Gnats

As I lay on the bench that frames our deck, a large swarm of pinhead-sized gnats danced in a frenzied mass overhead.  They flew spasmodically in misshapen orbits like drunken electrons, but amazingly didn’t run into each other. 

This kind of swarm is called a ghost, and rightly so.  If you walk into a swarm of male gnats at dusk (the males die after the females join them and mating is accomplished), you don’t even notice the ghost until you’re in the middle of it.  And then you’re consumed. 

This time I was simply observing, and several feet separated me from the ghost. However, I remembered a time years ago when my son and I sped through a ghost of gnats in our pasture during a run on the 4-wheeler at dusk.  For days my right eye itched.  When I finally saw the eye doctor, he diagnosed the source of my discomfort: a tiny gnat wing was tucked into a fold on the inside of my eyelid.

But this evening the gnats and I were coexisting peacefully, like friendly neighbors.  They stayed in their space and I stayed in mine, and yet we were somehow linked by common experience.  As the sun fell farther behind the horizon and the sky began to turn gray, they suddenly disappeared.  And for a split second I was curiously aware of being alone.