On Spiders
Posted on May 2, 2007
Filed Under Aphorisms |
You have got to admire spiders. They lurk in corners, like trouble. Palely loitering, they are nevertheless always paying attention. They are perfectly attuned to their environment. The least vibration, the slightest tremor in their world and they spring into action. They are haughty, supercilious, and removed, it’s true. They mend their nets like impossibly distant beauticians gift-wrapping bottles of perfume. Some have grand, articulated limbs with exquisitely poised joints. Daddy Long Legs, we used to call them as kids. As a boy, I once disabled a bee and dropped it into a web in a hedge. The spider rushed out to spin a cocoon around its prey, but that was a mistake. The bee stung it and the spider leapt back in pain. The bee couldn’t break free and eventually died. I pried apart the hedge to look for the spider and found it dead, too, curled up in a ball deep inside its hole. Intelligent spiders keep their distance from their victims. Like spinsters, they patiently knit burial shrouds for the creatures, mummifying them in about a minute. All the while the spider remains aloof, and always just out of reach.
Two aphorisms featuring spiders, one by Theodor Adorno:
Properly written texts are like spiders’ webs: tight, concentric, transparent, well-spun and firm. They draw into themselves all the creatures of the air. Metaphors flitting hastily through them become their nourishing prey.
and one by Francis Bacon:
Laws are like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught, and the great brake through.
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