There’s a Fly in my studio.
I call every Fly “Tony”.
I’ve been trying to re-locate spiders instead of killing them for the past year or so.
(Which is a pretty big feat for a recovering arachnophobe.)
And I’ve decided to extend the same compassion to the other bugs that find their way into my home.
Tony flies around; they land on my bucket of water.
They land on the desk;
Sometimes they land and tickle the hairs on my arm.
Or they land onto the clay leaving no footprints, no trace of themselves.
They sit and watch me sculpt,
rubbing their little hands together as though mimicking my movements and motions.
Do they understand what I’m doing?
That they’re watching an artist work?
What is art to a Fly?
There’s a big window in front of my work desk.
And they fly up to it every now and then.
I wonder if they dream of returning to the outside—returning back to their friends, family, and the life they once knew.
Or do they have a sense of wonder and discovery being inside a foreign space that is so different from the world that is familiar to them?
The Common House Fly can live up to a month.
I think about how one month possibly feels like forever to a Fly.
And how a month feels like nothing to me—a creature that can live, on average, to 75 years.
And how 75 years is a mere second to the universe that we know—something that has existed for billions of years.
I think about how, if I were to ever wander and find myself in a foreign space with a foreign being, I would want them to spare me.
I would want them to allow me to live and observe them and this new world—regardless if my human mind could comprehend or understand what they’re doing.
Tony kept flying towards the window and seemed like they wanted to return to their world.
They seem to have had their fill of this strange place.
I eventually managed to catch them in an old yoghurt cup, and helped them get back home.
I wonder what stories they will share with their Fly friends and family.
I wonder what stories will be passed down to the next generation of Fly.
A generation that I will see, next month.