A good-bye buzz. - By Daniel
A tiny black dot makes itself known to me when its fuzzy figure suddenly disturbs the background on which my eyes are unconsciously fixated; I was somewhere else. Its shape becomes clearer although only momentarily - for a split second, to be more precise - as it moves up towards my head much faster than my eyes can adjust to it; then, with the grace of those born to fly it swiftly swerves to its left, almost crashing against the apex of my right cheekbone, to finally scape my attention after what seemed to be a good-bye buzz; Im gone once again.
Comments (24)
'love the ending -- I'm gone once again.
What was it?
And what happened?
So we have a story without a hero and without a plot.
Brilliant. (???)
I thought the same. And as @Caldwell said I got the fuzzy feeling too.
Good short story and congratulations to the author!
Quoting god must be atheist
Fly.
Unfortunately I initially thought it was, somehow, a bullet. I blame the guns and violence that plague many of the stories; I guess I was expecting more of the same.
I read it a few more times and saw it on its own terms.
:clap: :clap: :clap:
Not the buzzy feel or good-bye of a butterfly this time.
But the flypast and Buzz of Apollo 11, perhaps?
Orbiting the moon before landing.
The face that of 'Man in the Moon'.
***
Brilliantly written :fire:
Was it Buzz Aldrin's final goodbye as an astronaut?
Left on a high...
...said the Man in the Moon :wink:
I have a story I submitted and it is interesting how it's been interpreted. The 200 word limit forces less development, and leaves the reader with more room to interpret.
I was left wondering if the interpreter knew more about me than me.
Me too, but more so in the long short story competition.
I was impatient and sent mine in before I'd perfected them, a terrible decision that will go with me to my grave.
Ive done the same.
I was serious, but mentioned my interpretation as a joke...
I figured - why I didn't reply to you specifically. There was general speculation as to the nature of the phenomenon.
My (poorly-founded, probably fanciful) interpretation is that the insect is slowly becoming extinct as the observer-author is fading into oblivion (possibly depression or dementia.) They meet, collide, are briefly aware of each other and reality, reflecting the brevity of conscious experience.
This is also my excuse.
So, we have two characters in an undefined space. The narrator and the figure. And we have two states: being somewhere else and being disturbed. For the purposes of argument, I interpet being somewhere else and being gone not as a daydream, an alternate subjectivity, but more literally as an absence or effacement of subjectivity itself, a pure nullity.
The plot then is a simple symmetrical progression: Nullity >> disturbance >> nullity effaced >> disturbance effaced >> Nullity. And we can imagine a loop where such a pattern continues indefinitely, where nullity and disturbance continuously destroy themselves and in doing so create the other.
I make sense of this by conceptualising the figure as a kind of stain on reality, the fissure/gap/imperfection that makes consciousness itself possible. Subjectivity itself. Note that the narrator only comes to himself, is subjectivised, in the presence of the figure. Without it he is somewhere else. He is unconsciously fixated on the background. He is the background in effect. Thats to say, theres no gap between him and the background, or between conscious and unconscious reality (its not exactly that hes unconscious previous to the entry of the figure but that the figure, or subjectivity, creates the everyday dichotomy of consciousness / unconsciousness.)
So, we can interpret the idea that all he can see previously is background, not simply as him being unconscious but really being somewhere else as in somewhere where no one is until there exists a more generalised someone. Where we are all gone until the stain appears. That which by its nature escapes dichotomies and definitions.
Theres a link here to Melvichs 1915 painting Black Circle, or Motive, which consists of a dark circle on an empty light background. Its no coincidence that the black circle is also referred to as motive. What is motive but desire? And what is desire but the core of subjectivity itself. Remove our desire completely and you remove us. But desire, like the dark blot of a swerving insect, is neither predictable nor within our control. As soon as we adjust to it (satiate it), it swerves on to a new object. It is the essence we are never truly united with and the intrusion into our fanatsies of perfection that makes these very fantasies as fantasies possible. It is the odd phenomenon that must create itself from itself and in doing so bring us into existence too.
To put it in simple terms, the story shows us that awareness only exists in conjunction with that which disturbs it and we never ultimately get what we want while we know how to want. The inner fly must buzz around saying hello and goodbye until the ultimate good bye buzz of death. Such is the loop of desire and the nature of subjectivity
It took me close to 500 words to say that. But the writer less than one hundred. Such is the nature of art :clap:
(Of course, there's always the possibility I'm waaaay off . :razz: )
:up:
This reminds me of the poem "I heard a fly buzz - when I died" by Emily dickinson.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45703/i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died-591
:smile: