Post Metamorphosis Blues

I caught my fly smoking in the bathroom this morning after asking it repeatedly not to smoke, going to great lengths to break it of this nasty habit, posting NO SMOKING signs on the cabin walls, then, in desperation, reaching for my flyswatter and smiting the poor creature once and for all.

I don’t enjoy death any more than the next person. I’d made it clear to my fly--NO SMOKING--in short clear expository prose, thinking the fly would get the message. But no! The fly smoked with impunity! And so, there was nothing to be done, nothing more I could do, for my fly persisted in smoking in the cabin. Smoking and buzzing around the cabin, the buzzing itself almost as intolerable as the smoking…

…I fetched my flyswatter, having only moments ago finished re-reading Metamorphosis, Kafka’s elegant masterpiece, having spent the morning in the cabin listening to my buzzing fly, reaching the human limit of toleration for another being, and then killed the fly dead.

I took the fly out on a stretcher this morning, dug a little hole in the sand very near where I’m now living, and buried it. It’s almost impossible to describe the grief I felt! My fly and I had a relationship that dated back at least one day, maybe two. During that time a bond had developed between us, a connection; I was sure of it.

As I stood over the grave this afternoon, I searched for the right words--I’m sorry, I mourn my loss, I thought we had an understanding, we took such pleasure together from being in the natural world etc.etc.--but the words wouldn’t do. I’d committed murder, plain and simple.

I made one last gesture to the fly, bowing in honor of its memory, and then walked back down to the cabin. When I came inside and closed the cabin door, minus my fly, I couldn’t help but look in the mirror:

 an old man’s face: a prune on a stick.