Fly philosophy
by Uri Peleg

When reality doesn’t offer them much of interest, people do not offer much of interest back. It’s only fair – one can hardly be expected to motivate oneself off of nothing. If reality were a person, it would be self evident that he liked some people more then others. So in the world walking around are people who do not really care about their lives or their future. They are going through the motions but there is no spark in their eyes. They are living but they are not completely here. Often they think of the past, of what was and what might have been, but rarely do they think about the present. They just sort of plow though it.

These were the thoughts going through Sebastian’s mind on the 14th of July 2003. He was dressed in clothes that were old and dirty, but there was something solid about them. Clothes you could rely on. Sebastian didn’t mind being a garbage man. He didn’t want a job where he had to run around all day, where people would shout at him and call him slow and stupid. Neither did he want a job where he had to talk to people all the time. You talked and did stuff all day long, but you didn’t have time for yourself and for your thoughts.

Sebastian liked his thoughts very much. He would have walked around all day, cleaning garbage and thinking his thoughts, if it weren’t for the flies that surrounded him all the time. For all the while that this garbage-man turned philosopher wandered the streets with his trusty broom and resilient cart, his right hand on the broom and his balding mind in the clouds, his left hand was swatting swatting swatting and his ears were filled with intermittent buzzing and his arms with the tickling of the most useless, annoying, stupid creatures in the world.

With every swat his body expressed anger. You can count on one hand the people in the world who spend more than six hours a day being angry at flies. One was a formerly rich Portuguese businessman who had invested his money in the development of a giant vegetable cutter. This bizarre contraption was supposed to drive over agricultural fields all the while cutting and sorting tomatoes and cucumbers and whatnot that it drove over. It would have been a huge success (thought the Portuguese businessman). But something about the sound or the metal or the smell attracted the flies, and they would come in like little lemmings so that instead of the processor filling its drawer with neatly sliced cucumbers it would have cucumber ala fly.

Another was a patient in the mental ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He was quite certain that he was a mutant ninja turtle, and where he looked at what would seem to the casual observer to be a little harmless fly, he saw a three foot tall monstrosity with murder in its eyes. He was physically restrained at all times, and often under heavy sedation.

Of these three people, Sebastien knew flies the best. All flies are extremely small, less than a centimeter in height. So when a fly sees a person, it is like when a person sees a thousand foot tall mountain, or the twin towers. Except that not totally unlike people, but to a much greater degree – flies are stupid. They have wings, they’re stupid and they’re bored. So when they see the twin towers walking around swinging their arms they go take a closer look. Have you ever seen a drunk fly? These are the flies that will go full speed and hit you in the chest or the eye and then drop. Drunk flies is one of seventeen different personalities Sebastian divided flies into, as he cleared the garbage, thought his thoughts, and swatted his anger away.

Evening saw Sebastien walking through the door of an apartment on the fifth floor of a rather poorly maintained apartment building. Fifty four or fifty three steps, depending on whether or not you count the first which is quite easy and therefore doesn’t really count. The flies were gone and Sebastien felt the soreness and exhaustion that come after a full day’s work. He smelled like a blend of dead cat, cinnamon and roses if the roses were covered in cow shit and the cinnamon inside shoes that hadn’t been taken off for eighty hours.

Considering these facts it is only natural to wonder if some poor woman were married to this stinking fly swatter. As a matter of fact, there was one such woman. Her name was Bella, and she had no sense of smell. Sebastien, who was not blessed by such blissful ignorance, skillfully dodged past her welcoming embrace and headed straight for the shower.

Warm showers, thought Sebastien as the water pounded over his head, are a blessing from the gods. Everyone knows that Edison invented the light bulb, but the invention of the shower, and of high water pressure, were of much greater importance. As the hot water hit his arms and his back, massaging away the tension in the muscles, Sebastien wondered if you could explain the world’s wars with the concept of showers. Rather quickly he reached the conclusion you couldn’t, turned off the water and toweled himself dry.

Garbage-men are thin, stringy things. Their skin is tough and calloused, never white, always tanned, like leather.

Sebastien and Bella had been having dinner for many years, and were quite used to each other and to each other’s mannerisms. Sometimes birthdays or other special events interrupted their day to day routine. On the 14^th of July this was not the case.

“You look nice” said Sebastien, over a mouthful of chicken soup.

Bella ran a hand through her hair.

“Thanks. How was work?”

“I gotta tell you, Bella. Those darn flies, they’re driving me crazy. They just keep buzzing around me, climbing on me, pestering me.”

Bella sighed. Flies were a dangerous topic with Sebastien, highly volatile. Best to steer the conversation away from flies.

“Sometimes I think it’s always the same flies. The same ones that come to me every day”.

“Did you read the paper this morning?”, interjected Bella, a touch of fake enthusiasm in her voice. He hadn’t been a garbage man when she married him. Her mother had told her he wouldn’t amount to much, but she didn’t listen. She didn’t listen!

All the while a part of Bella was thinking these thoughts, another, more responsible part had continued talking, and had succeeded in changing the subject. Disaster averted, the evening continued peacefully enough.

Sebastien dreamt of a fly. In his dream he was lying on his bed, trying to fall asleep. Bella was lying next to him, her head turned to the other side, snoring softly.

In his dream whenever Sebastien would begin to fall asleep, a fly would fly and land somewhere on his face. Sometimes it was on his nose, sometimes on his eyelids or his ears. Each time Sebastien would swat the fly away, thus waking himself up. He felt a great amount of anger and frustration at the fly that was preventing him from doing what he wanted. This was how he spent the night.

Meanwhile, at a rotting piece of meat located in a confidential location, flies were swarming. A human passing by saw the flies and passed them by, hearing only buzzing and assuming that this swarm of flies was there for food.

Humans had never really tried to listen to flies, so his mistake wasn’t surprising.

There is a well known experiment that teaches something interesting about the psychology of mice. This experiment consists of a small button that the mice can press with their nose. Whenever the button is pressed, a jolt of electricity is released, stimulating the part of the mouse’s brain that is associated with pleasure. Next to the button is usually placed some food and a mouse-sized bowl of water. The result of the experiment is almost always that the mouse continually presses the “pleasure-button” until it is too weak to do so anymore, and dies of starvation, without the strength to reach the bowl of food.

As Sebastien swept the corner of 7th street, he wondered what the results would be were this experiment tried on humans. He supposed most of the people in the world would have an aversion to participating in such an experiment. The most psychologically addictive drugs have a similar effect, and it is said that after you try them once your entire purpose in life becomes to recreate that feeling of pure pleasure.

Sebastien swatted a fly away from his face, but it came back and landed on his shoulder, crawling in the direction of his neck. As he continued sweeping a group of young kids passed him by, joking and laughing about something on their way home. One kid, who was significantly shorter than the others, seemed to have their attention, and was telling a story all the while making exaggerated movements with his hands and his face. The children had to pass in single file besides Sebastien because there were cars on the road and the pavement wasn’t wide enough. As they passed one of the quieter children threw a candy wrapping that had been in his pocket into the garbage can on Sebastien’s cart, and darted a glance at Sebastien’s face.

After the children had passed by Sebastien was able to resume his interrupted train of thought. The fly had flown away, but there were others buzzing nearby. Every time he swatted one away it would just fly back and settle on a nearby part of his body. Sebastien was able to ignore them until they reached his skin, at which point the tickling of their legs prompted him to swat them away again.