An ant crosses my path. Small and black as it is, it seems to know what it is doing, walking the top edge of my iPad as I write, taking note of everything that is before it.

I wonder how much awareness an ant has, how much cognition, how much understanding of its world it bares witness to. I seem to be more aware of it that it of me, yet we go about our daily routine with the same energy and determination; I with my incapacity to figure out what the fuck I'm doing here and it, seeming totally capacitances, looking for food, sex and safety. Then again, maybe we are both on the same search but with different perspectives and priorities. It and I seem to share a rather stunned and haphazard approach to our existence.

I don't know what the perspective of an ant might be but I'm sure it's a simple one. Humans on the other hand seem to put in more of an effort. Life is complicated, as they say.

The  ant wanders back and forth for a while. I watch it extend its antennae and delicately raise itself on its hind legs as if in performance to a song for an unknown audience. Communication between ants is silent. They produce pheromones that diffuse quickly and extend far and wide. Other ants detect these molecules and react accordingly. My senses are oblivious to any odour beyond the sweat and grime of the tropics and a curry cooking in the distance. The simplicity of intermolecular communication seems simple enough for ants. Why can't it be that simple for humans? Why do we continually complicate communication with innuendo, half truths, semantic gymnastics and, worst of all, the unspoken word? What would an ant say if it could speak? I ask the ant. It says nothing, which says it all, really. I’m often ignored by ants and other organisms.

I brush the ant from my iPad and watch it scurry under the table and down a crack in the floor. Whenever I leave the house for an extended period of time, invertebrates take over. Worms at the front door, dehydrated and stuck to the tiles, penetrate through a gap in the security screen, especially designed by the builder to keep worms  and the like, out. Beetles from the front gardens annual hatching squeeze between the louvres into the front rooms. They scurry for shelter behind framed pictures of Italy. Is this the way they experience other worlds? Spiders spin webs in every conceivable corner of the house. 

Cockroaches have abandoned the garden leaf litter and made for the space behind the refrigerator, only to be disappointed with the lack of food normally found in abundance on the kitchen floor after a bout of cooking. A family of geckos has hatched and left the egg shells between the coffee mugs. Their food supply has been guaranteed over the last 4 weeks of my absence and they have grown fat on the harvest of invading invertebrates. I nuke the house with toxins from a red can labelled ‘Non-Toxic and Non-irritant.’ I assume that’s for my peace of mind. Not all invertebrate phyla could be identified as I suck up the remains with the Dyson. Each movement across the floor is delivered with a rather whistful sweep of my right arm and an interesting dance step recently invented during a dream sequence with Nicole Kidman. Not that I like Nicole or have any sexual desires on her person but I do find her a more than suitable dance partner during a romantic illusion.