing includes trauma, tragedy and pain.
Readers too can distance themselves. They can also choose to close the book, flick off the screen, tale a break.
For me writing and reading make life more bearable. Thanks, Kass.
Thanks Kath. I love your post on 'fiddle arsing' – your grandmother's term. And it's clear to me from your blog that you are a person with an excellent work ethic, all that wonderful voluntary teaching of those young children who cam sometimes resist your efforts even when you and/or your daughter are feeling so sick.
I hadn't thought about the cleaning function of ants. Funny. was it you who talked about the cleansing properties of slugs in my earlier post.
Good things come out of the oddest juxtapositions.
Thanks, Kath.
Finally, Rachel thanks. If you have ants you can try a number of solutions.
I buy little patches from the supermarket that I place strategically near the ant congregation. Apparently the ants eat from these and go off to die. Yuk.
I did not try this with the ants in the toilet because they confined themselves to the toilet bowl itself and as I said earlier they all drowned. They're all gone now.
Great post. That first line just springs up at the reader and makes me want to know more.
Thanks for visiting me -nice to have found you. 🙂
My laptop refused to let me leave you a message..
but I find the ants in the toilet every morning to be a remarkable image
and the desire for a good work ethic to be a remarkable goal for a daughter to have..
thank you.
Dear Elizabeth, thank you for the opportunity to have a glimpse at your world. I like the way you write. It just seems so effortless in conveying your thoughts and emotions. I wish you the best for your thesis.
Oh dear, Elisabeth, I don't think you're an ant at all 😉
I think sometimes being all things to all people just becomes too much and then the guard is dropped and complaints are voiced until something amuses and then one's personal sun shines again. That's how it seems to work for me, anyway.
I've read that black ants like sugar and all things sweet, brown ants butter. That's some toilet bowl!
A psychotherapist friend told me that many of her clients began analysis when they were faced with writing a thesis. She regarded this as normal, having done the same herself.
Don't the Buddhists have a thing about the eternal ant?
How fortunate: you and your daughter talk.
elisabeth – in one of those synchronous acts that characterize this world i just bought a bright yellow goretex jacket for biking "so i can be better seen in the rain".
there are (like the weather) long dry spells that are what i think of as "breathing in" absorbing. they seem less frenetic, less engaging than the "breathing out" stages but they are equally important. i'm an artist and yet i haven't painted for seven years. not one painting. there was a time when i wasn't doing much else (well, besides working for a living) but i can wait. my access to the creative force is paused until i am full again. what do you tink of that? steven
I love you connection of ants to real live. Everything I read however is completely normal. Life is like eb and flow, dark and light. One doesn't exist without the other. When you are busy it is real hard to not get frustrated with housework. I already grump about it without being busy. I also think that your work is a bit like your baby You work hard to get it right which is a lot of responsibility, worry and hard work. In the end it is all worth it though Good luck
Bravo for getting that chapter done today; it's a great feeling isn't it when you finally do something you've been putting off? I can't help feeling we avoid things for a reason, until we're fully able to do a decent job.
Your daughter sounds like a dream child.
Thanks, Purest Green. That first line and those ants are captivating. I'm glad they caught your eye. I hope I catch it again. And in the meantime, it's good to meet you here.
Thanks, Melissa. The desire for a good work ethic is a good start, but I'm not sure it's enough.
Still we keep trying, my daughter and I, to knuckle down and get ourselves motivated to keep on keeping on.
Much as you do.
Thanks Between 7 and 9, it might look effortless, and in someways it is. But of course in other ways it's agony as you would know, writer that you are, even between seven and nine, that must tale some diligence. It's good to see you here.
Thanks, Janice of Jabblog. I seem to fluctuate between considering myself an ant or a slug – the one is excessively industrious, the other amazingly slow.
But as has been pointed put in response to my previous post, slugs are also meticulous in their own way. They are great, silent night time cleaners.
Thanks for your kind words here. Janice. I am getting on with it, ant like, slug like, however.
Thanks, Mim
I wonder that there's something 'sweet' in the toilet bowl. Perish the thought.
And yes, as far as the thesis goes, ad visiting psychotherapists, I know of a few souls who went into therapy in order to deal with their so-called 'writers block'.
And thank goodness there are times when I can talk to various of my daughters but there are other times when silence rules.
Well Steven, how amazing.
You have not painted for seven years and before then you did little else beyond earning a living.
Are you experiencing withdrawal or do you expend all your creative energy on your bike, in your photography and writing or in your teaching?
I can't imagine not writing, but painting takes so much more effort at a practical level – canvas and easel to set up, paint to buy, paint to dry etc.
I can understand your giving it a miss for a time, but seven years….
Thanks, Steven. You always give me cause to think again.
Dear Marja, my Dutch friend in New Zealand.
I agree with you that our work can be like raising our child, and we love it with the same mixed feelings – with buckets of love and occasional bursts of frustration when things don't go as we'd like.
But in the end as you say, hopefully it is all worth it.
Thanks, Marja.
Well Eryl, I have felt better since Saturday for completing a chapter.
I wonder how long it will last. I suppose I will need to build on it.
What do they say about writers?
You are only as good as your last book, your last poem, your last chapter, and this even before it's been published.
Thanks for your good wishes, Eryl.
i think it takes grizzle to deal the chunks of time in our life when we feel overwhelmed. blending the creative and the practical into one life on the same day is taxing at times. two different sorts of energy are called for and yet we often only show up with one sort of energy.
oh, yeah- loved your comment about not being able to transcend the business of your mind. you write with such clarity.
I like your comparison to ants in this piece. One thing to be encouraged about is raising an obviously very bright and together daughter.
Elisabeth this was great! You kept me interested from the start and I love how you could go from one thing to another and yet it all flowed together effortlessly. Great writing! I would love to be able to write like you but I'm not a writer…I'm only a self taught artist. So I'll visit here often for something good to read 🙂
I don't know if you're aware I was a newspaper editor for a couple of decades, but here was my thought when I read this: "There are ants in the toilet bowl," my Aussie blogging buddy from Downunder? I thought: Oh man, awesome. That, were you writing for print publication, is what I would call a kick-as lead, my friend. That is one of the best leads I've had hit me so squarely right between the eyes that I giggled outloud just as the way the words sounded in my head. Marvelous, couldn't have been any better, A+ effort in ruthlessly hooking your readers, no escape route available, no prisoners taken, and no backing away will be tolerated when you set out to write, because you got 'em so squarely hooked in their lips that was then only just a matter of reeling 'em all on in. How many comments on this so far did see? So you see it's not just me. That's some red-hot word-smithing job you done here, girl. Way to go.
Thanks, Sherry, I love the notion of 'blending the creative and the practical into one life on the same day' that 'is taxing at times. two different sorts of energy are called for and yet we often only show up with one sort of energy'.
You have recognisd my struggle with such beautiful words. I imagine it's yours too. I imagine it's the lot of many who struggle to lend the creative with the practical.
Thanks, Jane. Serendipity I say. Those ants were real. They appeared in our toilet bowl one day and have since disappeared. My daughter is real, too. And it's good to hear that she comes across as 'bright and together'. I think she is these things, but sometimes when you're in the business of mothering you can't see the wood for the trees.
Thanks, Jan. It's good to meet you here. I wouldn't underestimate your craft as a self taught artist. maybe you can include some of your work on your blog someday, then I could also visit you.
Thanks, Donna. As I wrote earlier, it was pure serendipity. I did not reflect too much on the appearance of the ants they just emerged.
I'm glad that it works as an opening line, though. I'm pleased to think that I might shock some of my readers in the same way I was shocked when I visited the toilet and noticed the strange shape in the toilet bowl, that fluffy look as if someone had dropped in strands of black hair.
This gets worse in the telling – too much toilet talk.
Thanks Donna for the A+ – high praise indeed. I'm chuffed.
This is the second time today I've seen the word "chuffed" used – must be a catching trend.
I too wish for a good work ethic, if only then so I could work my troubles away. But then, ants have a good work ethic too, you know…
Excellent post, as always.
You daughter's on the money! Pun intended. With work ethic comes financial retribution. Time will tell. Beautiful post. Many thanks.
Greetings from London.
Thanks, Phoenix. I'm especially grateful for your comment here, in the context of your 'troubles'.
I hope you feel chuffed given your hard work of late in dealing with your difficulties. I've no doubt you have a good enough 'work ethic' given the quality of your blog.
Hi Cuban. Both my daughter and I are as of now working on our work ethic. Hopefully it will improve.
I imagine yours to be exemplary.
Thanks for your good wishes.
Hi there.
Never had ants in the toilet but we used Terro to control ants.
Ants are a great example, however, of desirable work ethic.
one love
This is a good post. This is a reminder that life is good, stable, copacetic. Right now I have other priorities, the safety and health of my children, even survival. I mask it with art posts but deep down, I worry about my teenagers. It's tough being a teenager in America, I think. I can't worry about my state if mind, I am just thankful I have not lost it. Well! Not much for cheerful company today, am I?
A work ethic, for an artist like you, is to pay not attention to deadlines. Is to hold the idea and let it flow whenever she(i certainly think and state that the word idea has a female gender) eagerly wish to express by means of writing, in order to fully achieve an honest and pure literary creation. Your work ethic, as a writer, is to stare and describe the way you made with the ants, maybe it is the creative impulse after all, an attempt by the universe to try to get self conscience of its own existance. Maybe is not the universe that wise and perfect as we would want to think, and thus is the artist´s labour, to help universe try to find the path to its fully understanding. So Elisabeth, a proper work ethic ought to be,in my humble opinion, for you to try to listen only to that voice of the world expressing through your mind and creativity, and avoid listening to the confussed concepts of a bunch of ants, or even people, that aren´t able but to lead themselves into a sure death, in the shallow waters of a toilet.
You're right about ants as a good example of an exemplary work ethic, SE'LAH. Only from where I stand they lack individuality.
They appear as clones of one another. Clones can probably cooperate well to get basic tasks completed, but I'm not sure that they deal well with the unexpected. They lack a touch of creativity.
To my mind, creativity thrives on diversity. Thanks, SE'LAH.
Thanks Ces. I had to look up the meaning of 'copacetic' and I find for others who missed it's meaning like me, that it is 'US and Canadian slang [for] very good; excellent; completely satisfactory.'
Well that's completely satisfactory with me too. I'm glad you liked the post, Ces especially as you're having to battle the adolescent elements at the moment. I can empathize. I have a sixteen year old daughter, the last of my four and life can be a bit of a roller coaster, but if it's any consolation, you get through it in the end.
Adolescence like infancy does not last.
Well Alberto, thank you so much for your perspective on the work ethic I should try to adopt, one that is best suited to my life as a writer .
I will do as you advise. I will try to stop listening to 'the confused concepts of a bunch of ants, or even people, that aren´t able but to lead themselves into a sure death, in the shallow waters of a toilet.'
This is beautifully expressed, Alberto, and I am very grateful for your thoughts here.
What an extraordinary writer you are. Amazing. Your words capture me and I cannot look away.