I knew a man who worked in an office with no windows. Gray vinyl floors and white walls and LED lights. Three black screens folding out from each other and a dishwater color printer that beeped when it wanted something.
No windows but the company had hung a painting. Or a picture of a painting in a black wood frame. A grassy meadow in spring sunshine. A distant copse of woods. Puffy clouds floating by.
The painting was six feet from his head. He’d read that to keep your eyes from atrophying you should look away from screens every 20 minutes, for 20 seconds. At something 20 feet away.
The painting was as far as he could get. He didn’t look every 20 minutes. But when he remembered that you should look at something, he looked at it.
And he would think about a grassy meadow if he could. But most times he thought about work. What he’d eat when it was over.
One day coming back from lunch there was a pile of dust under the painting. A sort of golden color. About an inch around and an inch high.
He squinted up at the acoustical tile on the ceiling, in its metal frame. There was no crack. There was nothing golden colored.
He lifted the painting off its hook and off the wall and looked at the back of it. No crack. Nothing golden colored.
He finished work and went home. The janitor wheeled in his big trash bin and cleaned up the dust at night. Took out his recycling- five copies of a Powerpoint deck. After printing he’d noticed a typo.
The next day after lunch there were two piles of golden dust.
He thought for a second it should be a gnome in the walls. The piles should be real gold. The spirit of his printer in gratitude for the toner he fed it. But that’s not the kind of gift life gives you.
What was it.
He remembered reading Mishima. A free PDF of Sun and Steel translated by an amateur.
For most people, Mishima explained, the wood, which is the body, exists before words, which are the white ant that eats away at it. Not for him. For him,
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος
The white ant. For a minute he’d thought they must have white ants in Japan. Later it occurred to him this was a poor translation of “termite”.
There’s a termite in my painting eating the frame.
At night he read Wikipedia. Like ants, termites create complex societies. Thousands of individuals. Most don’t reproduce. They eat wood pulp and feed it to the queen. Some have wings and eyes but most are blind.
The termite’s life cycle is complex. Unlike ants, a baby termite is born capable of becoming anything. Worker, breeder, king, queen. Flying “alate” or blind tunneler. Throughout life they proceed through a series of molts, taking different forms. Some reach a final molt as a point of no return. “True workers are individuals which irreversibly develop from the apterous lineage and have completely forgone development into a winged adult”, it said.
“Workers remain wingless and… become developmentally arrested, appearing to not change into any other caste until death.“
Most work in the colony, including processing wood cellulose into food, is performed by juveniles before their final molt.
My termite’s eating cellulose. Therefore he can still be anything.
He could become a winged alate. What Wikipedia called “winged virgin queens and kings.”
A queen termite is the longest lived insect. It lives up to 50 years. Recently a termite colony had been discovered in Africa thought to be 34,000 years old. Many times older than any city of man. 7 times older than the pyramids, themselves mounds for preserving kings and queens.
There was nothing he could do for the termite here. No leaving out a dish of water. It extracted moisture from cellulose. It would have wandered from the walls in the storeroom where they kept the painting. Where the colony must be.
The only living thing that was with him.
Every night he cleaned up the dust so the janitor wouldn’t find it, and want to fumigate.
And he thought about how he’d get in the storeroom. Find its civilization and put it back.
And if they found the colony and tried to spray the building. He’d say he had some allergy or disability and he would sue. Or he’d break in at night and dig the colony up. Put it in the trunk and plant it in his yard.
And his termite would be a winged king.
For now he sat and worked with his termite. And the termite burrowed on, dreaming of a queen.
delicioustacos 
Dogshit Houllebecq imitation
we’re living in a post-“made in china” world where imitation is a legitimate strategy. for example, there are many similarities between DUNE and star wars, also between secret of the incas and indiana jones. both by the same plagiarist who is now a billionaire. so DT being the Temu Houllebecq or bootleg Bukowski is not a big deal. he has thousands of fans, made shekels from writing, while you just leave stupid comments. he’s clearly the winner compared to you.
Aren’t we all termites, really?
I appreciate the research you put into this post. No way you knew all that before you started.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be an insect. To get in its head for a few minutes, crawl around and experience what that’s like. A picture frame as your whole world, but you don’t know what it is and can’t possibly conceive it.
Aren’t we all termites, really?
it would probably suck ass to be any insect. lifespan of a few months. get squashed easily, or eaten. be thankful you’re a huemanbean who can think and imagine. but yes we are ultimately trapped in a finite world called earth. doesn’t matter if it’s a globe or flat. our lifespan is longer but not much if you think on a span of millenia. people who were alive in the 1800s are now long gone. they each had hopes, dreams, moments of happiness, despair, horniness. hopefully nietzsche was wrong about infinite return. i don’t wanna repeat this life even if it means being a hueman again. but sometimes i feel intense dejavue, like i’ve already done all of this before.
anyway, fumigating those termites would be the humane thing to do, in my opinion. i disagree with taco’s sympathy for all living beings. a quick death is actually kind of nice for most organisms. better than toiling away as a wagie, day after day, converting cellulose into food to feed the queen so she can birth even more fuckin termites and continue this pointless cycle. gas ’em all.
no it would be fricken sweet.
>no termite-boss
>no termite-car insurance
>no termite-mortgage
>no consciousness
>get to do one job all day long
i wouldn’t trade places with them, knowing what i know, but i also wouldn’t mind being reborn as a termite.
We can each be Kings…
Awaken the LION spirit within you
ASCEND!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzaHfn2grA4
That guy is going to get laid off if he doesn’t get back to work. Can’t help the termites from his couch watching Netflix in his boxers collecting UE, can he? Get to work.
Harris-Walz 2024. A New Way Forward. The Party of Joy and Kindness. Love and Care for all living creatures, including termites. Everyone is welcome, except for maga-nazis of course. Hate those jerks!
MAGA, bitch!
Why is this so damn sad