Obon is three days when the dead return and hang out with those who welcome them. I welcome them and have long suspected that the dead come to me in the temporary vehicles of insects. I don't know how this happens, but I have noticed special signs that hint this. Thus, as Obon approaches, I try to resist my typical reaction to kill bugs.

But, I am human and thus forget, and I sometimes attack with the quick-response brain I have within my brain. Thus, I occasionally aggress and kill these tiny visitors/family/loved-ones. I am trying to not.

So, on August 12th, as I sat eating breakfast, I noticed a tiny crawling creature on my table and I smashed it with the tip of my finger. It was hard, so I smashed a couple times. Then, my Obon brain leapt in and said, "Dad!"

It was an ant.

I stopped smashing the ant/father. I picked up its broken body and put it in the empty yogurt tub that was at hand.

I watched as the ant suffered and flailed and maybe took some bites of yogurt and then stopped. Then, started again. Then stopped. Then crawled around injured.

I hadn't killed him. But, it was just a matter of time and pain until death made the ant-body vacant.

So I carried the tub into the kitchen and responded in the most spiritual way I know: I improvised vocalizations into the tub. I sang for maybe 20 minutes, hoping the vibrations of my voice would assist the ant/dad/visitor/ghost in ways I can only trust. I hoped the vibrations would assist the whatever sentience that can take temporary form inside a body to depart back in a way that was better than it was at its arrival -- more expansive and less prone to feeling a need to fit in a form. More open. More empty. And, other Buddhist notions.

The ant/dad still hung on throughout my singing, its thread-like legs broken and quickly beating for grip. It moved around the tub bottom.

Then, I decided to record and honor/memorialize the ant in the way you are listening to.

In the middle of the first chant (before the bass was added), death settled in and the ant-form become vacated. Ant-sentience or Dad-sentience or WTF-sentience departed as surprisingly as the ant body appeared on my table.

From Where? To Where?
As What? Of What? For What?

I don't need answers to these questions to trust the feeling to respond.
Sorry Ant/Dad/Visitor/Loved-one for the pain I caused you. Hope your return was worth the trouble.

Love,

Jerry