Fly in the house
A fly in the house escapes your swat because it sees your hand in something like slow motion. The same second lasts longer for the fly than for you, a reminder that people do not all live at one speed.
What it may mean
Chasing a housefly around the kitchen is a lesson in how differently time can pass. To a fly, your swinging hand moves in something close to slow motion: its eyes register flickers of movement several times faster than human eyes can, so it sees the swat coming and plans its escape jump before the hand arrives. The same second is simply longer for the fly. People live at different speeds too. The pause after you ask a child a question, the wait for a reply to a hard message, the minute before someone speaks in public: what passes in a blink for one person can stretch for another. A fly that keeps slipping away is a small nudge to remember that your sense of how long something takes is not the only one in the room. You might notice whose seconds run slower or faster than yours today.
Depending on how you saw it
A fly landing on your arm again and again
Houseflies have taste sensors on their feet, and a fly landing on your arm again and again is sampling the salt and moisture of your skin. Shooing it away rarely works for long while you sit still and warm. What returns to you again and again because the conditions for it have not changed?
A fly rubbing its front legs together
A fly that stops to rub its legs together looks as if it is plotting, but it is cleaning. Its feet carry taste sensors, and dust or food left on them would blunt its sense of what it lands on, so it grooms many times a day. Which tool you rely on every day could use a minute of cleaning?
Several flies appearing at once
A sudden handful of flies signals something nearby for them to feed or breed on, such as an open trash can, fruit or a pet bowl. Finding the source ends the parade. What small thing left out is drawing more than you expected?
A slow fly in late winter
Cluster flies spend the winter tucked inside walls and attics and drift out sluggishly on warm days, often to sunny windows. They are confused, not bold. What old habit wakes up in you on the first mild day of the year?
Why it happens in nature
Houseflies have taste receptors on their feet and land on food, skin and surfaces to test them. Their compound eyes register motion much faster than ours, which is why a swat so often misses, and indoor flies head for bright windows. Several flies at once point to something nearby to feed or breed on.
What folk beliefs say
Macedonia
In Macedonia, a 1903 collection says, the soul of someone who had died was believed to return to the house for three days in the form of a fly; a cup of wine was set at the head of the body, and the first fly to sip from it was the soul.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 158. View the page
To reflect on
Whose sense of time runs differently from yours, and how could you meet them at their speed?