After my morning dream journal and reflections, I went to sit outside. I have been doing this every morning but I am usually out before sunrise. It’s Sunday so I slept in and went out around nine.
It felt nice, the sun was warm on my skin and I was still sleepy so I enjoyed lazing around in it.
But then the fucking flies started to swarm. I prayed for them to go away so I could enjoy my morning. They kept coming, I kept swatting. But I didn’t want to go inside, god damnet.
So I just sat still. I was uncomfortable. I worried about the health dangers of flies landing on you.
I kept sitting still until I could focus on something else.
There were a lot of butterflies out today, a large monarch as well as many small ones. I watched as they danced around each other.
Palo verde trees are plentiful in my yard. They are inspiring in the way they grow, gnarled and spiked. They twist and turn up to the sun and they provide coverage to the baby saguaros until they grow even taller than they are. But they still affectionately hold them close.
Their bark is green, an evolutionarily trait they adapted to be able to produce the life giving chlorophyll they need to survive. The leaves they do have are very tiny, you can’t see them unless you are close. Leaves let too much moisture out and in the desert, moisture is scarce. You have to keep what you can. So instead, they grew to be tall and green.
Everything is green in the desert. People say it’s not green but it is.
The flies continued to swarm.
They remind me of what I have been thinking on recently, how evil whispers. How it badgers you relentlessly, only coming back stronger if you try to swat it away. It whispers until it’s screaming. It whispers until it’s drowning you, until it’s all you can hear.
The worst things seem to try and demand the most of my attention. It may just be a buzzing in my ear. But it distracts me the most from my purpose.
There was a period of time that I didn’t go outside after the sun rose because all I could focus on were the fucking flies.
My purpose is to stay present, despite the flies.
My purpose is to stay present with the flies.
They will always be there when the sun is shining. I can let them ruin my morning or I can choose to accept them as an inevitable part of the balance in life and enjoy myself anyway.
I enjoy looking at the butterflies and the Palo verde trees, protecting their little baby saguaros.
I wondered why the butterflies couldn’t be the ones swarming me instead. That would be much easier.
I guess that’s just how it is.
Good whispers too. It just doesn’t come back stronger if you swat it away. It’s polite. I wish it wasn’t.
Eventually, I did go inside. It got to be too much. But I had done what I came to do, I stayed in the sun.
I accepted the flies until, for a moment, they became nothing but background noise.
Then I took a shower to wash off the feeling of them. Purposeful, but still gross.
I think I learned a lesson. I also think that next time I sit outside in the daytime, I will wear pants instead of shorts.
Practical and spiritual, there is usually more than one lesson to learn.
