Ants Eat Fish Quotes

During forced exercise one day, Louie fell into step with William Harris, a twenty-five-year-old marine officer, the son of marine general Field Harris. Tall and dignified, with a face cut in hard lines, Harris had been captured in the surrender of Corregidor in May 1942. With another American,* he had escaped and embarked on an eight-and-a-half-hour swim across Manila Bay, kicking through a downpour in darkness as fish bit him. Dragging himself ashore on the Japanese-occupied Bataan Peninsula, he had begun a run for China, hiking through jungles and over mountains, navigating the coast in boats donated by sympathetic Filipinos, hitching rides on burros, and surviving in part by eating ants. He had joined a Filipino guerrilla band, but when he had heard of the American landing at Guadalcanal, the marine in him had called. Making a dash by boat toward Australia in hopes of rejoining his unit, he had gotten as far as the Indonesian island of Morotai before his journey ended. Civilians had turned him in to the Japanese, who had discovered that he was a general’s son and sent him to Ofuna. Even here, he was itching to escape.

Earthly rule, therefore, has been appointed by God for the benefit of nations, and not by the devil, who is never at rest at all, nay, who does not love to see even nations conducting themselves after a quiet manner, so that under the fear of human rule, men may not eat each other up like fishes; but that, by means of the establishment of laws, they may keep down an excess of wickedness among the nations. And considered from this point of view, those who exact tribute from us are “God’s ministers, serving for this very purpose.

Dante looked as though he might have gone slightly pale with fear, although Charlie couldn’t quite tell because of all the sunblock on his face. He said, “So there are ants out here with the most painful sting imaginable and giant snakes and man-eating piranhas and tiny fish that can swim into your private parts and consume you from the inside. Is there anything else completely horrifying that I should know about?” “Brazilian wandering spiders,” Charlie said. “Electric eels. Giant centipedes. Jaguars. Assassin bugs. There’s also a couple dozen venomous snakes.…” “And caimans,” Milana added. “Oh right!” Charlie exclaimed. “I totally forgot about those.” “What are caimans?” Dante asked. “Relatives of crocodiles,” Charlie explained.

They're kidding themselves, of course. Our sky can go from lapis to tin in the blink of an eye. Blink again and your latte's diluted. And that's just fine with me. I thrive here on the certainty that no matter how parched my glands, how anhydrous the creek beds, how withered the weeds in the lawn, it's only a matter of time before the rains come home. The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver. And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disgusing intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals. And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world. Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in the electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs. And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world. Yes, I am here for the weather. And when I am lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE, AND HE WAS GLAD!

Until age 24 or so, I lived with my girlfriend in a 15,000-yen apartment in Yamagata. The people around us were kind and would give us fruits and vegetables. So while we didn't have much, I think we ate a well-balanced diet. Even though we were poor, we had a pet Japanese rice fish. I found it dead one summer. I went to toss its body in the trash like in Parasyte, but my girlfriend said she wanted me to bury it, so I went off into the park, alone. I tried to bury it under this big tree, but the ground was too hard, my hands got all dirty, and I had no hole to show for my effort. Out of options, I figured I would pretend I had buried the fish and left it lying there on top of the ground. As I watched it for a little while, ants found the body and began trying to carry it away. I'm not sure what came over me, but in that moment, love for the pet fish welled from within me for the first time. I brushed the ants away, and then I ate it. The next day I had an upset stomach. And when my girlfriend suggested it was something I'd eaten, I came up with some lie cover up the fact that I'd eaten our pet fish. I've had people get mad at me many times throughout my life, and when I'm scared of that, the lies just spill out. Most of the time I get caught in them, but this time I didn't. That brings us to now. The memory of lying to my girlfriend is far stronger than the guilt of eating our pet fish. Please allow me to confess my sin here.

Caves across the ocean in caves of dark hills white skin people like the belly of a fish covered with hair. Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and animals. They see no life When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and rivers are not alive the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects They see no life. They fear They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves. The wind will blow them across the ocean thousands of them in giant boats swarming like larva out of a crushed ant hill. They will carry objects which can shoot death faster than the eye can see. They will kill the things they fear all the animals the people will starve. They will poison the water they will spin the water away and there will be drought the people will starve. They will fear what they find They will fear the people They kill what they fear. Entire villages will be wiped out They will slaughter whole tribes. Corpses for us Blood for us Killing killing killing killing. And those they do not kill will die anyway at the destruction they see at the loss at the loss of the children the loss will destroy the rest. Stolen rivers and mountains the stolen land will eat their hearts and jerk their mouths from the Mother. The people will starve. They will bring terrible diseases the people have never known. Entire tribes will die out covered with festered sores shitting blood vomiting blood. Corpses for our work Set in motion now set in motion by our witchery set in motion to work for us. They will take this world from ocean to ocean they will turn on each other they will destroy each other Up here in these hills they will find the rocks, rocks with veins of green and yellow and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks they will lay it across the world and explode everything. Set in motion now set in motion To destroy To kill Objects to work for us objects to act for us Performing the witchery for suffering for torment for the still-born the deformed the sterile the dead. Whirling whirling whirling whirling set into motion now set into motion. So the other witches said