My Next Teacher..

All my life I have been afraid, deathly afraid of spider webs. At one point I willingly touched one and was fine when I was real young, that of which lasted all but five minutes.

I feel bad for doing it because they are creatures and I do love all the little creatures, but when they're in my house I do end up taking a shoe to them. I only fear the spider itself if it is poisonous and that's within reason, back in Florida I wouldn't want to have a brown widow crawl all over me, but i'd pick up a jumping spider and watch it scoot across my hands.

Shortly before I left Florida I had gotten rid of all of the brown widows on my mothers property. It was a triumph for me, I didn't want them harming my mother or my family and It was a process that lasted months, they kept coming back! The spiders that took their place were of three different kinds. One that gotten into the living room was poisonous, there were quite a few more on the porch, they were sprayed. Though there were two kinds I respected greatly both were orb weaver spiders.

Orb weavers spin disc-shaped webs, they're perfect circles and they're anchored by angular lines of web (looks like triangles if you really look at it) to something sturdy. The webs are HUGE in comparison to the spider itself and it is a very wonderful experience to sit for a few hours near one of these spiders while they spin a new web. They tear their old web down at some point during a twenty four hour period and rebuild a new one in its place and I would sit for hours watching the spiders at work.

Like I said, I had two kinds on mothers porch. One had the misnomer of "crab spider" from everyone in my area of the state. They were actually a spiny orb weaver and I just adored them. Still I was afraid of their webs, but the more I paid attention to the one that was on the front porch, the more appeared on the back porch. They built their webs connected to plants in my garden for a couple weeks, maybe to show me that I was just a big baby. Though the more I was paying attention to them, snapping pictures of them in the center of their webs, their webs in the rain, the more I was beginning to have dreams about them AND their webs. I had a dream where I was talking to the personification of my subconscious whom was holding these spiders, I looked to my right and saw spider web tunnels of these spiders just crawling around (which was unlike them, but there was some sort of meaning). I knew they were trying to teach me, but I couldn't grasp what.

On one of The last two days in Florida I went to a park and saw a few more of these spiders. When I went to pack my car for the trip out of the state there was a black and white spiny orb weaver stuck to my car. Picked it up, web and all and put it in the grass, then proceeded to freak out.

Then I moved to Tennessee.

The other was a brown spider. Another orb weaver, but this one preferred the eaves of our house and was nocturnal. I saw one at my old job up here when I worked in brentwood every night, I would smile and watch it spin its web as long as possible.

Winter came and passed, spring came and passed, and now summer is coming to a close. Guess what came onto my front porch? Another kind of orb weaver. She's huge, but she's gorgeous. Her web is about a half foot smaller than me, she's blocking the way out of the front door, but I am amazed when I watch her sit there, her back to the outside world, i'm free to gaze upon all of the patterns on her abdomen and her striped legs. I left the porch light on last night and watched her catch the little bugs that had been stirred up from the rain. She's rebuilt her web about five times by now, I would love to watch her spin it!

She's here to tell me something, to teach me something where the others left off. Something knows i'll listen to the orbweavers and nothing else for the time being. I've read the meanings and the shamanistic point of view on these spiders, I just have to find what they're trying to tell ME, through my eyes and theirs, not someone elses' perception. I think it's something to do with their webs...

"What tangled webs we weave..."