Just resting

... is easier said than done but a spiderweb can make all the difference.

On the third morning of feeling under the weather with aching joints and a hacking cough, I told myself, “Alright, that’s enough. You have to get things done. You have to write and you have deadlines.” I shuffled over to my desk and found that overnight, a spider built her web on my desk lamp then across to a messy stack of books and over to my swivel chair. If I moved the swivel chair or anything on my desk, I would’ve ruined a night’s work.

Her web shimmered beautifully in the morning light.

I remembered a similar encounter some twenty years ago, and the poem I wrote about it.

Work

Every night between two hedges
a spider strings the filaments of
her web across the path
leading from the garden
to the street.

Every morning I walk into the web.
In my haste I forget to duck.
I brush it off my cheeks and lips,
muttering apologies
to the spider.

Every night she builds a web again.
And everyday
I wreck it
on my way
to work.

“I get it,” a colleague said to me. For even then, I would bring my poems into spaces where they were least expected, as I did when I read this one at a researcher’s forum for presenting anthropological research proposals on development and conservation issues.

“What you’re saying is,” he continued, “is that it’s all useless. Our work and all that. Right?”

“Right,” I said, immediately feeling guarded and wanting to avoid conversation. Inwardly, I thought, “But I really am sorry for my carelessness towards the spider.”

So this time, this time, I chose differently. “I get it,” I said to the spider. “Thank you.” I shuffled back to bed and promptly fell back into an exhausted sleep.

For sure there’s something to be said here about learning from nature and listening to your body when you’re sick and you need to rest. Some might think I’m using the spider and her web as an eloquent excuse for being unproductive. There may be some truth to that. Soon I’m going to have to take over my desk again. However, what I’m still chewing on several days and doses of antibiotics later, is the importance of the spider’s work, and how freeing it felt to accept that leaving her web undamaged that day was more important than “getting things done.” This is the seed of something I’m going to care for as attentively as is possible. I don’t know yet what will grow from it.

If you’d like to explore this thought experiment with me, become aware of the work of other species happening around you. When faced with the option of disrupting or even destroying the lifework of a neighbor species for your own timelines, work, convenience, or notions of orderliness and hygiene, ask yourself whether you can let their work be more important than your own, this time. I’m curious to know what will come of it. If you have such a moment, please share what it was like for you.

23℃ and raining,
Padma