I swear to god, dude, interventionism has to fucking die. I think this is it. I think I’m literally done with trying to intervene on things. I keep just, like…… inadvertently doing all kinds of shit when I try to intervene.

But I can’t call it inadvertent anymore. I can’t hide behind innocence anymore. I’m not fucking innocent. First the roach and now this. My god, dude. I keep fucking shit up. I think…… I think intervention in general... I think I have to be done with it. No longer trying to save or even observe anything anymore. The whole thing……… the whole fucking thing.

Ground it in reality, mamas. Let’s ground it in reality. This is not just in a vacuuuum. I’m not just saying this shit.

It’s that I went outside to listen to [song], because [rdct] sent it to me, and I was trying to have this whole, like, romantic moment with it. I was trying to give him my attention, my full attention, and give the song the fullest possible chance of resonating, so i took myself from inside to outside. I guess that’s where it started, with vanity, and with desire, and with lust, and with whatever else you wanna call this whole obsession that i still have with [rdct] after all these years. My god. Okay. Anyway.

The song starts to wrap up, and I’m not liking it that much (a mention of driving upstate registers in my mind, but it feels like a trope at this point, as well as a visual of laying on one’s side curled up against someone’s body? And then one of, like, a lamb being led to slaughter. and that was the song). That’s when I looked down and saw two ants—yes, not one but two— seemingly crippled. They were writhing and limping. And I was like…. There was really only one thing it could’ve been that caused that, and that thing was me, me and my fee-fi-fo-fumming around like I own the place. I was just, like… trampling around around there………. It must’ve been me. But, like, wouldn’t I have crushed them completely? Or maybe they just…. Maybe they’re so smaamll and so well guarded by their exoskeleton taht they just like sunk into the tissue of my foot and didn’t fully die.

In any case, I kept watching, because of course I did. One of the ants proceeded to curl itself up into a ball, ..... and that made me pause. The other one was just hobbling away, but this one was in a ball. It seemed to touch its antennae, or maybe its mandibles, with one of its legs, possibly trying to fix what was broken, before frantically hopping and limping away.

But the other one stayed curled up into a ball. And this is where I just, like, dug myself deeper. I found a way to scoop it onto a fallen leaf, the least dried of all the fallen leaves, thinking I could give it at least a soft place to sit while I observed it up close. Truthfully I didn’t put any thought into what I would do once I had it on the leaf. Like, really, what was I going to do?

What I did do was carry the leaf into the sunlight. But again, not sure what my motivation was. Goddamn.

I put it into the light, and that’s when it seemed to start freaking out, like the sunlight was going to kill it or something. And then the phrase “sun-drain-life-out-of” came to mind as it does in these situations, as with the roach.

Within a couple seconds, a micro-gust of wind pushed the ant off the leaf, and it fell to the ground like a feather. I picked it back up because I felt bad. Just as soon, it fell like a feather again, though this time I didn’t pick it back up.

There was a group of tinier ants hanging around where I’d dropped the curled-up ant. They were about a tenth of my dude’s size and orangeish-brown. One of them went up to my guy and touched him, then scrammed away back toward its hill, which I hadn’t noticed before. And then another one went up to him, and another, and with each encounter the tiny ants seemed less intimated. Pretty soon, one of the tiny ants grabbed my dude’s leg and started dragging it closer to the hill. One and then two other ants followed suit, grabbing his other legs, and then they were dragging it across the threshold of the hill.

I had a solid, like, fifteen seconds where I could’ve intervened further, but I was stunned into inaction. And I didn’t want to put in the work to do any other shit, frankly. I didn’t have the dexterity to interrupt such a tiny process. Any action on my part would’ve risked further damage, further collapse further violence. I had already done enough, hadn’t I? So I just watched as the little ants carried my guy into their den, where it was certain that I could no longer intervene. Mercifully, the opportunity to act receded. I no longer had the option.

I wonder if these moments are the ones that are going to be weighed when I’m at the pearly gates at the end of this life or whatever the fuck. They’re going to find a way to combine all of these little moments into a ball, like the ant, and put the ball on their little scale, and they’re going to judge me and say:

“LOOK AT ALL THE DESTRUCTION YOU CAUSED…. AND WHAT TO SHOW FOR IT? WHAT DID YOU DO TO UNDO YOUR DAMAGE DONE TO ANT ECOSYSTEMS? DID YOU DO ANYTHING? OR DID YOU VOYEURISTICALLY USE THEM FOR STUPID LITTLE INSIGNIFICANT CLICKS ON YOUR ANT-THEMED WEBSITE? FUCKING SHILL. YOU DIDN'T LOVE THEM. YOU ONLY WANTED TO DESTROY THEM. YOU SHOULD HAVE RETIRED. YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED INTERVENING. YOUR FATE: INFINITE TORMENT.”

So that’s what I’m going to do. That’s the resolution: I’m done intervening. If I see an animal seemingly suffering, I will not interevene. I promise not to intervene. Or, if I do intervene, I promise to…..

Is it better to just make it a general rule not to intervene? I feel like it might be. I feel like intervening might just be a universally horrible thing at this point. I don’t know….. Maybe I’ll need to keep doing it when I go back to work in the hospital, but I feel like it’s just a bad way to go about things. I think…. I know that humans are, like… their whole thing is to, like, interfere with local physics and control it in various ways, but I feel like when you get other sentient life involved it becomes really fuckinggggg I don’t know. Dangerous. Karmically dangerous, and, like, dangerous in other ways, too, I’m sure……

On the bright side, I guess it’s good for the tiny ants to now have my guy to feast on, but, like… is it really that good for them? Or did I just… I really don’t know, man.

The question is what’s the difference between intervening intentionally and uinintientinonally? This whole thing started with me unknowingly stepping on those two ants while listening to that stupid song about lambs being led to slaughter.

The line between intentional and unintentional is so thin. There was some intent in this little saga, but it was mostly just blundering. It disturbs me if I think about it for too long.

Of course I’m guarded from fully being disturbed by these things by my superego or whatever, but, like… it still does make me think, like…. I have no fucking clue what’s going on in this life or what I’m “supposed” to be doing—if anything—or if there really will be some kind of champion at the end of the time who will judge me harshly for all of these actions. I have no clue, dude.

So now I just let it be done, let myself stop thinking about it, and go take a shower. It’s all fine.