Spider Story

-My route home from work takes me down Route 117 in Stow, a pretty country road, one lane in either direction, with farmstands and such. It's also the main drag for a lot of Stow, so it sees some occasional heavy traffic, particularly in the vicinity of Interstate 495, around 5pm. One evening last week, I was stuck in that heavy traffic, heading west. No worries; the Stones are on the radio, the sun is shining through the trees, and I have nothing I am late for.

-I then notice a very long strand of spider web, dangling down out of, essentially, the sky. I peer upwards, and it seems to be attached to a tree limb at least thirty feet overhead. There's a light-brown leaf on the end, slowly approaching the double yellow line on the asphalt. I then realize that it isn't a leaf, but rather a spider the size of my palm, spinning one heck of a webline. I imagine it is thinking something like, "I'm gonna spin the biggest web ever. I'm gonna catch birds, and squirrels, and maybe small dogs, and I'm gonna suck their juices."

-I'm slowly inching forward in traffic, and pass the spider as it touches down, dead center on the road. There's no traffic on the other side, and the spider clearly decides the better part of wisdom is to walk away from my car. It delicately begins to pick its way to the left side of the road, still attached to its line. I look down at it, smile wryly, and say, "Sorry, fella, this isn't going to end well."

-Traffic lets up, and I begin to move down the road with a little more speed. Twenty seconds later, a Kenworth semi truck blasts past me going the other way. Can't fault the spider for ambition, but, yeah, it really didn't end well . . .

Be Afraid

-This weekend there was a women-only slumber party. The attendees included (relative to me) a FWB, an ex-GF, a cuddly friend, a friend I've been very cuddly with, and a woman I find interesting but don't know too well.

-And, like at all such slumber parties, they apparently talked about boys.

-As Jeff from Coupling would say, "Women, talking! About us! It's enough to make grown men turn ashen with fear, and clutch the walls for support!"

Not So Much Pearls Before Swine as Bacon Before Pearls, But . . .

-Had a grumpy moment this weekend, when I thought, "I'm not happy. Why isn't anyone making me happy? People should be making me happy. People suck!"

-Fortunately, I recognized that as pretty damn toxic, even for me. Added a few new axioms to Jon's Book of Annoyingly Trite But Occasionally Useful Sayings: Waiting for other people to make me happy, or trying to make them make me happy, is useless. All I can do is make myself happy, and make other people happy.

-So, I went to see Sky Captain (very entertaining movie), and set certain bringing-the-happy-to-others plots in motion, and my day promptly improved. Another victory for trite-but-useful . . .

Alan Moore is a Very Smart Man

-So, I went back and re-read this month's Promethea. Next month is the last issue, but this one was sort of the issue where he wrapped up his discussion of magic, the universe, and apocalypse.

-And y'know? I kinda get it.

(No, Jen, I'm not turning into a pagan. Stop gnashing. [mwah])

-Moore's point (paraphrased badly, since I'm not Alan Moore by a long shot), is that the Creation/the Big Bang was the most holy act imaginable, and that, as everything since (birds, people, the Chrysler Building) was implicit in that act, that every instant, and every aspect of every instant, is equally holy. That the Universe is a single four-dimensional moment which must be cherished, for it is All That Is. And that we are the part of the Universe that must do the cherishing, for we are the part that is self-aware.

(He even uses the phrase "strong anthropic principle", which is a sure way to pique my interest.)

-My personal philosophy is ofttimes bleaker than that. I have occasionally regarded the Universe as a dark and dangerous place, where we have to be kind to each other, since the world doesn't care . . . and too frequently other people don't care, either. But Moore makes a good point. We do exist, and there is no one to credit for that but the Universe. She/It may not always be kind, but after she/it went to the trouble of bringing something as unlikely as self-awreness into being, we'd be idiots not to thank her/it for the gift.

(And Moore also makes good points about imagination being the only thing we can be sure isn't imaginary, and gods being "our attributes blossomed into pure and potent symbol-forms", and about a bijillion other interesting bits, just in this one issue. That man's got the gift. I must extract his brain and eat it.)

-Now, I don't actually regard the Universe as, y'know, an entity, with a personality. (Despite my half-assed indulgence in the feminine pronoun, above.) For me, this stuff is mostly metaphor. But it's a really cool metaphor, that I can actually get behind as a way of framing my engagement with reality, and guiding my understanding of what I know and don't know.