Spiders

9/18/07

I’ve always felt a sort of reverence toward spiders. Arachnids. Those eight-legged bugs who weave beautiful webs and catch other bugs, those silent roommates who reside in the corners of doorways or on the edges of cobwebs I haven’t the concern to clean.

Part of my fascination comes from my understanding of the Spider Woman, the storyteller who breathes life into being through the words she weaves to catch people’s attention.

In my cabin there are seldom formidable spiders—the kinds that dart across my toes and trigger a scream before I have time to realize that it is more scared of me than I of it. Most of the spiders here live quietly in some spot along the ceiling, often where the ceiling and the wall meet. They have a speck for a body and thread-like, almost translucent legs have black dots at the joints. And I see many a fly or gnat or moth tangled in their silk, so I appreciate their company. The worst distraction to my sleep is a restless fly buzzing about a dark room, growing louder near my ear and fading as it whizzes off another direction, perhaps trying to locate an escape. The moths aren’t so bad; they are quiet. And they gather near the lamps and then find a piece of wall where they rest, folded, during the day until the day darkens again, bringing rise to localized light from various watts bulbs.

There used to be two spiders, the spindly, unobtrusive kind, that lived in opposite corners of the shower stall. While I scrubbed my scalp it was often entertaining to see them, like trapeze artists, working their way across the top of the stall, through steam, to another part of the air, where they were held-fast by the delicate strands dust and their own silk had provided. Of course it was a double risk—that one should fall, plummeting down into water where his legs could not find a way to stand, and for me the risk of attempting to remove fallen spider from amidst shower drops or wet and soapy hair without getting jumpy.

So many times have I been up late, writing, thinking. And where I happen to be staring, there floats down a spider on his single, lookout strand. Out of all the spots in the room where I could be looking, there, in the small space framed by my forward sight, dangles a creature so easily unseen, so small against the proportion of human things.

They’ve put spiders in zero gravity and the spiders have woven their webs just the same. They’ve found out fabrics derived from spiders’ silk have amazing strength and resistance. Spiders lurk in those Halloween places where the unknown, the imagined tends to frighten. These octaped vampires exist in thousands of varieties, adapted to the environments, prepared for the predators and prey that will inevitably coexist with them. And in myths they are linked to the art of creation and the power of words.

I’d like a tattoo dedicated to the spider, or the Spider Woman, to represent my love of words, but I feel like there is more significance to the spider, and what it means for me, that I have yet to understand.

November 26, 2025 There are 45,000 species of spiders in the world. forty-five different species in Pennsylvania alone. When I was a child, I'd feel startled by the presence of an eight-legged creature, say, in my bedroom. My dad was a reliable help with this. He did try to encourage me not to feel scared of them. Years later, I'd also have a peripheral friend come rescue my friend and I from a huge spider from rural Pennsylvania, Butler County, and that sucker was formidable. Our friend, our knight in cotton armor, brought a BB gun as well as a tupperware container, since he wasn't sure what we were dealing with. The poor thing was frozen on the pink bathrobe hanging on a hook, door opened to my tiny bathroom in a tiny cabin with two levels separated by a spiral staircase and an outdoor staircase, which was honestly easier to use. More years later, I'd have a roommate who was used to retrieving various bugs and spiders from parts of the house where they didn't belong. He was good about putting them outside. It was one of the ways someone reminded me of the kindness of my father. Rather than lecturing me about my response to the creatures, he just accepted that I felt uncomfortable with them there, and helped me to relocate them someplace else without killing them. In pop culture we might think of Spiderman or Spiderwoman when we think of spider lore. We might think of the Black Widow. One of the most formidable spiders because of its ability to harm bigger animals, if compelled to do so. Spiders get a bad rap, but they also inspire a lot of empowering mythologies that help us to frame our experiences. The idea of the storyteller creating new life from her stories feels magical to me, as an existentialist who accepts her responsibility in defining the various meanings of experiences in her life. Of course I always have a choice of how to frame my experiences. And in the memories of different events in my lifestime, I can revisit them to derive some new sense of understanding--about myself, about life, about people and the world. I am the eternal editor weaving strands of consciousness and revising the stories they tell.