In looking through my photos (looking for stuff to layer) I came across a rather shiny, somewhat hirsute, elegantly green fly, in close proximity to a screw, weathered to a nice iron-oxide red. This is one of the few night-shots of flies I have: a rarity in that flies are generally inactive at night. (This one was drawn to a light-bulb, and was probably a bit lethargic due to consuming a bit of fermented garbage.) In looking back at the fly-and-screw image in my files, I wondered what bits of insect symbolism I might glean from the image. On a whim, I went on an internet search and found…surprisingly little. Oh, there are plenty of slap-dash “research” articles on insect symbolism, but so many of them seem to have been penned by the same, shallow author. I wanted confirmation of the ancient Egyptian interpretation of flies, and—well…I suppose I could have found it, but I had to dig through layer upon layer upon layer (upon layer) of “spiritual” treacle attributed to some vague set of idealized Native American spiritual traditions. I did find quite a number of gems indicating such depth-of-thought baubles as: “Flies represent filth” or “Flies represent filth” and even the most deliciously profound, “when you dream of flies, which represent filth, it means that the great-wonderful-all-powerful-politically correct-gender neutral-though-distinctly-sacred-Feminine god/essence-entity-force-mother/FeminineFather-GaiaSisterGirl-PowerWoman totem (like the bear) is informing you that there are elements of your life that exist in disarray and need to be cleaned up.” My muse immediately latched onto the whole “Gender-neutral-feminine [invariably blond] goddess-sister-power thing,” and immediately lost interest when the whole Jungian-influenced lollipops and rainbows stuff that started coming up, midway through the first sentence; I feel, though, that I should have read, until at least coming across at least one reference to Atlantis. (Seriously, it was that kind of article.) There are interesting insect symbols out there, and whole, weighty tomes written on the subject, but cursory searches are likely to turn up the most recent, least-dense, fluffy stuff, and a lot of the most recent stuff comes across as gluten-free pastiche fondue. One of the better fly-interpretations I’ve heard) comes from ancient Egypt, which isn’t surprising, since modern humans fawn over ancient Egyptians. In dynastic Egypt, flies were considered “warrior” insects, and they were something of a totem for members of the Egyptian military. They seemed to embody the whole “Give ‘Em Hell” ethos, which apparently involved making such an “immortal pest” out of yourself that your enemies were left paradoxically twitchy and catatonic due to sleep deprivation, constant sniper-fire, with occasional bouts of pillage, cat-rescue, and arson thrown in, just to keep it interesting. (Yep…I wouldn’t be surprised if the ancient Egyptians had sniper-archers: two or three of whom were always featured the acid-free, glossy papyrus pages Pharaoh’s Life magazine. And since the Egyptians invented the, um, “adult content” centerfold, it also stands to reason that they invented the magazine as well, since they had to put their primordial centerfolds somewhere.) Because of the rather unsuccessful—admittedly cursory—search for fly symbolism that didn’t embody present day knee-jerk responses to anything with more than four legs, I decided to abandon my quest. For now. At some point, however, something may emerge, undoubtedly with the help of…well…a fly. As for the title for this piece...I have no idea where that came from, but maybe The Screwtape Letters might have something to do with it: well. Either that, or I'll write the world's first "Screwfly" comedy...a genre-classic screwball comedy, only with insects rather than humans. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.