12.27.2020

As a mayfly in the pond for the very first time, W surfaces directly into the beak of a waiting bird who was already busy feeding on the swarm. Awake for a few seconds and then suddenly gone. The next time a fish grabs the rising imago before breaking the surface. All input from that cycle is blurry. Flying into the swarm, mating, and successfully laying eggs gets rewarded by death five hours later. The full cycle lasts long enough to produce a panoply of sense impressions, some rudimentary emotions, and one moment of aware bliss.

Once W was resting next to a log, wings drying, strength building, preparing to soar into the swarm and was yanked away by a frog's tongue. Dissolving slowly in the frog's digestive juice there was a moment of realization that flow had been interrupted. Surrendering to the inevitable, W glimpses a connection with a larger source. Once W was swarming above the pond and out of the thousands of mayflies in the swarm kept colliding with the same individual, no matter what flight path, finally destroying both. As W fell from the sky, the absurdity of the situation triggered real laughter, rising joy gave way to a feeling of great peace. The stories are endless and each one ends the same.

W's moments on Earth were too short and too focused on survival to be able to reach the kind of contemplative depth that might have led to liberation in a single lifetime, yet over many lifetimes those moments of clarity somehow began to accumulate.

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