i look down and watch the little construction figures move in the constructed landscape. i remember ant farms, how strange it must have been to make their world between two panes of glass, flat world enclosed and exposed to the eyes of tiny giants to stare blankly and go into a trance. i remember looking again and it was all still, everyone died working in the midst of the construction. i thought maybe i could shake the panel and reanimate them and they would start again to make a world within my world. it was an enclosed window world made for kids to watch while it grew and died as it was made, as it was doomed to die. we were talking about death last night, deaths and impending death, we think of death all the time now, even when we pretend everything is normal and don't talk about it, deaths, ants walking circles to their deaths. the animated dead people play-acting the world. tiny figures in death spiral with the power to destroy sitting on stages calling for ceasefire while they drop bombs on cities and say genocide is not genocide. i look down and watch the death spiral of the make believe world.