OK, so that last bit was a bit rushed – a bit fake, a bit gratuitous, but I’m back already and I want to write about something in particular but I want to put that on hold now, in an instant, for a bit, to digress into something that happened twenty-one words ago.
The words were flowing out through my hand and the pen at an astonishing rate and I knew exactly what I was going to write about next (but as it happens – funnily, I did not write those words next) – the feeling was one of some kind of communion – the words were forming in my gut or even lower, like a kind of chakra writing they moved up into my head and down my arm like a river of light and fire – painful and blissful at the same time. I don’t know if I can describe it properly maybe later. For now back to the thing I was going to write about.
There is a spider in the corner of the bathroom ceiling above the toilet. The roof slopes down there so that corner of the ceiling is just above head height and is easily within arm’s reach as you stand peeing into the bowl. The spider has been there a week at least. I have been peeing a lot lately so I see it quite a few times every day. I always forget about it until I’m standing there – in the act – and look up casually. When I see it I always think ‘God, it’s still there’. I’ve often thought of cupping it and putting it outside but then think ‘Don’t interfere boy’ – leave the creature alone – besides, spiders eat flies and they are a pain.
The spider is a long-legged-tiny-body variety and it sits upside down on the ceiling – immobile. I’ve blown on it a few times to see if it reacts – and it does – but only by a slight adjustment of its legs. There is some sort of haphazard web around it and I saw it fussing with a small package once – like a little fly cocooned.
I’ve taken to thinking about the way it perceives me – every couple of hours I appear before it – a huge shape emanating whatever kind of energy it receives – shimmering perhaps – or vibrating in some way. I wonder if it’s scared – probably not, since it doesn’t even budge – even though a simple swat with a newspaper would end its conscious existence – but then maybe it will reincarnate in a more interesting life, but then who am I to say whether my life or anybody or anything else’s life is more interesting than the life of a long-legged spider who lives in a corner of the bathroom above the toilet.
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