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19. A SPIDER (Sept. 2002)
My apartment in
northwest Queens is high, cold, it faces the Hell
Gate, cold Canadian wind pours through the windows, I keep it
clean--- so what kind of creature can live there except humans? But a
couple of years ago I saw a tiny, tiny spider just outside the bathroom. I mean
a baby roach could whip its ass. It was bigger than a period but smaller than a
comma. I'm only slightly exagerating. I happen to like spiders very much. I
respond to their loneliness, I understand their caution in a dangerous world.
Yet they're bold, too. Hunters. Show me a vegetarian spider, and I'll show you
a cross-dressing caterpillar. I often examine the spiders I meet. But this time
the little creature panicked, sprinted to a black crevice and jumped in. It
wanted to live. It desperately wanted to live, though it wasn't aware.
Meanwhile, I'm aware and I worried about it. Even if it found something to
eat--- and I have no idea what that could be in my apartment--- how long
would it live? Spiders are solitary creatures. Not like bees or ants. Would it
ever find someone to mate with? Two spiders once found each other, to create
this one. Did they live in my apartment too? There's nobody, no thing, that
loves it, that cares whether it lives or dies. It's too stupid to even care
itself. Yet even an atheist sees the life force panicking in it and moving
it to safety, to preserve it for what? From my godlike mediocre perch I remain
humbled and awed by this experience of revelation in my cold 1-bedroom
apartment near the N train in Long Island
City.
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