my grief , my grief that was so physical that my skin and hair were peeling off , proved to me definitively that i was a primate , an animal , and that my thoughts were just the sweat of the brain doing its real work : finding bananas , trapping ants for protein and entertainment , clinging to another ape long after the mating ended just because the extent of my senses had gone too far and i was capable of understanding what the night meant .