I’m a terrible hypocrite. I can’t stand spiders in the house, but I adore them in my garden, where their bridges and palaces are now quivering everywhere, only visible against the sun or by the rare leaf suspended in mid-air … exquisite.
A leaf floating free
From stem and branch – inholding
The ever-tree myth
Once more nature translates its lore to the soil, carrying patterns of relationships to new settings.
We do the same, daily and all year round, translating our experiences to ourselves and others … our cells, bodies and minds continuously changing, never the same, despite appearances.
I wish for grace in waiting, the hibernating towards re-membering afresh the cyclic occurring wholeness in new formations.
And I wish for the patience and good humour of my tiny Buddha.
Course of Mirrors 
I don’t mind spiders, but I’ve never known a snake I wanted to cuddle up with. Spider stories always remind me of Huck Finn:
“Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle ; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches
away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horse-shoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.”
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Oh I loved Huck and his reflections on superstitions. People lost respect of such subtelties 🙂 I have my way to ward of come-backs, and I apologise to the spider community when I instigate the endgame of one of theirs in my house.
Snakes really scare me. One of my father’s aquaintances had a rare animal shop in Munich. At his home he kept huge snakes in glass cages. Once I attended feeding time and saved two white mice from being swallowed whole. They became best friends. My mother wasn’t too pleased..
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Spiders have a similar characteristic as sprouts. They serve a purpose and are an important part of the diet, but the thought of them makes one quiver.
In Aus. we have what is called the Gossamer Spider, so light that it floats in the breeze and entangles itself in trees and bushes. It is a beautiful thing to watch in the spring.
Nasty pieces of work some spiders and it seems we are blessed with a number of them. However, recently a spider was discovered and it is one of the most beautiful creatures alive.
This is a tiny Peacock Jumping Spider, so colourful yet tiny and almost invisible.
I don’t think it literally jumps peacocks but the colour is as vivid as a peacock.
Surprisingly, not a lot of people suffer from spider bites, given their history.
We have a national anthem to spiders called: the Redback on the Toilet Seat, which refers to earlier days of outside dunnies, where it was a basic requirement to check under the seat before taking one’s place on the throne.
All-in-all, I am with you Ashen on their beauty, but there is a place for them and it’s not in my home.B
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Will look up Peacock Jumping Spider.
Redback on the Toilet Seat … an anthem to spiders? Wow!
Do they also hide in boots?
I didn’t see one spider during my time in the Northern Territory, I worried more about possible crocs hiding around the fabulous rock pools.
I guess spiders are more visible in your summer, beginning soon.
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I agree with you about the spider in the garden being a thing of beauty, but in the house they are either pests of nightmares. Often they aren’t the same spiders. Garden spiders, the ones with the gossamer webs, tend to be big and brightly marked and spin beautiful webs that catch dewdrops as well as flies. House spiders are fat and hairy and dusty-looking. They make untidy webs like hammocks spun out of insulating fleece. They are the things out of horror films and I can’t stand them either.
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With you there, Jane. Fat, black and hairy on a white wall offends my aesthetic prejudice. Magnified in our imagination they become monsters. And I can’t help thinking we must appear as monsters to some smaller creatures 🙂
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I have ceiling so high that only spiders keep them clear of flies. I love spiders and find destroying their webs causes real guilt! Snakes are another matter, even harmless ones cause recoil. My first husband loved snakes and our garage was filled with aquaria and both mambas and boomslangs. How to torture a wife done quite silently! It worked. I departed.
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Our bodies and minds must hold memories of early natural predators. Hang-ups. I observe affinities in people when it comes to water, earth or air. Some of us shy away from fast crawling creatures, others from slippery and slithering ones. It’s easy to spot animal aspects in people’s physic, walk, gestures, even in the way minds work. Our psychology may have such elements hidden deep down, calling on us to learn tolerance. Not being an earthy person I had a brilliant initiation in Somerset, looking after a large garden.
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Synchronous, as I too had blogged about spiders.
Lovely.
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Yes, I saw. Wonderful story – the bindings 🙂
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Wonderful imagery, Ashen. 😀
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Thank you Kate 🙂
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What a beautiful combination of pictures and thought.
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Thank you, Cath. Love it when visitors discover posts in my archive 🙂
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