Yesterday I learned that in Shintaido, money is never offered to the teacher. The ten-dollar fee goes through an assistant. A teacher should never have to think about money but is focused on what he or she is teaching, on what he or she is seeing.

So, I have been gauche in my ignorance, unintentionally rude, handing over my check (out of cash).

When I started on this trip, I divided my cash. One envelope in my purse where it could be easily accessed, the other stored separately in case I lost my wallet.

The first envelope lasted me the whole trip. The only problem was that once I arrived, I still had not found a place to live, where I could unload the car. Days passed. I was out of cash. And, I had no idea where I had stored the other envelope.

I was trying to write the other morning about porn I’d looked at before I falling asleep. Ant porn. Reading a book called Journey to the Ants.

As these things tend to go, the pictures were grainy. An orgy of ant legs and feelers. No telling what was going on.

I was interrupted, and never finished writing about ant sex and people sex. (Sorry!) But that night, I went on with my reading: “After the nuptial flight the newly inseminated harvester-ant queen breaks off her [own] wings by pushing them forward with her middle legs and hindlegs.”

Wow. One must read of these things in small doses.

I put the book down.

Then, last night I came upon this:

“After reaching the adult stage the young queen undergoes yet another radical transformation. She changes from a highly versatile, self-reliant adult into a helpless colonial mendicant. While a young virgin still resident in her birth nest, she is ready with little notice to fly away on her own and mate with the winged males. She alights and sheds her wings, builds a nest single-handedly, and raises the first brood of workers unaided over a period of weeks or months. Then abruptly...the roles are switched and the workers begin to take care of her, reducing her to little more than an egg-laying machine, a demanding beggar who trails behind the workers as they move from one gallery or nest to another. Thus diminished psychologically, she cannot be a ruler in any overt sense. She issues no commands, but she does remain the prime focus of attention of the workers, whose lives are consecrated to her welfare and reproductive activity.”

I found my second envelope last night. Finally. Right there in a zippered compartment of my toiletries bag. Where it was all along.

The money etiquette in Shintaido is certainly more important than the money. As may be true in most exchanges.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to the care and maintenance of my little car. I promised him a luxuriant bath in San Francisco as I pushed us across the west. He probably could also use an oil change. We take good care of each other.

And yes, this is all related somehow. And the quotes are from the writings of Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson.