spider rain, protein counts, and endless suffering
🕷️🕷️🕷️
Happy May long weekend!
I’m writing from a patio set that smells faintly like wet dirt.
Or maybe that’s just the smell of the outside.
I don’t remember!
Ontario winters are engineered to obliterate any and all memories of the sun.
Spring is a mental rebirth.
Above-zero weather washes away our collective seasonal depression and tries to convince me to go jogging because it’s so nice out, and why the heck not, everyone else loves it, don’t be lazy, this is what people in their thirties do! 1
Every year, there’s also a moment when I remember bugs exist.
Right now, I’m sharing the space with approximately 30,000 spiders who took shelter in our outdoor furniture.
It’s taking everything in me to remind myself that they are harmless.
They’re amazing even!
Spiders are essential for the environment!
They’re mosquito abolitionists!!!
My political sisters!!!
Besides all the legs, eyes, and quick movements, what’s not to love?
It’s basically like having a bunch of free pets!
They most definitely didn’t lay eggs anywhere near, in, or on these cushions!! No way!
I feel bad because I displaced a bunch of them to come tan outside.
I’m sure they’re used to this kind of bigotry.
If the Itsy Bitsy Spider taught me anything, it’s the nomadic nature of spiders.
They are always climbing in and out of water spouts. Being ushered out of homes and off ceilings. Lurking in sheds across the nation.
I once read an essay about the Itsy Bitsy Spider as a Sisyphean figure that has stayed with me.
The spider is stuck in an endless loop going up and down and up and down and up and down the water spout.
He is trapped in an eternity of tedium and waterboarding.
But whose life isn’t tedious?
Who among us is not pushing their own proverbial boulder up a hill? Climbing and reclimbing the same water spout ad nauseam??
How are there always dishes to do?
Why is the laundry never clean???
Surely there can’t always be something else to write?!?!
What do you mean I have to shave my legs, again?!?!?!
At what point do we ever actually consume enough protein??!?!
Eventually, the Itsy Bitsy Spider must be allowed to rest!
He must move to a home that isn’t a functional faucet!
He must find peace or a deeper meaning for this madness!
How could anybody continue to be rained out over and over and over again??
To quote a famous philosopher:
Let the rain fall down
And wake my dreams
Let it wash away
My sanity
'Cause I want to feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I'm coming clean
Powerful stuff.
For the Itsy Bitsy Spider, maybe every rainfall is a fresh start.
Maybe he embraces the rain as part of life.
Maybe he yearns for the release of a clean slate.
A rebirth.
Who knows how much of the experience he even remembers?
Based on what I Googled about long-term memory in common house spiders, likely very little, if anything at all.
The Itsy Bitsy Spider experiences every adventure up or down the spout as his first time, like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates.
Or… like me coming out of hibernation every May long weekend.
Each spring, I change over my wardrobe, set up the backyard, and prepare myself for a new summer season without even considering the impending doom of winter.
Why dwell on the inevitable?
Another great philosopher once said:
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb
There is something to be treasured in the mundane.
Tallying grams of protein gives me a small sense of accomplishment.
When the dishes are done, I feel at peace with our space.
I wake up on Sundays full of inspiration (and some dread) about writing something bonkers for your inboxes.
In his endless pursuit, we must imagine the Itsy Bitsy Spider happy.2
Or else what keeps him moving?
How does this tiny spider find the will to pick himself back up over and over and over again?
Is he bound by duty?
Pride?
Or is it unrelenting optimism that keeps him moving back up the water spout?
What keeps us doing the dishes?
Folding the laundry??
Working on our hobbies???
Shaving???
Counting protein????
Do we act purely because of the shackles of expectation? (I am a spider, therefore I climb / I am a woman, therefore I need hairless legs.)
Or are we driven by the aspirational ideal of having a clean house, nice wardrobe, soft legs, and semi-noticeable muscle tone? (The best spiders live in water spouts, and I will push myself to greatness.)
Because happiness is not a fixed state.
No matter how fulfilling it is to climb a water spout 15,000 times, the 15,001st might break us. One day, there will be a dirty dish that brings us to the brink of sanity.
How do we know when our repeated cycles are part of a greater good, and when they need to be abandoned?
I have seen the edges of my breaking point.
I have entertained giving up.
I have looked at my water spout and thought, “I’m okay, thank you. This has been a good run, but if it rains one more damn time I will let myself drown.”
There are only so many grams of protein I can consume in a day without straight-up snorting powder.
There is no amount of protein pancakes, or protein bars, or protein popcorn, or protein chips I can force myself to eat without questioning my whole existence.
Does that make me less committed than the Itsy Bitsy Spider? Probably.
There is a phenomenon in Australia called Mass Ballooning.
(spoiler alert, this is still about spiders and not real balloons)
After heavy rains, millions of spiders will seek higher ground to save themselves from drowning. They release their webs into the air to catch a breeze to safety, floating through the air like Shen Yun dancers descending on a new market.
Eventually, they rain down in a giant blanket of webs straight out of a horror novel.
Look at how yucky!
But also, how hopeful!
This spider rain is a story of resilience: of a cohort of itsy bitsy buddies refusing to be washed down their water spouts over and over again.
These spiders were, quite literally, hanging on by a thread.
It took one brave soul to say, “You know what, guys? This is too much,” and throw a silken white flag into the air.
Together, they let the wind carry them away.
That’s beautiful.
Inspiring.
A reminder that it’s never too late to start over, fly somewhere new, and wreak havoc on unsuspecting farmland with your grand, gothic entrance.
When and how do we free ourselves from the cycles driving us to insanity?
What is the final rainfall that sets us on a new path?
When times are bad, how do we spin our own webs into the sky and untether ourselves from the shackles of daily life?
…Of course, spider webs are almost entirely made out of protein.
Gotcha!!
Counting protein is an endless hellscape!!!
You will NEVER be free!!!
Anyway…..
Someone buy me this necklace plz and thx 😘
Please do not let me become a runner — this is a temporary and seasonal madness. It will pass.
Shocking no philosopher has ever come up with that one before…