The Fly: A Short Story

Featured / Brian / 1 Comment

It started when I woke up and heard the fly in my room. I did everything I could. I read, I meditated, I sang, I did push-ups, I typed on the keyboard, I even tried praying to relieve the burden of this fly. The fly was still in the room. Sometimes it would stop flying and land somewhere. These were peaceful moments. Most of the time, though, it flew around. Those were hostile moments. I left the house for a while and forgot all about the fly. When I came back I remembered. It was still alive and flying! I tried a few times to kill it, but I could not manage to do so. It’s hard to kill a fly by simply clapping your hands. Flies are elusive and exasperating insects.

I could have left again, let the fly buzz around until he got tired or died. I couldn’t do it. This was my house, not the fly’s house. It was cold and rainy, a day to sit contentedly inside and watch the rain fall down, not a day to be outside. But I could not be content with the fly in the house, it brought me to the end of my patience, I really couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand it or sit down with it in the house. I could do nothing but become increasingly irritated. I sat and tried to read again. Nothing doing. I could do nothing but think about the fly. It had completely taken over my attention. There was nothing else in the world but the two of us, the fly and me. I thought about why the fly had come. There had to be a reason. Flies don’t just appear out of nowhere without a reason. I thought about it some more and could not think of one single reason why this fly was in the house.

Was there no reason for this fly? If there was no reason for this fly, then did that mean there was no meaning in this situation? The dread!

The apparent meaninglessness of the entire situation filled me with horror and forced me into action. The meaning here would reveal itself, I was sure of it. I needed to be sure. I would learn what this whole thing meant by killing the fly. From the death of the fly the meaning of the situation would come to life. But first, the fly must die!

I went again into action. This time the fly would not get away. I followed him into the bathroom and shut the door. There, let him fly around in there, I thought. That settles things.

Before too long, I had forgotten about the fly and settled in to read. Sometimes I would stop reading and bask in pure contentment: the peaceful stillness of the day, the mix of rain and snow gently falling on the window, the warm cup of tea in my hand, I needed nothing else. The simple pleasures of life! What else was there to need? Needing was for unhappy people, the ones who were always intolerably irritated with absurdly minor issues.

Intolerable was the word. The irritability of other people always exasperated me to no end. How could anyone be so irritated! And how truly minor the issues were that made them so upset. I didn’t see a bit of sense in it. There was no meaning in it at all. What disturbed everyone all so much was as pointless as a fly. I was glad to be rid of those constantly irritated and discontented people, glad to be rid of all my burdens and worries. As the cold rain fell down on the window outside, I felt arise within me the warmth and sunlight of true contentment!

Soon, having drunk a pot of tea, I found I needed to go pee. Serenely, I opened the door and walked in. Immediately the fly flew out. How quickly the mind forgets of its troubles!

I forgot right away about having to pee and went to chasing the fly for a second time. Again, I tried to trap it in the bathroom, but it was too smart for that, so I was forced to look for another way to remove the loathsome pest from my presence.

I chased it for a quarter of an hour around my 350 square foot room. In such a small room, with such a small insect, such a vast and endless problem! It was madness, and it needed to stop. I chased it above the sink, I chased it under the table, and finally I chased it to my bed where it stopped flying.

I stood on the bed. The fly was in the far corner, on the ceiling, and I could tell it was afraid. The fear in the room was palpable. I stood there and waited, my entire attention fixated on the fly. This time it would not get away, I was sure of it. I thought about what I would do if it got away. I could not fathom the possibility. It was simply unimaginable to me that the fly would live for another minute. I pushed the thought out of my mind.

The fly took off again, while I clapped frantically like an epileptic at a piano concert. Did it hear my clapping? More to the point, did it understand the intent of my clapping? Above all I feared that the fly was under the misperception that I was clapping in support of it. On the contrary! I despised its very existence! I wanted to nip that misunderstanding before the whole situation got completely out of control. I wanted nothing more than to end this fly’s life, to kill its buzz, and not to give it my support by clapping, that senseless human form of expressing non-verbal approval. But the only way I knew to kill it was to clap it between my hands. That would be the last clap and the final curtain. Whatever misunderstanding my clapping might bring about would not matter after the fly was dead.

With the rage and fury fitting for such a critical and crucial moment, I roared at the fly,

“I clap to kill you, not to praise your efforts!”

Still, the possibility that my intent might be miscommunicated was too grave a threat. The complexity of the situation made my head hurt. I wanted the fly to know I was trying to kill it, and not be under the misperception that I was trying to express to it my approval. I wanted it to be in fear in its last seconds, not basking in unwarranted and nonexistent admiration.

I picked up a book. This way there could be no misunderstanding. I would kill the fly by use of the book. I tried that for a while without success. No, that could not be the way. I could clap the fly faster than I could hit it with a book. Anyways, what if the fly imagined that being killed with literature was more flattering than being killed by flattery? Misunderstanding be damned! It did not matter how this fly died as long as it was very shortly dead.

Well, what can I say? Something changed in the manner of my pursuit. I became more focused, more driven. I readied myself, I zoned in on my target. It became more of a chess match and less of a bullfight.

The fly took off away from me, and I took a desperate lunge. I clapped one time, opened my hands, and saw the fly fall below me to the ground. It twitched once, twice, three times, and then it was still. It would no longer torture me with its insane buzzing.

I took a deep breath and sat down again. Outside everything was the same. The mix of rain and snow was still falling gently on the roof, the trees shook gracefully in the wind, and the deer and coyotes roamed the hills. I waited for the contentment to come back, the way it had been hours before when I had forgotten about the fly in the bathroom. I waited to bask in the glow of a task completed, a job well done.

But something was not right. Why did I not feel more alive now that the fly was dead? Where was the freedom from every care, the loosening of all my burdens that I was sure would come when the fly was gone? I was free from the fly’s odious existence, so why did I not feel free? I had been sure the reason the fly had come into my life was because of the freedom I would feel after its death. But I felt no freedom! The dread!

In the fly’s absence I could still feel its presence. In death its hold on me was even stronger than it had been in life.

I waited.

Wanderings in Alaska: From Kenny Lake to Fairbanks

Featured / Brian / Leave a comment

I spent the fall before I started at Prescott living with my cousins in Kenny Lake, Alaska, 40 miles south of Glenallen and 220 miles northeast of Anchorage. I spent my time at their place chopping wood to keep warm at 30 below, doing odd jobs for neighbors, snowshoeing through the woods, reading, writing, and watching Lord of the Rings with my three younger cousins. They were three of the best months of my life. When I had worked enough odd jobs that I had money to travel, I did that. One day I decided to drive to Fairbanks.

Driving from Glenallen, I wasn’t sure where I was going to stop for the night. Most campsites were closed for the winter, so I thought I would just pull off the road and sleep in the car somewhere. There was a sign for a campground by a lake, though, that looked like it might be open, at least it was not gated off, as most of the campsites were. I pulled in, drove the loop. There was not a soul in the 50 plus site campground. The lake, Paxson Lake, was run by the BLM, a governmental organization, so technically it was probably closed. This was the time of the government shutdown. But the shutdown seemed so totally irrelevant here, so far removed from this campsite by the lake, surrounded as it was by mountains and trees, that I never expected a ranger might come to kick me out. A ranger did come to kick me out, but not until the next morning, so I still was able to enjoy the stillness of the deserted campsite for the night. I set up my tent and then walked around gathering dead spruce wood for a fire. I laid the wood in a pile, took off my boots and socks, digging my bare feet into the rocky sand, and leaned back against the hard wood.

better fire alaska

Good. Wood gathered, tent set up, fire burning. What else? Food? Why not. I cut up my quarter pound of sausage, put the pieces on a stick, and stuck the stick in the fire. Cut open a bagel and stuck it in the fire. Got my steel cup, filled it up with water, and stuck it in the fire. Waited. Leaned back against the wood, looked at the sky, darkening now. Took the sausage and bagel out. Put the roasted sausage on the toasted bagel, added some cheese which instantly melted from the heat of the bagel. Took the cup out and added a teabag. Dinner. Good. Anything else? A book? But that would require standing up, and the fire was so warm. Something of an issue, but one that could be overcome. Simply required an exertion of will. I could do that, I could stand up. I stood up, and ambled gingerly in my bare feet to the car, found a book, went back and leaned my back against the wood again. Edward Abbey would be my companion for the night. And a good companion he would be, better than many, than most, his voice truthful, passionate, alternately loud enough and silent enough to be heard. Often though the fire would distract me from his righteous and pure polemics, and I would put the book down and stare at the flames, thinking nothing, not at all oppressed by the beauty of the night, not at all lonely, but feeling liberated in the aloneness, which was not mine as loneliness would have been. Not my aloneness, but the aloneness. It had been here before I came, and it would be here after I left; I joined it, the aloneness, become a part of it, more a part of it than I would have been if I were not alone.

trees alaska

 Unhappiness here did not make sense. The trees were happy where they were, the rocks on the shore were content that the water in the lake flow gently over them, the animals pleased to roam and find food. It made sense only to conform to the contentment of these natural living beings and life-giving forms, and it was the only type of conformity that made any sense. Part of me dreamed that life could always be this simple, this easy, and maybe it could. But perhaps, another part of me thought, it is the difficulty and monotony of everyday life that make the rare times of easy happy simplicity when there is no conflict between the inner and outer life, when there is no distinction made between the two, when you are a part of the outer and the outer is part of you, so meaningful. A pool of water in the desert wouldn’t be an oasis if the desert were filled with water.

lake alaska

 It snowed during the night, 2 or 3 inches. I had fallen asleep by the fire and moved to my tent after the fire burned down and the cold woke me up. In the tent I slept soundly and warmly and didn’t realize it had snowed until the morning. I was in no rush to leave so I stayed in the tent and read in my sleeping bag. After an hour or so of this, I heard strange motorized sounds coming down towards the lake. I heard the strange motorized sounds stop by my tent, heard someone get out of the car and shut the door, heard someone ask if anyone was in the tent. I feigned sleep. She asked again, I answered. She was pretty nice about it.

“This campsite is closed, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. The governmental shutdown and all. You can get dressed and everything first.”

Although this ruined my plans, which consisted of staying in my sleeping bag doing nothing, it was alright. I would press forward. The Denali Highway was a few miles ahead, and perhaps not yet closed for the winter. My Uncle Peter and Aunt Patty had recommended driving on this road, which led to Denali National Park, but it was mostly unpaved and always unplowed. If it had snowed heavily during the night the road would be impassable.

hwy sign alaska

 At the entrance to the road, there was a sign which read “Travel Beyond This Point Not Recommended,” and a second sign which warned that wind, snow, and other perilous weather conditions were almost always present. In other words, only a fool will keep driving. More to the point, you, driving the 2003 Subaru Forester, are a fool. Do not continue, turn around, you have never driven in the snow, have you? No, of course you haven’t, which is why you consider continuing. Stop considering it. There are winds on this road which have flipped cars twice the weight of your little utility vehicle, conditions which have put the fear in drivers infinitely more experienced in the snow than you are. I listened for a minute or so to the signs, physical and otherwise, and then went beyond. There was a campsite about 20 miles away, Tangle Lakes, surely closed, that I would drive to. I’d turn around there, if I had to. On the way, I saw a caribou in the middle of the road. It paused for a few seconds and looked at the car, then turned and ran, stumbling a little. Perhaps it was hurt, hungry. I cursed myself and the noise of the car for frightening it and making it use energy to scamper up a hill, energy it might have needed to find food. I could have watched it from afar and waited until it was out of sight before continuing. As it was, I made it act other than it would have had I not been there. I changed the natural flow of things, and not for the better. When does human interference ever change things for the better?

It started snowing when I was about halfway to Tangle Lake. Not too hard, but definitely snow, not rain. Cold enough outside for it to stick. For Alaska, a minor storm. Fairly windy, snow accumulation if the pace kept up of maybe half a foot by the morning. Nothing to get worried about. In Washington, everything would be shut down. Then again, in Washington everything was already shut down, snow or shine. The governmental shutdown and all. At Tangle Lakes, I stayed in my car for about half an hour, thinking through the options, which were two. Press on or go back. West or east. Right or left. The first had the ring of adventure to it. Press on, in a general westerly direction, through snow and wind, through some of the wildest country that man has yet profaned with a road, seeking adventure. Go back? Retreat? That definitely was not adventurous. Not an attractive option. No romance to it at all. So I turned right, towards adventure, the west, towards a fair chance of fatality. The snow, as if in answer to my foolishness, immediately started to come down harder, the wind picked up. The weather report that Patty and I had looked at the day before had said that winds would be gusting at over 70 miles an hour. Travelers were forewarned. After 3 or so miles of driving under 10 miles an hour, I turned around. A couple more miles more and I might have had trouble doing even that. Later, when I returned to Kenny Lake, Peter told me that the Denali Highway had been closed for the winter that very day. I was probably the last one on the road.

subaru and snow alaska

Back on the main road to Fairbanks, I stopped in and got a cup of coffee at a cafe. Just to see the reaction, I asked the old man there if he thought the Denali Highway was passable. He looked at me for a second, looked outside at the snow coming down hard, and looked back at me.

“No. Not a chance. Stay on the main highway there, my friend.”

I did so, heading up to Fairbanks, 3 or so hours away, which for some reason I wanted to see. To see the difference, maybe. See how I would fare in a city for the first time in a month. I thought, mistakenly, that after a few weeks of living with my cousins away from the land hungry evil twin brothers of progress and industry, living in the shadow of some of the most majestic mountains in the world (Wrangell-St Elias Range), I might better be able to handle the brutal meaningless sounds of the town and city. And if I could not, then there was the library. I could always retreat there. There was a university with stacks and stacks of books. And there was always the car. And the road. The car on the road, departing. I could leave if I couldn’t stay. I arrived at night on Tuesday, after picking up a couple of not so reputable or respectable but nice enough hitch-hikers (one of them started singing when I put on James Brown, “Man, I haven’t listened to this since I was a kid. Do you got It’s A Man’s World?” so we sang it together.) I dropped them off so they could look for drugs and then parked my car and slept surprisingly well in the parking lot of the 24 hour Wal-Mart. Before I fell asleep I wrote a poem, just one of probably thousands of Wal-Mart parking lot poets all over the USA, down on our luck.

I stayed in Fairbanks the whole of Wednesday, mostly in the university library reading the poet Robinson Jeffers, leaving the library once to go buy some books at a used book store. Libraries and used book stores, the shining beacons of civilized life, which have saved many a wanderer, salvation for those who don’t know why they are there at all, why they aren’t climbing a mountain, riding waves in some sea, wandering in some desert. Jeffers, from the poem “De Rerum Virtue”:

 “One light is left us: the beauty of things, not men;

The immense beauty of the world, not the human world.

Look—and without imagination, desire nor dream—directly

At the mountains and sea. Are they not beautiful?”

Or as the Grateful Dead put it:

“Let it be known there is a fountain

That was not made by the hands of man.”

I left early Thursday morning, left the land of men, returned to the mountains; left the dangerously hopeless dream (or nightmare), returned to the starkly beautiful reality. In the words of one young unpublished poet, I left the land of rules and returned to the land of reigning silences, left the land of fools (myself included, no less than the rest), back to the land where there are no disguises. Driving from Fairbanks, I started to feel excited, more alive. I had felt dull and lifeless in the library, though the most refined thoughts of the greatest writers this world has known sat in books all around me. Driving now, Zevon on the stereo, I switched on the cruise control and watched the sun rise in the rearview mirror over some hills (mountains in any eastern state, hills in Alaska). The sky was almost completely clear, a rarity in perhaps any part of Alaska at this time of year, though I can’t say that for certain, having not traveled over the one-thousandth part of the state. Alaska is so massive, and with such wildness, such beauty. I wanted to climb every mountain I passed. But the Alaska Range, close to Denali National Park, was about 100 miles ahead of me. I decided to park my car somewhere ahead, in the range, and, while the sun was still shining, climb until I had cleansed myself of civilization by a process of detoxification. I parked the car shortly after a sign reading Wind Area. The sign had it right; the wind was powerful, though not quite as strong as it had been on the Denali Highway. Besides, the mountains were irresistible to me. Wind or no wind, I would climb.

Postcards From Europe in 50 words or Less

Featured / Brian / Leave a comment

In Chamonix. Planning to hike the Tour of Mont Blanc, a 200-kilometer loop. Passed a hotel called Le Gite Vagabond. Tempting, but too expensive, so I slept on a bench outside the train station in the shadow of Mont Blanc instead.

gite le vagabond

________________________________________________________

I am writing you from a train filled with Aussies. Paris to Lisbon, Portugal; a long ride. I was in Paris for a day. I didn’t know what to do so I went into a movie theatre and watched Spiderman.

_______________________________________________________

Dublin is as dirty a town as they claim, and as beautiful. I drank Guinness today and sang dirty old town with an old drunk. I watched cricket and noticed that cricket players are faster than baseball players.

_______________________________________________________

I got to Madrid hours before my flight back to Ireland. I lay down shirtless outside the airport, as I had done in Phoenix a few months before, and did nothing. Much hotter here than it is on the coast. The temperature rises, the people get colder.

_______________________________________________________

London is packed for the Olympics. My brother and I came over from Ireland to watch the Marathon. I retreated to a bookstore and read The Perks of a Wallflower and then napped in a park. Rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and socks, watched Londoners get drunk.

_______________________________________________________

Somehow I made it to Berlin to meet my uncle, though I had no money. Strangers can be kind, when you aren’t in France. Here, I biked in the downpour, looked at portraits of smooching dictators and gorged on continental breakfasts. I took some food for the road.

_______________________________________________________

Got robbed in Nice. Took the train to Marseilles, hid in the bathroom. Spent the week trying to get a new passport. I sat in the US consulate reading the dictionary and copying down words I liked.

_______________________________________________________

Wish you were here in Portugal. Lonely and melancholy tonight. For the past week, I have bodysurfed in the day, slept on the beach at night. I don’t feel lonely while surfing, riding the waves; the loneliness comes when the sun sets, and the couples walk off hand in hand

______________________________________________________

sunset portugal

beach life

_______________________________________________________

In France, most everything is forbidden, private, or impossible, usually all three. “Can I sit here?” “It is forbidden.” “Pourquoi?” “Dis table izze private.” “Can I climb this tree?” “No, it is impossible.”

_______________________________________________________

Hung out in Lyon with a gorgeous German woman studying abroad there. Saw a guy with a Redskins hat, he told me the Heat had won the NBA Finals. This news did not make me happy, but the messenger of the news did.

_______________________________________________________

Mark Twain wrote, “There is a friendly something about the German character which is very winning.” I agree. The difference from the French was noticeable the moment I crossed the border in Strasbourg.

_______________________________________________________

Met a group from Jersey (not the state) on a train. They were going to a heavy metal concert. I don’t like heavy metal music. They had a friend called Jim Beam. After meeting him I decided to go with them. I left the concert when Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing “Free Bird.”

train

_______________________________________________________

I feel invisible when travelling in the city. Not ideal for a life, good for a few days. Not a part of the city, not apart from it. In it, as an observer rather than a participant. An outsider by choice. I’m in some city, I forget the name, thinking of you.

______________________________________________________

Got to Hamburg a little after 2 p.m. on July 3. Watched a horse race. Met a group of 12 or so. They welcomed me with sandwiches, sausages, and lager. The next day I told them I had to get to Berlin, had no money. They paid for my fare. Gratitude.

______________________________________________________

Talked to a French bum today. Seems that all French bums have dogs, earrings, long hair. Renegades. Interacting with French people from the towns and cities drains me. But the bums are like mountain spring water from the Alps, refreshingly energizing, quenching that thirst for meaningful connection.

_______________________________________________________

A trekker named Bruno saw me trying to hitchhike. He came over to me, laughing at the pitiful sign I had made. I told him my story, he told me to come with him. I hiked for three days with him. I slept in a cave, he slept in his tent. We wondered where the french flies go at night.

bruno

bruno cavemen

Help Is On The Way

/ Brian / 2 Comments 
Help me to hear the song
brokenness sings
on its way to hope.

Help me to grasp the hand
loneliness offers
on its way to union.

Help me to trust the tears 
loss releases 
on its way to peace.

Help me to be the tunnel 
grief travels 
on its way to love.

Let This Loneliness

/ Brian / 2 Comments

Let this loneliness be a crucible in which a genuine maturity is forged, rather than a noose that continues to strangle my natural capacity for joy.

Let this loneliness be a hunger pang, a groan of desire for the real food of communion, rather than an oddly comforting bone I refuse to drop because it’s all I’ve got.

Let this loneliness be a shrill call to the deeper Life for which I long, rather than a dead animal I strap on my back every night, each night more oppressive than the last.

Let this loneliness be a north star that guides me to the Inn where True Love is born, rather than a bolted door that keeps me locked in a war of hatred with myself.

Grant Me the Faith

/ Brian / 5 Comments

Grant me the faith to believe that Life is stronger than death, and Love deeper than hate. Let me never abdicate my house to the hungry thieves that would rob each room of its particular treasure, and curse the one who lives inside as worthless, no more than an empty purse, a justly abandoned figure on a severed fragment of scorched earth. Let the figure refuse the facile fabrication of an identity based on feelings of uselessness and ugliness, but rather let these feelings pass. Let them move through the physical body like a river, however muddied, moves through a canyon, rather than harden into a dam of mind-made steel. O God, Creator of all that is good and real, without whom there can be no unity, let the faint beginnings of light seep through the cracks of my divided self and thaw the ice congealing in my heart. Bring me back continually to the depths of your peace in the present moment, and do not let your sun come up over the hill to shine through my window while I am lost in a state of war, with myself or with the world. Let me face each state, whether familiar and painful or strange and painless, with courage and compassion. Do not let me act from an unconsidered sense of lack, but let me look directly through that hole, like one whose right eye through the tiny lens of a telescope sees with a jolt the vast sky lit up at night, limitless and unimaginable.