Fly in the ointment, worm in the apple? Both, a distraction.
***
It’s one of those weather-perfect early May mornings. Low humidity, nice breeze, quiet. So far, anyway. Perfection is a relative term. Disruption is waiting.
I sit on the porch with the dog, the Bible and coffee, a perfect trifecta to aid in squeezing out the mental sponge of yesterday’s accumulation of garbage. Maybe something important will come to mind. Focus is key to progress.
Who can deny with so much swirling around that keeping focus on anything is a problem. Thinking is hard enough on its own. It takes little to get distracted. Dogs barking, leaf blowers, horns. You name it.
Early morning thoughts are pure. Everything seems possible. A thought pops up. It’s one of those long-lost thoughts that needs resolution, one that keeps circling in the brain like an old 45 rpm record that gets hung up on a glitch in the groove and keeps recycling, around and around, same verse, never a conclusion.
Thoughts like this usually work themselves out over time like a thorn in the finger. Like finding the elusive perfect line for a new song. It’ll show up when it’s time. Always does. Just wait.
And I’m focusing hot and heavy on this particular thought. I have it in my grip, squeezing it tight to get the juice out and it’s about to happen. Perhaps a solution at last. Until my ear is distracted by a buzzing in its periphery. A fly finds me.
A fly, the common household type that’s allured by anything sweet, like the unguarded rim of my coffee cup. It’s fair game while I’m off wandering in the weeds of wonderland in a mental swoon.
Instantly the thought vanishes, and a new focus comes to mind. Did the fly deposit eggs there for the proliferation of its vile offspring? Take no chances. Nothing good can come from ingesting these foul germs. It flies off, hides, waits for another opportunity for mischief.
I wash the cup, make more coffee, alert to the lurking assault of the fly. I get back to where my thought pattern left off, but the record is stuck again. Hit the wall. Focus lost. I curse the wretched creature.
I open the Bible. There’s an answer for everything inside this book. The page falls open to Ecclesiastics, 10th chapter.
Then, from nowhere, the fly zooms in, skids to a stop between verses 1 and 2: “Dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.” I kid you not!
Good wisdom maybe, but confusing. Dead flies are odious, so are live ones. But then there’s also a warning attached: folly outweighs wisdom. I contemplate the implication.
Then there’s this thing about the heart’s inclination to lean right or left? Has this anything to do with the politics of red/blue polarization? Is this fly delivering some esoteric message or advice on how to vote? Stranger things have happened.
I randomly pick another chapter. Out of caution I avoid the Apocalyptic chapter. No sooner done than the fly is back. It plants his foul legs on Matthew 23:27:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law, you hypocrites. You are like whited sepulchers, beautiful outward, but full of dead men’s bones.” Maybe this fly has psychic insight. It surely knows about Washington, DC. It zips off again like an alien UFO.
This is certainly a strange early-morning fly. I try a few more randomly selected parts of the Bible to test this psychic hypothesis. Strangely enough, with every verse the fly returns. Absolute truth, believe it or not.
It must be fond of camels, having landed on verses like “…swallowing a camel” and “…easier for a camel to pass through the eye a needle than for the rich to enter the Holy Gates.”
It particularly likes Ecclesiastes 10:19: “…wine makes merry, but money answers all things.” It actually resembles a banker I once knew.
It soon disappears as stealthily as it came. It leaves me with a new focus. Can angels morph into flies? They both have wings.
***
Later I find the fly on the floor, flat on its back, feet up, dead. A new thought occurs: Most heart attacks occur early in the morning.
The fly, a distraction or an omen? I’m cutting out sweets.
Bud Hearn
May 15, 2023