Writing Spider

Posted on September 21, 2009

I spent time on the weekend at the new house. In the middle of moving, it’s easy to get stressed out and forget why you’re doing it, so it was really nice on Saturday morning to see lots of great wildlife around us.

First, there were two hummingbirds doing a dance in front of the garage while I pulled weeds.

Next, I saw a big Blue Jay fly off of our roof and toward the trees.

Then, on the way back into the house, we noticed a HUGE spider in its web off to the right (near the room that will be my home office.) Instead of trying to get rid of it right away, we looked it up and found out that it is an Argiope aurantia, nicknamed a “Writing Spider” because of the ‘scribble’ it weaves down its web!

I decided having a Writing Spider grace my home and garden must be a good omen that this move is going to be good for my writing.
A picture of our new guest, Eudora the Writing Spider, is below the cut for people who are squeamish about such things.

writingspider

and yes, that is an *entire grasshopper* in her web.

The large female Writing Spiders take down their webs every night and weave them again before dawn. Like a mirror of our process, it reminds me to keep going, even if I have to undo and re-do something several times.

Rhett

Next, I saw a big Blue Jay fly off of our roof and toward the trees.

It is completely impossible for me to not see a blue jay or a bluebird without hearing in my head a lyric that is, to me, the sound of complete happiness:

“Don’t fly, Mr. Bluebird, I’m just walking down the road. That early morning sunshine tells me all I need to know.” –Allman Brothers Band, “Blue Sky”

I don’t know why. It’s not a particularly complex image or anything. It’s just etched in my cortex.
jules

I think most of the time, the images that stick with us are not overly complex, but just simple joys.

Thank you for sharing that! Now I have to go listen to the song. 🙂
Rhett

I had to go pull it out and listen to it again, and then I did a little reading on the Allman Brothers Band and was quite surprised to find that there was a somewhat conscious effort in that album (“Eat a Peach,” I believe) to write music that captured what a reviewer later called the sense of utopia inherent to shared Southern cultural memory.

And this really made me start thinking about that subject, and it’s a fascinating one, because I suspect that anyone raised within that culture actually does carry around a set of images and feelings that we don’t realize as being quite so universal. I think, however, it’s something becomes so clear when you shine a light on it. Songs like “Blue Sky” and “Revival” and even songs of yours like “Something Holy” connect into this image of a perfect world of privacy, material and spiritual sufficiency, and equality.

write. play. repeat.

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