So far I have found that Portland is a city very interested in what’s “in season” and what’s coming up “next season,” which is kind of ironic, because Portland doesn't really have seasons. It’s a temperate climate. It has two seasons; rainy and cold or sunny and warm. Coming from New York where the weather is like the extreme mood swings of a toddler, the relative calm of Portland doesn't exactly scream “seasons” to me. But, perhaps that is why people are so interested in seasons here. They like to imagine that talking in variables will make noticeable changes in their environment.
Whatever the reason, one of the seasons we have experienced thus far is Bug Season. August is spider season. It comes after wasp season and before stink bug season. Of all the seasons, Bug Season has been my least favorite. And of the bug seasons, spider season ranks last. In August spiders were everywhere. In bushes, in trees, between
trees, on the grass, in the flowers, on our ceiling, in the corners, on the car
door, in the sink, in the tub, hanging mid air from who knows where, if you can
name it, a spider had claimed it.
One morning a spider spun a
web between the posts of our front porch and I came within an inch of getting a
face full of web and squiggly spider. I was an inch away from panic attack level screams of “get it off
me!” hysteria when I noticed this little punk tiger striped arachnid
sitting there upside down in middle of his web staring at me. Just
sitting there watching and waiting. He
must have thought he was pretty clever. Why
build a web in the rhododendrons and blackberry bushes when you can bag a human?
He must have thought “enough of this small time game hunting! Capture bug, ruin
web, eat bug, fix web, and capture another. What a waste of time. I’m gonna kill a person and be done for the
season.”
It had been like this for days so it
was not a surprise when, outside my window, I saw a spider spinning
a web one morning. I’ve seen spiders spin webs before, or rather, I thought I
had. I know I’ve seen it on nature
shows. But, until that morning, I don’t
think I’ve ever actually watched a spider work.
It was fascinating.
The web she was making was huge.
She’d picked a spot between two large tree limbs that were pretty far apart so
the circumference was about the size of a garbage can lid. And this was a little spider. She was about
the size of a nickel. That something so small could make something so big was quite
a feat of engineering. How many times
did she leap from one branch to the other before she got it right? If she fell
to the ground, would she climb all the way back up and start all over again? And
if she made a lot of attempts, did she go back to that same spot?
And the way she worked was so
interesting. There was so much power in
her. It looked like she was hovering in the air; flying from one end of her
invisible web to the other, spinning line after line in an intricate, specific
pattern. She was deft and fast and
worked with clean precision. She knew exactly what to do next, which direction
to go. She’d make a line somewhere and then double back to the center of the
web to reinforce it and then head back out again. Her long, fuzzy, little legs would make the
minutest adjustments to the thread, making the web stronger, more exact.
Her life is basic: catch and kill, eat,
survive, reproduce. Wash, rinse, repeat.
She works away, busily engaged in the practice of just doing what she’s
doing. She’s not straying from her task
she’s just at it, busy and focused. It’s cyclical and repetitive, but it’s
leading towards something. Completely
focused on the task she was a great example of controlled concentration.
Yet, she is so fragile. She’s
literally hanging on by a thread. This
fine line of invisible stuff, if I wanted, I could wipe it down with one
finger. On the other hand, it suits her
needs. Her web is as weak as any other
spiders, but unlike the ill-planned web of my would-be captor, she’s built it
well. She’s picked a great spot; high in
the trees near the fruit where bees and bugs will fly by. It’s partially covered under the eaves of the
house so it’s sheltered from the wind and the rain.
Watching her work made me wonder,
“Is my life really that different from a spider’s?” Life is fragile and cyclical and ultimately,
it is redundant. We do the same things
over and over again. Our bodies do the same things over and over again. It is
amazing and fascinating, but it is not unique.
It is mundane. This kind of plodding focused, dogmatic dedication to her
work isn’t really that dissimilar to mine. When I pay attention to how I deal with the
mundane it guides me towards a life I want. Likewise, I’ve noticed that when I act like
the spider on the porch, making poor choices and living a disconnected life,
regardless of how beautiful the dream is, will draw me further away from what I
am seeking.
Sitting there watching that spider I realized a well balanced life
is mundane. A balanced life is not
a string of passionate love affairs, but a monotonous cycle that helps draw me back to the middle. It’s about
how I spin my web. When I live on the fringes of it, when I over extend, spin
too wide, spin to small, when I lose focus or pick a bad spot, people walk
through it, the bugs avoid it, the wind rips it to shreds and I go hungry. When I focus and am consistent,
when I do the work of learning how to deal, life begins to reveal itself, it
lays out a pattern. It tells me where to go and reminds how to get back, it
reinforces the learning.
For good or for
ill, it is not the grand gestures that make us who we are but the mundane. The routine itself reveals the Self.
With this idea in mind, I
embarked on an experiment. My goal was to cultivate a more consistent
meditation and writing practice. I am not very good at either, but both are
important to me. When I meditate it helps clear my head and I write better. When I write
it’s a form of meditation. So, I decided
I would meditate and write every day for 45 days. My plan was to get up in the
morning, meditate for 30 minutes and then sit down and write for 30 minutes.
Like any well made plan, it was a
good one. It was the new car of plans;
shiny and bright, I was excited about it and I wanted to take
my New Plan out for a spin as soon as possible. But, just like a new car, the
New Plan lost 20% of its value as soon as I drove off the lot. I found that a new plan gets banged up pretty quickly when you are in
the middle of a move. It is also really
hard to keep a New Plan going when you have children on summer vacation who want a lot of your attention. And of course there were just the days. Days
when I was simply too tired, sick, stressed or distracted, days when I sat
there and nothing came and nothing worked. And there were days that I just didn’t care
anymore. Like my little friend’s web, my link to my process is fragile. It is
tenuous and slips out of my grasp quickly.
The "holiday season" just ended and now we're in the season of resolutions and new beginnings. We are constantly inundated this time of year with messages telling us that now is the time to make those changes you've been wanting to make! So often we start off the new year thinking "yes! This year gonna be It!" only to get frustrated and disappointed when the days come that don't turn out to be It. We lose faith in ourselves and the process. Whether you start a New Plan today or next month doesn't matter. What matters is starting over. And then starting over again. And then starting over again and again. My New Year's resolution is the same one I've had since I started this project six months ago. To be routine. To go back to the process again and again. To stick to the practice.
The results will take care of themselves.
At least spider season in Portland isn't as bad as this!
http://www.viralnova.com/spider-fields/
