Living near the river

has advantages and inconveniences.

One inconvenience is the way that mayflies, having completed their complicated journey through the stages of life and accomplished their great task of perpetuating the species, seek refuge in our living room where their ultimate ambition is to go towards the light of our beautiful white ceiling, there to expire - and remain - all dry and light and insubstantial and as permanent as the river, stuck forever to its emulsioned brilliance.

So this morning I had to find the right implement to sweep them all off. There must have been about 20 of them as well as one small living fly who wondered why I was persecuting him as I incessantly poked him from his resting places. The mayflies float down, gossamer flecks of down, and disappear on the dark tiled floor where we hoover them up.


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