The Room of Spiders

The Photographer and I are staying with the Nurse and the Artist this weekend, in their attic room that doubles as a studio. Showing us to the space, the Artist warned that there were brown recluse spiders behind the walls, so she understood if we preferred an air mattress in the living room to the studio attic futon. She showed us where she had placed cotton balls soaked in eucalyptus (which apparently brown recluses don’t like) and sticky traps around the edges of the room. She brandished a small wooden stick and said, “I call this my Death Stick.” It was used to kill spiders that were found half-alive in the traps. 

I was sure the Photographer would prefer the living room air mattress. He was sure I would as well. But ultimately we unanimously opted for the studio attic, because it felt good to be in a creative space that was real enough to incorporate a little danger. The Artist talked about how they challenged her to be deliberate in her studio. A piece of fabric left casually on the floor would be an invitation to an approaching spider, and a careless moment of picking it up less than thoughtfully could mean a poisonous bite. We talked about the association of spiders with creativity, in myth, because of their web weaving ability.

Falling asleep the first night, I thought that the good thing about brown recluses was that they are, after all, reclusive, and prefer the darkness and safety of the space behind the walls to the frightening openness of the room. We tend to think of all dangers as though they are stalking us, poised to attack. Reality is a bit different. Most dangers we live side by side with, and when we understand a danger’s nature and limitations, we can often trust it in a certain way.

The Photographer dreamed that he woke and pulled back the covers to find a spider where his feet should be. But it was a gentle scare. All in all, we slept well in the room of spiders.

On the Giving of Gifts

Some time ago, my friend Susan posted something on her blog about the giving of gifts. I found what she wrote touching, and we started what turned out to be a lengthy conversation on the topic of gifts.

I have written before about how fascination with something leads to a greater understanding of and relationship with the larger world. The subject of gift-giving has become one such fascination for me. Gift-giving is as old a practice as we can fathom. The more Susan and I discussed it, the more we realized the very large role that gift-giving plays in human society, the way we use gifts to communicate and relate to one another, and how gift-giving was a skill that could be cultivated like any other.

Recently this ongoing conversation has turned into a new blog: The Best Present Ever.

Take a look. Drop us a line. Share a story or a comment. We would love to hear from you.

Funeral Dress

In Phoenix, the Heard Museum houses an amazing collection of art from Native American tribes indigenous to the Southwest. During my recent visit, a guide walked my friends and I around one of the larger exhibits and explained the some of the practices of many tribes whose ceremonial objects were depicted. 

One exhibit showed funeral and wedding dresses, and she explained that this tribe believed that women become clouds when they die, so the groom was required to make for his future wife a funeral garment. It had to fit correctly, meaning that, when he wrapped her in it, water could be poured through it and fall to the ground. If it were too tight, her soul could not escape her body. If it were too loose, the water would fall completely through rather than raining down on the ground, as it was supposed to do, in order to support life in the dry Southwestern climate.  The groom was required to make a garment that fit correctly, no matter how many times he had to try.

I like the idea that before getting married, a person must be able to fashion a garment that holds their loved one not too tightly, not too loosely. Relationship is like this: Hold someone too tightly, and you restrict the soul. Hold someone too loosely, and there is no life-giving quality to the partnership. We should, by all means,  keep trying until we get this right.

A Fish in the Desert

Paul Sereno’s Stone Age graveyard, found in the Sahara desert, contained fish bones. If you know the history of the place, it makes sense; it used to have deep lakes in which Stone Age fishermen caught enormous fish.

But consider, for a moment, working in the dry Sahara heat, no water in sight, or indeed, in the air, and finding the remains of fish. I find such artifacts, from time to time, in my own life, odd pieces of straggling evidence that I was once a different person, living in different circumstances. It’s always jarring. For a moment the old person and the new person must exist together, and however I feel about that former self,  I must accept that she was as she was, that she adapted to the time she lived in, then moved on from there.

Sometimes I also wonder what artifacts from this life will resurface twenty years down the road. What lost note, journal, or dogeared book becomes the fish bones buried in the desert?

Purple Shamrock

The Artist gave me a pot of purple leaf shamrock during her last visit. I put it on the coffee table in the middle of my living room, where it opens during the day, when the sun is out, then closes slowly in the evening.

I’m notoriously hard on plants, and the only ones I have kept alive to date are hardy things that have survived months of relative neglect. The purple leaf shamrock is a little different; it gives me immediate feedback if I don’t give it the water and sunlight that it needs. At night, it closes to rest, and as I recently read, it is likely to go dormant for a period of time, during which I should move it to a dark place and allow its leaves to fall off, knowing it will come back when it’s ready.

After months and months of frantic pace, the purple shamrock reminds me that everything has a natural rhythm. I’d be a little lost without its gentle reminders that nothing is open and productive all the time, to give myself what’s necessary, to rest when it’s time.