Asami Nagakiya (ANT BITES VICTIM) in Trinidad and Tobago

Ant Bites

was an attempted novel I tried in 2004. it was to be fiction.

but nothing came out other than me. my life, my stories, my episodes

upon returning to trinidad in 2003.

it is a manuscript that outlines how you can love a place thoroughly

and it hates you, strangling to kill you ever so slowly, it counting on being imperceptible,

the title came from me standing in some grass at night , in a garden, needing to pee real bad, and doing so razed up an ant's settlement.

i was of two minds to tell that level of truth, but there it is. it may add to the veracity of the story...of need, and the thing you need despises you, seeks to kill you for mere wanting to exist comfortably in its space. well i ended up getting twenty three ant bites that night on my feet, and i broke out almost immediately into one massive connected hive, metres thick, from ankles to bottom. from that night at st. clair to nine months after, i was never properly diagnosed with insect poisoning, could have died all along within that time, and suffered a bit in the interim. it dont seem so bad as i write about it this time, but it was. dangerous.

so in my convalescence, i started to write. the idea of how you can love , be in love, be enthralled, worship and celebrate a place, and it really be all about killing you.

i am waiting to see this turned into a book or movie. though i wrote it as a book, i realized what came out is really a screenscript for a film/. it is also written in this very innovative genre that only a few other writers ever employed: Sandra Cisneros and Victor Borge.

but i wake up this morning . come to fb.

see a post first on the newstream, a pic of Asima Nagakiya and the caption reads, "This woman loved our country" and I can say and echo - she really did love this country/ then after that a whole new fresh load of brouhaha with tim kee blaming her for her demise, and all of that is so reminiscent and mirroring of my life here. endless folk who blame me for being about something in this nothing place, who blame me for the ugly broken responses of empty people fragile and insecure from their incompetence in comparison. i wont go on. but it is all ant bites all over again. if that script ever gets made into a movie, i am writing this so you all can remind me to include this episode of the life of this pan player. Trinidad is a country of Ants, that bite the best of us into useless oblivion, either by violence or negligence. Only a few of us scream a laudable sound.