Tuesday, September 04, 2018

SPIDER REQUIEM

About to dry my face on bathroom towel I notice a small black spot on the towel. Within a split second the following things happen:

The spot moves.
It's a spider.
I panic.
Shake the towel over the basin.
Exterminate innocent spider down the plug hole with hot water.
Feel guilty and relieved.
Philosophise for a few moments.

Within that black spot everything was working, that little engine perfectly tuned. Life!
I can't make life, can't make anything as perfectly functioning as a spider.
Bang! In that spider's life I was Death.

2 comments:

Tom said...

For many years I loathed spiders with a fearful passion. I have noticed that over the past few years I have come to tolerate them, even like them. Certainly I do not kill them any more. There is a critical size, however, above which I break out into a sweat. At that point.....

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Tom, yes, I completely sympathise. The fear is connected to the suspicion or belief that their intention is to run up to me and begin to crawl all over my face and hair. Of course they have no such intention but, well, fake facts is fake facts!