Fly

Although Flickr has entered a sucksome phase, new-and-improving itself into suckicity, I uploaded pictures of flies today.


Fly Portraits (which didn't work as a set in my Flickr gallery because of a lack of instructions for the new-and-improved suckicity) was inspired by Pete McArdle's cover story for the Piker Press this week, "Shoo Fly." I love Pete. He's so warped that my own weird penchants seem mild by comparison.

I don't know why flies are funny. I remember being about giggled to death over Gary Hockenberry's capture of a fly in seventh or eighth grade; he pulled one wing off (not the capital crime it is nowadays) and named the fly "Charley the Diving Fly" because he'd allow the fly to climb up his fingers and then take off, only to land abruptly on the floor by Gary's desk. I think Charley lasted through two classes, both American History and Math.

And of course there was my mother's take on faith formation during the Canon during Mass at church when I was young and impressionable: a fly landed on the pages of our hymnal, and she snapped the book shut on the insect with a loud retort, squishing it between the pages, her facial expression unmoved like a deadpan statue of an Aztec bystander. Did the priest notice the sound, or the tears of hilarity that poured down my face in lieu of laughter? I never knew.

Leap forward thirty years, and imagine with me the flies of Manteca, California, where we lived for eleven years. I swear to you, and don't even care if you believe it, the flies in that area would land in front of you, and do this really rude hoocha-hoocha thing with their legs, rising and falling in a dance that never failed to enrage my emotions. Why did they make me so angry? Why did they dance like that when the flies we have here in Ripon, only six miles south, do not?

I had as much fun photographing flies on the back patio as I did snapping pics of "Things on the back of trucks."

Yes. I am easily amused at times.

Oracle

In those days

at the equinox of the Late Summer Year

the heat rose again as in July

and the people did once again

dip in their swimming pools in luxury

and lament the waning hours of daylight

Two months of summerlike weather

did the people lose that year

two months of gardens growing

two months of sending children outdoors

their tans were lousy

unless they went to a tanning salon

Summer dresses and sandals

tank tops and shorts

the people wore them even though

the sun and the earth declared autumn

"No, Summer will not end!" they cried

"Extend it the two lost months!"

"This cannot be done," said the Lord.

"The sun and the earth have their own agenda

as they must

for the sake of the rest of the world

yet I will help your acceptance blossom

and feed the nimble-tongued toad as well

Thus the Lord

allowed the flies of September to flourish

in their hundreds, in their thousands

flies which knew that Summer ended

and which coveted the houses

and the dinners of mankind

Like a second job

the people took up fly swatting

massing mounds of carcasses

in their kitchens and their porches

in their bathrooms and their dens

and turning their many minds

And so the people stopped their whining

heaved sighs of relief at early sunset

they looked to the skies for tell-tale hints of rain

and began to hunger for the chilly nights

the wearing of sweaters

and the demise of all the filthy, bloated, obnoxious and frantic flies.

The flower in the picture is cyclamen, which is winter color around here. It's begun blooming early, for reasons I don't know. We got two decent tomatoes from cultivated plants, finally, and while I welcome our current hot spell, I have indeed begun to wish for real autumn weather to slow down all these damned flies. They hang on the doors and sail in any time someone comes through; they ride on people's backs like they were on a bus and enter the kitchen to wallow on counter and dishcloth and mashed potatoes.

Ripening tomatoes, or the demise of flies? Well ...