
Working on the old car I thought I’d found a new friend. Hanging by a lone filament off the sun visor was a baby spider, barely over 1mm. I spent five minutes trying to focus a video of her swaying in the breeze. She only appeared as a beige apparition, the car’s dash in perfect focus. The distraction of a new video subject had brought me into the present moment—away from ruminating on the cares of life.
Then the weight of life came crashing back on me—she was dead. Now I felt the bloat of breakfast carbs & the atrial flutter which was absent during the photo shoot, and depression peeked around the corner. I know—it was just a spider. A million die every minute just as a billion new ones hatch. This is the nature of attachment. It took me five minutes to attach her to my mind-made self, part of what I called me.
This was my reminder that we can embrace a higher consciousness. We can accept the current moment in presence, and realize the world of form is temporary. Attachment is not required for us to enjoy and marvel at it.
What brought her to the end of life at the end of a solitary silk strand? Not enough prey in the car’s interior I suppose. This is the second time I’ve seen a spider hanging by one leg on a single strand of silk in death. Maybe an arachnologist can explain this end-of-life spider behavior


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