DANCING FLIES

I finished Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane, read the first few pages again, then watched the dancing flies above the pond, buffeted now and then by a northeast breeze whenever the sun went behind a cloud; the massed flies buffeting, in their turn, the whirligig beetles. You stand more chance of following a whirligig beetle than a dancing fly, if you can choose one dancing fly in the thick of the dance. 

Dancing flies — their real name — do not bite, do not land, they dance, and now and then concede to the breeze. I look into them, trying to choose one and happily fail as they swing southwest in a rush of billows.

For some days I've been thinking what I'd like to say about reading Gerald Murnane, his phrases/places that are his points de repère and the impetus of reading him. Those small bursts of wind that seem to confer order, or rhythm, or conviction, among the dancing flies, bring his writing, his reading/writing/remembering, into just the right not quite focus.