Lazy bull [The True Story about a Bull of an Ant]

Preview: My imagination has been running wild for a long time, and it occurred to me in October 2005, my first story that I conjured up was titled “Lazy Bull”, about a supernatural ant. I had written a poem about the name, Lazy Bull, and had put it in my first book called “The Other Door”, but I did not use the ant, as it should have, I should have, since he was the originality of the story . . I wrote the story in my head in 1959-60, when I went to the Conservatory in Como Park, often; I sat that summer next to its thick walls, I looked into its millions of windows at the plant life, I let the sun beat me and I daydreamed all day; I was only twelve at the time; at that moment, I caught the vision of an ant that, along with other ants, crawled where I was. Red ants and thick black ants, and so on. But this story seems to come back to me, because I guess every time I went to the Conservatory that summer, the story progressed and new episodes emerged.

The following year, of course, I was thirteen, and my head went out of Lazy Bull, where I dreamed it, at the Conservatory, until I say, until October 4, 2005, when I wrote my memories of the last story I made. I remembered – and now here in my house in Lima, Peru, it comes back to me, this new month of April 2006; the story I wrote in Houston, Texas, a year earlier. You might think it’s a strange story, but no stranger than many of mine. Will I write it down, or take it from my napkin, the one I just found upstairs in a back drawer, forgot I had written it down, and put it there.

Lazy Bull, Chapter One: The Story

I was daydreaming, but I’m getting ahead of myself: I had walked to Como Park, the greenhouse was there, it had once had the kind of plant life you can imagine. I would often go there, to the park, that is, through the greenhouse, and the animal part of the park: the zoo and the amusement rides, or the Midway section, and this is where I would sit, leaning against the wall, I almost went to sleep: this is where I started daydreaming, or at least it was where I sat during the summer of 1960, and I daydreamed a bit, and I came up with Lazy Bull, my favorite of all ants, my super ant you could say ; He had also come here a couple of times after school, after school started again; –my new school: Like Jr. High School, but right after, when fall came on the scene, the story melted and I found myself in a new world. But I’ll stick with the summer and the creation of Lazy Bull, because it was a certain ant that I saw at the beginning, the one that triggered this story, a black ant, crawling, working, and then there were more black ants, of course, and I lost sight of the original ant after a while, or I thought I had, but every black ant that was its size became for me a Lazy Bull, in that area, as the daydreaming started and continued: because I went back to the same place the week after the week; Thus, little by little, I knew that this story would be etched in stone within me; I had to go back to this place to finish the story, I had no other choice. And this is the first time I have written about this ant.

When I saw this first black ant (the original Lazy Bull), I looked at him for a while, he was lifting things twice his weight, no … no, maybe three or four times his weight; and leaves three times its width and its side. He came and went with all his friends, but seemed to be lifting the largest and heaviest blade. “Why?”, You may be wondering, “why then did you name him Lazy Bull”, because surely he was not a sloth. But he handled that blade so easily, it looked like he could have lifted a hundred of them lying down. So I came up with the name, Lazy Bull, it looked like a bull, a strong ant indeed. Well, imagination can go a long way in such cases, so let me tell you what happened next. This sounds really crazy, but this is what daydreaming can do: I looked at this ant before it entered its anthill and it said, “There … you are like me, lazy, lazy.” And I was lazy, sitting there doing nothing, listening to my daydream, and an ant talking to me; my eyebrows almost hit the back of my head, this was terrifying to say the least. He was sleeping, or in a trance, I don’t know, I just remember him speaking, the voice said:

“I am the fat ant – Here!” (Now you know why I had to go back: to get the rest of the story, and it took me all summer.)

I said, “Lazy bull!” With a tone of confusion in my voice, and he said:

“How about that, and what is the Bull for?”

“Try to stand up, Homey,” he said, and I tried, but couldn’t, they bit my trouser leg; it was like a bull pulling me so that I couldn’t stand up.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “you made your point,” and that’s how we first met, and as time passed that particular summer, and a hint of fall, I got to know him pretty well.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if he was daydreaming or if it was real, that was a long time ago, and every time he came back he would tell me new things about his life. I would see that black ant next to the anthill, I thought it was him, and who knows, and I would lie down to start daydreaming, and when I woke up, a little awake and out of my dissociation pattern, I had realized that I had I come from a world of my own; and I had a new story to tell, or save or just revise, whatever it was, and the stories came from him, of course.

While I was in this stupor, of some kind: Lazy Bull was telling me how he helped these ants out, in particular when a spider came, demanding his help, a big one, a big spider, he had to fight it, throw it, throw it away from the anthill, so that he does nothing and harm his kind; oh, this was old business for him. One time I guess they sprayed the inside of the greenhouse and he had to open the windows for the ants and they blamed the maintenance man and the janitors in the morning, but it was ‘a gas attack,’ Lacy Bull explained. for me what else could I do?

Lazy bull

Chapter two, an adventure

There were a large crowd of ants around this area (the side of the greenhouse, where it normally rested): it was mid-afternoon, this summer day, apparently looking at the imposing face that was staring at them: me. Lazy Bull told me he couldn’t sleep; I somehow dismissed it, I thought to ask some of their names, the names of the ants, but there were actually too many, big black ants. Lazy Bull was something of a hero to the ant horde, a shaper of the thoughts of his people …

“Ciao, ciao!” He roared apoplectic sounds, a million ants waiting for Lazy Bull’s avalanche of wisdom, with all his voice. Then a voice called out:

Help! Help! Help! It was one of the ants under the shoe of a man who was next to the anthill of his house. As the man walked forward, he raised his foot; I bent down to the middle of my knee, staring sternly at Lazy Bull (the ant was free, but the hill was destroyed). Between the ants and a buzz, and the guy who had now entered the greenhouse, Lazy Bull had turned white with anger, surely not just his teeth, his entire body turned white.

“You humans just destroyed the largest underground ant home in Como Park Conservatory. He was kind of a big man, I thought, a fat one would say, tall, and he was walking carelessly, half safely, and he tripped on me, and I stepped on the wrong place. But what could I say or do, it was a child just watching. I thought in my mind: all they want is a place to sleep; finding food was no big deal, just keeping a nice place to sleep was a hassle, evidently .

I left that day and came back the following week, to find that the maintenance crew had filled in the cracks and holes in the staircase, and had put new cement on the sidewalk, and yes, all the ant hills were destroyed – a bad day in Como. Park for this horde of ants.

“Will you listen to me?” Lazy Bull said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Find a new home for us,” Lazy Bull said. [erratically].

The Conservatory had been around since the early 20th century, and this area had never been touched up (to my youth knowledge) and now the whole area was, so I walked around this great complex, I would have taken Lazy Bull, or his horde, forever to do this I guess. I wanted to find a place that wouldn’t be worked for another twenty years or so.

Home

Chapter Three

In the shadows I looked, as I was walking through the Conservatory, and found a statue of an Indian by the side windows of the Conservatory – a platform that I was on, I had seen many times, and it stood out today to the point that I had to step on his lawn and go around it several times to check it (and now, at 58, he’s still there, the same place he was 40 years ago). Here, next to the statue, below the edge of the platform, the ground was not touched by machines or human hands; It was under this statue, I felt that a generation of solicitation by the ants could be preserved. When I explained this again to Lazy Bull: telling her that I had found the perfect place, at that very moment, a caravan of ants left their old home, yes quickly, and headed to live under that statue; That was 43 years ago, and I predict they are still there; but who knows, things change over time, everything and everyone. And that was the last time I saw Lazy Bull, and I had that continuous dream. It sure felt real. I’ve passed that statue a couple of times since then, a few years ago, but I didn’t pay attention to it, or not much anyway, I just gave it a quick look or two, and a big smile.

Note: officially written in Huston, Texas [while waiting for my flight for 70-minutes, to go to Lima, Peru; coming from St. Paul, Minnesota, October 4, 2005: see Advance for more information on the story.]