The ant tracks of time look like footbridges made of hyphens (3 or 4 hyphens per bridge) black and white rainbows archways above phrases like diacritics over bottles and jars (these items out of focus, soft focus, just nouns) —similar to a breve ŏ or an inverted breve ô, a Latin small letter with circumflex, or a macron with grave ṑ.
The ant tracks of time appear near a thesis statement, above a wall of description a corridor of narration near a subtitle over the door frame to an example: college students taking a summer course read an essay on noise and distraction by Seneca when a bridge of hyphens appears on the third line. It’s followed by a bridge over the second phrase in the twenty sixth, I cannot for the life of me coming long after I have lodgings right over a public bathhouse, which is separated by months from see that quiet is as necessary to a person as it is usually thought to be, the order different in time, sequence of writing, sequence of reading, as a jackhammer pounds and a crane lifts steel rafters into a skyscraper, a new dorm under construction, a giant statue of a tyrant is erected by a 100 slaves in the crowded streets of Rome. Dust on sandals. During bridge repair, the ants cross a plank over the construction site to a small hole in the stanza of a vacant lot leading to an underground crossword puzzle of tunnels & dens, razed & redacted rooms, repressed & collective corridors an alternative textbook, an anthology of excerpts adding to their stash: i) the image of a head fallen from a statue ii) the axle of a torched motive iii) a cornice of a stone statement and are supervised by the white ant that patrols the rows, Control Alt Delete— warrior ants, explorer ants, diplomat ants, teaching assistant ants, sales representative ants, dietician ants, second cousin ants, pastor ants, actor ants, architect ants, seamstress and tailor ants, high school sweetheart ants, mercenary ant, beautician ants, translator ant, editor ants, shoe store clerk ants, a fat June bug, street cleaner ant, a bee on its back, waiter ants, mandibles of predatory lending, police tape between pinchers. Fun fact:
Seneca was the tutor of Nero who requested his suicide & Seneca submitted his resignation in a bathtub, not as bad as suffocating minor enemies in rose petals?
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Western Civ 101
Alexandria Peary
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Graphic - Ellen Berkenblit (B.1958)
