Patterns

As I stood last night in the cold starkness left behind by the day's scattered rain, leaning against the swollen pine alcove outside my window, I found that small Black Widow spider exactly where she is every night. She's easy to miss... lurking in the shadowy corner, retreating at any sign of danger into an ancient screw hole where some sort of potted plant used to hang. Over the few months I've lived here I feel like I have gained some sort of repore with her. She is rarely scared by me at this point, and since I have resisted my initial urge to simply squish her, I think I might have gained some trust. She seems to put up with my smokey breath well enough, even though she sits a mere arms length from my face, and the orange glow from my smoldering cigarette does much to improve her already sinister position- perched like a gargoyle, gazing down on from above.

I find a strange sort of serenity being so close to such a tiny creature who yet wields such an immense power over me- the power to end my life. It's sort of humbling to realize the balance that her and I share: though we can share this small space so harmoniously each night, I still understand that she could easily kill me, or at least cause me great (and unwanted) pain, while at the same time I could easily just slide my paperback copy of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man out of my back pocket and end her life with a flick of my wrist. But instead we both resolve to keep to our own patterns- she hangs and hunts and creeps and kills and eats, same as her ancestors have done for thousands of years, and I lean and sigh and think and smoke and watch like men have done for centuries. Letting the world pass by for a moment. Noticing things we never would as we rush around all day. Blending into the dark for those small, precious moments where we become much like the spiders that we all find ourselves watching at some point or another. Maybe that's why I'm beginning to grow some sort of fondness for her... maybe, in some way, we have something in common, be it ever so small and existing for mere moments each day.

Then again, I can't create silk from nothing, and I prefer to digest my food AFTER I've swallowed it. Oh well.