[MD] Reevers of Knowing

[Charybdis]

It was certainly interesting to learn your perspective on this.
I have a sort of code that I follow with spiders.

If a spider is in my domain, and I can positively identify it as being
poisonous to humans, I will kill it.  My fealty is to humanity first, and I
attempt to destroy potentially deadly invaders into our domains.  Black
widows are fond of building in human structures outdoors, so I am often
looking for and killing them.  They like to build in places like little
holes in a block wall, a barbeque pit, or under a flowerpot -- places where
a child might unthinkingly put its hand.

If I can positively identify a spider as being relatively harmless to humans
(these are usually the non-web-builders who you find running about on the
floor or in the garden), I will attempt to relocate it if it is convenient
to do so.  Otherwise, I just let it go.  If I'm in doubt about the identity
of the spider, I may kill it anyway, just to be safe.  I especially do this
with web-builders.

My cat has her own code in regards to spiders and scorpions, however.  She
thinks they're fun to play with, but she's a bit rough with her playmates.

Regards,

Charybdis


On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 5:19 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:

> I hate people who hate bugs.
>
>
> I can't help it.  When I see one, I shudder with revulsion and if they come
> near me I shriek with fear and go stand on a chair.  I know they have their
> place in Nature's scheme, but its a visceral reaction on my part over which
> I have no control.
>
>
> I don't necessarily want them poisoned or stepped on, I just need somebody
> to deal with  them for me.  Brush 'em out of my house and out of my life so
> I don't have to look at them or deal with them at all.
>
>
> Last weekend, my father-in-law's wife, Chris,  married for  a few years now
> after his first, my wife's mom, died of cancer.  Chris saw a beetle in my
> kitchen and she gasped.  I jerker around expecting to find the refrigerator
> on fire, but no, it was a beetle.
>
>
> "You don't like bugs?"  I asked.
>
>
> "No!" she exclaimed, "I'm allergic."
>
>
> "Well", I replied, "the best thing to do is let them crawl all over you
> then.  Allergies are caused by underexposure.  Allergies are an
> inappropriate immune system over-reaction due to too little experience with
> the 'foreigner'."
>
>
> She gave me a strange look and soon got out of my house.   I didn't even
> need help brushing her away  or have to stand on a chair and shriek.
>
>
> She's a sweet enough person, I suppose.  But she is from Southern
> California, which is bad enough, but even worse she used to work in
> Hollywood as a sound editor (even got an emmy once for her work on Lonesome
> Dove) and she name-drops all the time in the most annoying fashion.  I
> could
> put up with celebrity worship, I guess.  For a short time.  But bug-hating
> puts her  beyond the pale.
>
>
> There was one incident in my house where I didn't mind the person's fear of
> bugs; when we hosted the "Chernobyl Children".  Olia didn't like bugs.  I
> cut her some slack because A:  she was cute and B:  If you live most of the
> year in radiation which is invisible and killing you, you're allowed some
> displacement quirks.  She hated the term "Chernobyl Children" btw.  She
> said
> it sounded like they were all afflicted with, as she termed it with a
> spastic expression, "Syndrome Downs".  She always wanted Americans to be
> aware that there were no infirmities or inferiorities about her person or
> intellect in any way.  And she never met an American who disagreed.
>
>
>
>  When she went into sobbing hysterics on the night she was supposed to go
> back to Belarus,  Lu asked her what was wrong and she went into a quite a
> long crying jag in Russian that nobody could understand, but seemed to
> satisfy her need to explain herself.  At the end of her tirade, lifting her
> tear-streaked face to Lu and I hovering worriedly over her, she could only
> inform us of the reason for her fear of spiders was,  "They have reevers of
> knowing".
>
>
> Now did she mean "Rivers" or "Reavers"?  At the time, it sounded like
> "reavers", but I'm pretty sure she meant "rivers".  She didn't know the
> english word "reaver" but she absolutely knew the word "river".  What
> tingles my memories still, is spiders as "reevers of knowing" in the
> beautious ambiguity which means so much more than either of its
> alternatives.
>
>
> Because I think they truly might be.  Whatever she meant, to this day I
> like
> to think of spiders as both "reavers of knowing"  and "rivers of knowing"
> They are so sensitive to vibration  with their slender webs quivering in
> the
> ether and living by what comes.
>
>
> I told my son, who is eight, that spiders catch bad dreams in their webs,
> and the scarier-looking the spider, the better they are at catching
> nightmares.  Sometimes the fearsome job demands the fearsome aspect.  Now
> that's an interesting truth in that it is based on fancy, but by its
> utterance becomes reality.  My son is not afraid of either spiders or
> dreams
> as a consequence of a fancy.
>
>
>
> Now, of course you'd have to be plumb out of almost a thousand better
> alternatives in the social  realm to be glad of a spider's company, but
> that's pretty much where I was at in the summer of '84, really out, really
> done with that girl who hated me for all I was best at, my first wife, D.
> and all on my own, living like a turtle with the world on its back.
>
>
> Kids, let it be a warning to you.  Don't get married at 19 to your very
> first and only girlfriend experience.  All I ever wanted was  to make a
> family in the world I'd been born into.  And here I was, seven years later,
> living out of the back of my VW Pickup Campershell and wondering if I'd
> ever
> find another woman to love me, wondering where I was headed and what I was
> gonna do.
>
>
> I started by going on a canoe trip down the Feather River with my best
> friend Griego.   After I got back from that trip, I went by myself on a
> river, the American, way above Sacramento, for a week and a half in a green
> idylic Eden that only lacked an Eve or I might be there still.
>
>
> I wasn't in a home anymore so I guess I was ... camping?  It sounded better
> than homeless.
>
>
> Anyway, I wasn't homeless.  I had my vehicle.  In America, I think what we
> mean by "homeless" is actually "vehicleless" because as long as you can get
> from place to place, you can sleep in your car, or friend's couches.  But
> once you lose that magic carpet, you're on the street, a shamblin' bum.
>
>
> The place I encountered my spider friend was also on the American, but much
> lower down.  We'd let in at Salmon Falls bridge and canoed down the upper
> reaches of the reservoir to a nice camp site.  Me.  My friend Griego, his
> girl Monique and his two kids from his wife Jan.
>
>
> I was really counting on Griego at this moment in my history.  When he'd
> been castaway for his playboy proclivities by Jan, D and I, still a stable
> married couple, had been open, generous and sharing to the lonely bachelor.
> Now here I was, on my own and needing some payback support and "shoulder to
> cry on" type affirmation like I'd given in my turn.  So I was expectant...
> which always leads to trouble.
>
>
> And then there was the Monique issue.  I quite fancied her.  She was
> exactly
> opposite my ex's physique and attitude and that was a draw, but she
> attracted men anyway in that sylph - like way some women have.  Dark hair,
> brown eyes, pretty, petite, quiet.  A good listener in her peaking-out-from
> her hair way with laughter at the right moments.  For me, that's always the
> killer.
>
>
> But in this situation, her main adversary is Griego's wife, and any concern
> out of friendship for me and my situation pales in consideration.
>
>
> While Griego must balance playing with his girlfriend and his best friend,
> he's also brought his kids.
>
>
> So what this all adds up to, my unhappy camper, is the bluest, loneliest
> and
> saddest feeling yours truly can remember in his almost 50 years of before
> and since.  All these people with their competing social connections, and
> me, severed of all.   Worse than that first time at pathfinder camp spent
> stumbling through strange rows of white tents and wondering whether I would
> ever find my group... and that time there were silent tears streaming down
> my face, this time it was just an empty ache in my heart wondering if I'd
> ever find somebody to love.
>
>
> And prayer.  I prayed like hell.  I prayed so hard that if my prayers had
> been answered and a ski boat of bikini-clad coeds had broken down on our
> beach, I'd probably have to be some sort of televangelistica today.  Thank
> god that didn't happen though.  Instead I found a spider on my shoulder.
>
>
> Small, hairy little spider, of a certain jumping, rather than web-waiting
> variety.  We became friends and it amazed me how faithfully that little
> spider would return to its perch on my shoulder, sharing with it's compound
> eyes, my perspective on the world and if knocked off in some rambunctious
> game of frisbee with Griego's kids, would return, scrambling a tenuous web
> that bound us together for a brief time.
>
>
> Tom Hanks?  In Cast Away?  Making a friend of a volleyball?  I totally got
> that scene.  That is human truth in cinematic form, right there.  We will
> socialize, even if we have to go to great lengths to find our other.
>
>
> The thing is, it worked.  I sort of understood.  If you have enough love
> for
> a spider, then believe me, more will come.  A sort of ease passed through
> my
> mind where I was able to wait a bit.  Be more patient.  Get some
> perspective.
>
>
> Get some perspective!!!
>
>
> That right there might be the most succinct, philosophical help I can give
> anybody in three words or less.  You really don't need much.  Climb a
> mountain and look down on your route.  Identify yourself with a piece of
> cosmos bigger than your own ego.  For me, the spider friend gave me enough
> perspective to realize my position in this camping trip was just not
> appropriate, not working and not fun.  I bailed.  Next morning, I asked
> Griego to paddle me back to my car.  It was time to start sniffing around
> Sierra College and what lay in store for me there next.  I was out of here
> as a prop in other's people's romantic drama.
>
>
> As we near the bridge tho, I noticed a fluttering in the water, and found a
> baby bird, just under the age where it could fly.  Needing attention.  So I
> stayed the week, catching grasshoppers and feeding them into that tiny,
> endless maw of hunger that baby birds possess.  The new center of attention
> from the kids, the girl and my own egoistic need to be needed.  I was
> healed.  I was grateful.
>
>
> I still am.  I pass under a bridge and I think as a surrogate momma bird,
> that some of my distant relatives might be darting for bugs.  I see a
> spider
> and I don't think "ewww".   I realize some people do and I don't argue with
> them.  I even agree that there is some "ewww" in their relationship with
> the
> spiders of the world.  I just don't agree that the source of the ewwww is
> in
> the spider.  The source is in the intellect of the ewwww'er.
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