Learning to Speak Web

I.

One night I nearly placed my head inside of her web as I bent to shift the latch on the chicken coop door. The next night, the crown of my head nicked a crucial thread that kept her creation taut against the background of chicken wire and cosmos.  We’d come home late these evenings, and somewhere between the rising moon and the beaming headlights I’d left on to light the path she appeared like royalty in the middle of her divine universe. Her magical net was illuminated into a soft glow— catching her more coarse, gray frame in celestial juxtaposition.

After so cleverly nicknaming her Charlotte, I sent a quiet invocation to whatever it was that might be listening and pondered receiving a message in her web. Wouldn’t that be a trip, I had thought. I studied her work that night, but for some reason I was missing it. Over the hard angles of each intersection my eyes passed to and fro until I was sure no message was there. 

The next evening I felt betrayed by her absence when I discovered that she had moved on. The regret of haste lingered like dew in the moonlight of my soul. 

In the wake of her departure I felt myself crack repeatedly upon awareness of luminosity. An uncanny mirror reflected that which sparkled and that which yet refused to shine. Each explosion of light nicked a different thread of my web that was so solidly anchored just seconds before. My creation quivered against its backdrop and longed to be held up before the cosmos.

Then, weeks later, I wiped a spider wildly out of my hair before I even understood what was there. A gentle curiosity replaced what usually would have been my automatic, dramatic reaction of a half-squeal. There she was, only, different—golden. For a second I saw her, and then I rushed into the next moment.

Later that same day, she came back. This time it was she that illuminated my cosmos– appearing from out of the dark, absolute expanse behind her. I was flooded with an awe of having known her at all, for she was not in her usual form. But I asked, and I knew. Yes, it’s you, Spider. Spider!  For a few seconds I saw her, and her message was received. 

Spider spins her livelihood and waits for what will be. She’s not advertising. There’s no marketing analysis or rebranding research. Spider speaks in web. She creates what she must and trusts that it is enough. She repairs when repairs are needed, and she moves on when it is time to go. 

I, too, weave the iridescent tendrils of my livelihood, although I am still learning to speak web. 

II. 

Charlotte is back, and she’s right on time– reminding me to expand my fluency.

I saw her in her glory last night. She was larger this time, and I wondered how I had avoided her for so long. Her web had been present on the garden gate for some time– a month or two maybe. Swinging back and forth, it rippled like a banner waving in the wind on a warm fall eve as stillness crept in and the season’s change danced its slow-dance within the changing light.

I admired the flexibility of her creation, strong as it was,  appearing to be made of the finest softness available.  Her center was luminescent and shimmering in the twilight as she waited there and rocked in the cradle of her world. 

On this night she was willing to be seen. Where had she been before, on all those other evenings, when I had wondered at her work? Perhaps she was not ready to reveal herself. Maybe, I hadn’t been ready to receive. 

Uncomfortably numb and with guts that had turned to soup, I had been painfully aware of a shift all summer. All I felt was an inner turmoil and a faint rising that couldn’t be placed. A longing was indeed present, but what was longed for remained in that place from which all comes– waiting, humming in the reverberation of the universal flow. 

At this point, I should know better than to resist– to decide preemptively– when I know somehow it is already written…in another time existing outside of this one…whatever this time, this now, is. But I’m resisting anyway.

If I had lingered longer, would she have whispered all the answers I wanted to hear?

Never say forever, she said. 

Always and forever, she said.

Intuition hit like lightning bolts and opposing forces seemed to balance themselves out leaving only paradox in metamorphosis.

That dream I had never understood. That’s what it meant, then. Eagle circled overhead with an ever expanding view, her keen eye waiting, her sharp beak eager to pierce what was given. There had been nothing to fear after all. I was the eagle. So, why did I fight her then? 

The embers have not yet finished smoldering. 

The phoenix still lies within the destructive beginning of her conception.

Spider waits for the next hit of sustenance to fall into her web.

Wait, she said.

In time, she said.

—be in Being— and what will Be, will be.