Shouts From Down Under

Marching to the beat of the same drum

I hope it's a sign of rain, because today, after we'd eaten and washed up from a hot lunch, I noticed a trail of black ants coming down the wall, across a kitchen bench and underneath it, where they'd found an enamel billy can of scraps, intended for the cat, who lives out in the shed.

The can was covered in them. Ants are a real problem around here. There is a huge meat ants nest half way down the block / property that I'll have to deal with in the next few days. Not sure what or how but they've gotta go. They are aggressive and spreading; you can't walk down there or stand around at all in the yard or next thing one has latched on, thinking you are an up sized Big Mac. I'm just a skinny Sparky. (Ok maybe not so skinny)

This behaviour of ants has me thinking about ours as writers.

Is this what we do? Do we follow some unwritten code that strongly "encourages" or even covertly "forces us", compels us to do what everyone else is doing? Walk where everyone else is going. Run when they run. Bite when everyone else does? Panic when we smell fear or injury?

Do we all follow one another into the haze of opinion hostility? Or perhaps not openly, but do it secretly?

Anyway, I noticed a bottle of Ant Rid on the shelf, so I removed the "billy" of scraps to the outside, disposing of it into the compost (sorry cat) and washing out the remaining ants. Then I poured out Ant Rid in a nice tantalising BAIT right where the billy had sat. Within 1/4 hour a lot of ants had calmed down at the billy's absence, and had gathered like drinking lions at the nectar of the sweet bait.

On the bottle it states that this stuff has a delayed reaction, and the ants will take it back to their nest where they cease to live, and the others in the nest then eat them, this being what ants do to their own; an economical survival mechanism by hive instinct.
Even the queen, their only breeder, suffers the same fate, rendering the nest empty of it's inhabitants, and stopping the problem inside the house.



This may seem cruel, but that's how it is, and it's how I dealt with it. Whether the poison is effective or not remains to be seen.

Sometimes I look at people in the community or where ever, who may be arrogant, opinionated, egotistical, strong willed, but they are doing some difficult job, emergency job, dangerous job, dealing with difficult people, or animals, or insects or other things and I'm glad someone is a #$%@@% enough to do what is necessary.

Getting back to writing.

Are all writers DEEP THINKERS? Are you a thinker? Do you not like to think too deeply?

Are there places you stop thinking and shut it off? Don't like to go there? Sometimes I think this is a good thing, particularly if those thoughts are on the road to self harm, or thoughts of something that isn't yours to think about, doesn't belong to you, and you have no right to think about that person or thing.

You know exactly what I'm referring to here.

But we've probably all failed at one time or another with our thoughts straying into danger areas. Sometimes we call areas "dangerous" when they aren't, but we just fear to go there. Experiences, or other's opinions may prevent us, or we have pre conceived ideas about thinking along those lines.

What if as writers, we were fed subject matter, or searched for writing material and it was like a poisoned bait? Like the Ant Rid?

Looked good, smelled sweet, tasted nice, but was really the most black hearted, despicable poison.

Then we carry some back to our nest of other writers. They like it too, like the signals, like the trail we've left behind, and they follow the path to the bait as well. It's the hive rules. Pheromones. Whatever.

Maybe it's not this dramatic, or poisonous.

But what if we are just doing the same old thing? Writing the same stuff. Following the same worn trail. Our feet walking in the same steps as everyone else? What if we didn't have a lot of understanding of why, but we just went along with the common approved thing?



What if we are / were hostile to anything or anyone different, and became aggressive against change?

That's what ants do. I only have to walk past, not even on the nest, not stepping on any ant, just stamp my feet a couple of times and wow. The anger. The hostility. The fear. They don't understand that I mean them no harm. They just sense something large and feel threatened. They probably want to attack, kill and hopefully (for them that is) eat.

If your writing is the same as everyone else, and you're comfortable with that, then perhaps that's a marvelous thing. I'm comfortable with it.

But if someone writes in a different way, style, etc and their piece is very different to anything else you've seen before, it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, wrong or incorrect.

It may have just never been done before.

Below is a quote from one of Carly Fleischmann's therapists

"By communicating, Carly learned that she had power over her environment"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg

https://www.facebook.com/carlysvoice


Sparky

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