About once or twice a year, usually following a particularly heavy rainfall, we are visited with willowy veins of ants whose periodic precision invades our bathroom. It may be coincidence that the darkening lines of insects grow in response to the scouting dance of the lead ants but information of some kind is conveyed in the stylized movements; this is especially obvious when a source of food has been located. When the first ants ascended from the depths of our house’s foundation and forayed into our kitchen, I had our annual Terminix inspection updated to include additional treatment to rid of us of the ant problem. I was a bit surprised to learn that the additional treatment was as costly as our annul contract; however, I was given assurances that the ants would be eliminated, if not with the first treatment then certainly with a second treatment which was included at no extra cost should the first prove to be ineffective. Quite predictably the first treatment failed to slow the invading armies of ants; the application of the fail safe second treatment appeared to be the critical mass which was responsible for the ants’ exodus shortly thereafter. “Appeared to be” is the operative term for no sooner than the creatures vanished, they reappeared, as vital if not more so than before.
I opted not to call Terminix again. It was clear to me that the ants would win hands down short of poisoning every living thing within a 50 yard radius of our house. We use as few chemicals as is reasonably possible around the house and garden organically so nuking the environment with a cocktail of pesticides is not something we take lightly. While talking to one of my neighbors I related my tale of woe regarding our ant infestation and he said there was a simple, inexpensive solution to my problem: Terro. Frankly, I thought his prescription sounded too good to be true, but it wasn’t. Provided the problematic ants are the sweet eating type, Terro works like a charm. Battalions of ants formed two lines: one marching to the feeding station that consisted of a piece of cardboard on which a few drops of clear Terro was placed and one returning to the nest carrying food. Depending on the size of the ant colony, in a few days to a week, the ants will simply vanish.
With the ants in retreat, Murphy’s Law was immediately in play: the shower that had recently been repaired began leaking almost as mysteriously as it’s repair had easily be effected. My wife had showered before me without a problem; however, when I finished showering, turning the knob to the off position did not stop the flow of water but allowed instead a steady, albeit, diminished stream of water to continue. None of my attempts to stop the water flow were successful so I spent the morning and actually part of the afternoon contacting the plumber who had repaired the shower just a few months earlier. When I was finally able to speak to a real person–the plumber’s voice mail was not working–I was told that the plumber was not in and he would return my call as soon as he was available, a scenario which, includes certain other skilled service professions, has become the norm. By the time my wife returned from work in the evening the shower had stopped leaking as abruptly as it had begun several hours earlier. When the plumber returned my call late in the afternoon of the following day I told him that the shower had simply repaired itself and was no longer leaking. Since he was familiar with my shower and the type of hardware he said I should give him a heads-up if the leak reappeared so that he could get a replacement cartridge for my aging shower.
Recently I’ve been reading a systematic analysis of Nietzsche as a philosopher and the coincidence of anecdotal calamities involving home ownership suggested a less serious theme of recurrence; perhaps, not quite eternal in nature but at least possessing some extended cycle of periodicity. If anything, Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence seems to provide a sardonic footnote to the mayhem which has resulted in the unrestrained pursuit of the great American ideal of becoming a home owner and the consequential underpinnings of his nihilism. Depending on one’s perspective–an integral point of reference for Nietzsche through which we impose grammatical order on the phenomenal flux of wills provisioned by our language and its unique structure–every iota of our physical and psychical existence, yea every tick of time down to the last detail (except there is no last detail to speak of) has come before and will come again exactly as it has before and will be again may or may not offer us comfort in the present or the incipient repetition of our lives. I have and will call again that same plumber and he has and will reply again at the same time and same way and with the same advice. If Nietzsche’s claim that any statement about “reality” is false then his own philosophical system is subject to the same test and is equally fallacious as it stands whereas its verity is hardly a candle of hope as it offers no improvement and would do little more than imprison whatever is–the phenomenal flux of will-to-power in a primal dance of force–in an absolute unending cycle of return. While the yea-saying, life embracing approach of Nietzsche distinguishes him from Schopenhauer’s pessimism, it seems small consolation when one is actively embracing what has already been and will recur countless times thereafter: one is reminded of the alchemical symbol of the snake devouring its tail or its modern visual analog, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Hmmmm, is that the shower dripping? Again?
