Hi.
Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee
I was reading an article about how spiders learned to fly. It starts with a note about the boat Darwin rode on, and how he woke up one morning 60 miles off the coast of Argentina to see that all the sails and rigging were covered in spider string. Thousands of red spiders had boarded, new passengers. They must have come from the mainland.
The rest of the article got into how spiders use electric currents to propel them, how they sense currents in their fingers, but it was the first bit about Darwin that stuck with me.
I used to get dreams about spiders. I’d waked up covered in them. Or rather, I’d be waking up like that in my dream. Sometimes it was bad enough I’d turn the lights on for a bit before going back to sleep. Recently, though, those dreams have gone, and I generally like spiders, because they’re strange and foreign even though they’re everywhere, guests in the broom closet, owners of no house. An American dream.
Back to Darwin’s boat: picture it. Come on, try a little – these spiders were too small to bite. See the sun setting up as you cross the top deck, blue skies, green Argentina. There are a couple clouds but it’s breezeless. You’re rocking back and forth.
It’s gradual, at first, the way you notice. You stare too long at the main mast, the way you scrutinize your coworker when you’re not quite sure he’s cut his hair. Then there’s the sails; the netting; the pink barrels that got pink being blasted by the sea. Everything’s alive and moving, a subtle crimson, and when you move there’s a thickness to the air.
The spiders could have drifted into open oceans, electric seas, but they found Darwin’s boat. A home, unexpected, strange bedfellows, new looks to everything, starting over. Again, the American dream.
Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller
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“But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?”
“Easy,” said the cat. “Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it.”
“Small world,” said Coraline.
“It’s big enough for her,” said the cat. “Spider’s webs only have to be large enough to catch flies.”
Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Livesay Writing 