Untitled (To the Spider in my Living Room)

I just saw something odd out of the corner of my eye.

I'm home alone, relaxing on the couch after a long day. Skimming through some blogs, texting my mom about nothing, listening to Bob Dylan again. Something just floated across my peripheral vision.

GAHHH--

Well, okay, that's a spider. Floating in mid-air.

A tan little spindly thing about the size of a twenty-cent coin. She must have cast her line down from the radiator pipes criss-crossing the ceiling and has come down, assuming any reasonable human will be fast asleep at this hour, to have a look around and catch a midnight snack. Now she's just hovering there suspended against gravity, her silk completely invisible, stretching her front legs languidly, searching through the void.

She holds still, then stretches and somersaults, then freezes motionless again. I'm not afraid of her. She has no designs on hurting me, her goal is the fruit flies that I can't seem to rid the kitchen of. She's probably more afraid of me than I am of her, and in any event, the likelihood that she's lethally venomous at this latitude is slim. I'm just going to move over here to the other side of the couch, realllllly slowly....

She's patient. Waiting. The flies will come by eventually, and she'll have built her whole web just for that moment. She's a Gramscian, quietly and intelligently waging her war of position suspended there in the night, instead of wasting time and energy scampering all over the house in a war of maneuver. She's weightless but solid, belongs to nothing and no one, her only point of reference as she swings through the emptiness is her own instinct and intellect.

She looks peaceful and carefree. A lazy tumble and a stretch like an eight-legged ballerina. She's also, it occurs to me, absurdly strong. She's maintaining herself and her entire body weight in perfect motionless balance on a single thread of silk, spun of her own accord from inside her own body, so microscopically thin that it's invisible to the naked human eye. I think of the last time I tried to climb a rope ladder and feel a mystified, grudging respect for the oh crap she's moving really fast she's coming down onto the couch oh god okay don't panic just 

I intended to come into the kitchen anyway, as I have some zucchini that just demands to be cooked and eaten immediately. I'm not in the least bit scared of that tiny little creature and I'm certainly not hiding from her.

I'm just taking my big ungainly mess of neuroses and weaknesses out of her eight-eyed sight, is all. Out of respect. I'm not worthy. Aracne defeats Athena, this time.

May the fruit fly hunt be plentiful, little friend, and may your silk never weaken. Please don't come into my room while I'm asleep at night.