The Unseen Here and Now . . .

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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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"Thursday's Fare"

Which is EXACTLY what we want.

The kids are behaving, the weather is perfect and I am lying on my stomach on a turquoise pool float. I am not in the pool but next to it. The float has been in the sun a while and is now very warm. It is taking the light chill of the water from my body.

I am VERY comfortable.

My eyelids seem to involuntarily open and close. The palms are gently floating in the breeze and the sky is that technicolor blue you mostly only see in 1940s John Wayne movies. Life at the moment is quite good. In fact, it's about as close to perfect as I tend to find it. I am thinking of nothing significant, and as far as I can tell, nothing significant is presently thinking of me.

Something catches my attention on the slate in front of me. It is a colony of ants.

The pool is on my right. There is a 2-foot-wide "border garden" on my left and grass beyond. The ants are working the slate surface in between -- juking and jiving and cutting and turning in all directions and in no direction at once. Somehow amidst their seemingly random dance they are affecting an end result that is generally a straight line from the edge of the raised concrete pool perimeter to the mulch of the border garden. Their bustling activity stirs my thoughts.

I am reminded that the rest of the world is not on vacation. I can hear the sound of construction equipment a couple of blocks away and the faint whisper of passing cars on the busy beach road around the corner. Big things are happening in faraway places -- power and money are changing hands. Careers are being made and lost. The Earth presses on in its persistent journey around the sun and somewhere in the distant cosmos planetary bodies must collide -- but just like me, these ants know nothing of it. And all of humanity and creation, save me, knows nothing of them.

What are they thinking, I wonder?

I regard them a moment more and realize that every so often a single ant emerges from the mulch on the left clutching some sort of prize before him. Mostly they appear to be small articles of plant debris but every now and then one emerges with what appears to be part of another bug. One passes by with the wing of something that is several times bigger than he is. I am reminded that pound for pound, ants are the strongest living thing on the planet. Several more pass by and then one emerges from the mulch with what appears to be a beetle's abdomen.

"Now there's a nice find," I think. "The queen will be singing his praises tonight."

But his luck is short lived. A larger ant coming from the other direction attempts to wrestle his prize away. They grapple several seconds and it appears briefly that the smaller, original owner might come out victorious, but the attacker is simply too big. He wrenches the prize free and turns back -- going with the flow of ants towards the border of the pool that apparently leads to home.

"That is so unjust," I think. "Nature can be so cruel -- no telling how long that little guy worked for that thing".

For a moment my mind wanders to debate the reality of free will and chance and the very real randomness with which things so often seem to happen. My thoughts skip to several sad events that have recently played themselves out in the news. My sense of human justice quickly has me questioning the necessity of such a world.

"It's just not fair," I think -- and I'm right. According to my understanding of things, it's not.

I watch the big ant a moment longer, resisting the urge to dispense justice with my thumb.

And apparently in this thought I am not alone.

Slowly from around the other side of the pool ambles "Emma" -- my parents- over-weight, under-intelligent 9-year-old Golden Retriever. She has been chasing lizards along the side of the house. As she approaches, she lowers her head and increases the wag of her tail. The skin of her face droops long and she smiles in agreement with her disposition, which is 100 percent happy, 100 percent of the time.

She is approaching the column of ants. The little guy who has lost his prize is heading back and has almost made it to the edge of the mulch. The low-down cheat that has bullied his way to wealth is halfway to the other side. Emma moseys persistently forward -- the big leather pads of her feet spreading out soft but firm under her lazy gait.

SKA-WHISH.

The rare moment of "random" justice comes with unexpected sweetness, and I smile up at Emma, who has little notion of her role as judge, jury and executioner.

She licks the top of my head and then sniffs the column of ants. The exhale of her nostrils blows several back into the mulch. She steps slowly over them in search of more lizards in the grass.

My son pops up from the bottom of the pool with a penny he has found.

"Look, Dad -- I didn't even know it was there!"

"I didn't either," I reply.

The world spins steadily on full of mercy and mystery and magic -- in the divine and infinite hour that is the unseen here and now.