Pity for the Alien
The human world sometimes seems barren when I try to look at it from the perspective of an insect. The table I stare down at is an alien desert and the brown fruit fly looks like a moving crumb. Frantic, darting about randomly, no food or water for miles. Vast empty surfaces, swept clean. Glistening towers of polished wood. Miles of repetitive vinyl patterns- an empty terrain, deceptively treacherous. Huge and blind, uncaring feet fill the space without warning, shuffling around faster than an ant can hope to move. Vast and empty. When I despair for the insect explorer, it is because I think of the open spaces I have seen. The mountains and the cities and the 24 hour car-rides and the mile-high palaces of clouds below my window during a flight. “There's so much out there that you will never see! You're trapped here in this empty sterile room and you think this is a countryside. Within the hour you're probably going to die.” But recently I learned that a fly's feet are a billion times more sensitive to sweetness than the human tongue. Though utterly alien to human sensibilities, perhaps things are rich at all levels.