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The Fly, The Window, Liberty
A fly became significantly frustrated after hours buzzing against the solid invisibility of the window. It could see the light, and the sky, but some sorcery of matter barred it from egress. It had worn itself out smacking into the glass again and again, rising high and falling low against the malevolent planar transparency standing inertly between its capacities and liberty. Nothing in nature ever is or was like this, and the fly was somehow aware of and, indeed, outraged by this awareness.
When I opened a door, some 15 ft away, and returned to the scene, the fly paused for a few moments, and began reorienting itself. It seemed to re-evaluate the entire puzzle briefly, and then it leapt directly off the plane, describing an arc in the air whose curve carefully traced an invisible essence around a corner, and out the newly opened back door — to liberty.
In the room where the door lies, there is another window. In this window is a fly that will perish there, even though I leave the back door (4 ft away) wide open all day, three days in a row. It will die in the window, with liberty one hop away because it cannot overcome its tropism for light.
Although it can easily sense the inflow of air from the open door 45˚; away, it cannot depart the window’s plane to investigate. Three agonizing days later (most of its lifetime), it will die there, right next to the egress.
The fact that such dramas take place every day may mislead us into dismissing them. This would be a grave mistake — seen with the right kind of eye, the value inherent in the story is inestimable. A single human so endowed as to be able to remove themselves from the hypnotic transparency of the glowing flatness that owns us and rise into the dimensions our ancestors routinely navigated could accomplish wonders.
Two such people could together transform a world.
The fly’s message is of crucial and timely importance. One of our eyes sees and is profoundly attracted to the transparent barrier which transmits light. Another (which is blind) can sense the flavor of liberty in the wind. Most cannot change the vector of their attention: once the window has them, it has them forever. Occasionally, a fly comes along who can leave the flat world of the window behind — and reach for the sky, which is, after all, its birthright.
Coda: On the windowsill, the desiccated husks of those who tried for liberty bear a stark memorial to the magnetic power of the flat pane that transmits light, but bars one from entering it.
