spiders

I'm afraid of spiders. Really, really afraid of them.

I don't know when it started, exactly. I like to rationalize my fear by telling myself, logically, that I was a small insect in my last life, who met its demise being consumed by an eight-legged predator. But, my mom swears that I wasn't afraid of spiders as a baby, having once casually thrown out that I liked to play with them, now and again.

My favorite book, for years, was Charlotte's Web. I think I read it more times than anything else, until I reached the age where I was reading historical fiction about girls abducted into the wilderness by Indians and Southern gentlemen.

It wasn't until older that I realized that they were terrifying. It may have been from an on-again, off-again relationship with the Lord of the Rings, which were read to me as a child, and which feature a particularly nasty spider.

In any case, somewhere along the way, as I formed my very burgeoning perception of what is real and what is not in my early childhood, I learned to be afraid of spiders.

And not just afraid of them. It became a thing. I once dedicated an entire self-penned monologue, performed by a fellow thespian in my high school drama class, to my relationship with the "phantom" spider that liked to haunt the bathrooms of my house. No one else, apparently, saw the spider. I would, occasionally, during the most inconvenient moments, see him -- definitely a him -- lurking in one of the corners. I have distinct memories of the thing, black and shiny, breathing. Yes, because I could see him breathing.

No one believed me, of course. Other, less mythological spiders also haunted me, occasionally sending me into fits of hysteria that had to be broken by a cliched slap from my dad. If there were a spider in a room, I would avoid it until I could rationally convince myself that the spider had lived out its natural lifespan and died.

If that was impossible, I had to call in one of my brothers to remove it. The removal -- usually involving someone brusquely killing it while I pretended not to look -- never quite worked. I was always left with that creepy, crawly sensation -- the one of being invaded, and being watched -- and being unprepared for the horrors that lurked somewhere unseen.

And I didn't like killing them -- or being responsible for their death. I still don't.

As an adult, I have learned not to see spiders. I have occasionally even behaved myself quite well -- or, at least not freaked out -- when in the inevitable and unsolvable presence of a spider.

I once slept in the spare room of an activist homestead -- converted from a Southern Baptist ministry, in the poor, neglected rural suburbs of Atlanta. There were large spiders, black, and long-legged, but not without the bulbous middle that keeps me awake nights. Six legged spiders -- although not technically spiders -- or those lacking large centers I find less terrifying. Don't ask me why.

It was during the only activist conference I have ever attended, in the deep and humid regions of Georgia. My hostess was a wild and not-unpleasantly aged 40-something activist, with a funky garden and garage that still had pews and that characteristically sloping roof of churches.

Sleeping arrangements were limited. By the time I arrived a handful of anarchist teenagers had taken over the garage, a roaming anarchist videographer slept on the couch in a thong and a t-shirt, and my host's still politically developing daughter -- whom she feared would grow up to be the next David Brooks in protest of her mom forcing her to hold Cynthia McKinney signs along the highway -- slept in the bedroom.

I was relegated to the spare room, which contained little more than a bunkbed and a mattress on the floor. And spiders in the corners, large and black ones, edging in between the wooden wall frames.

I held them at bay for a whole night, with only my good thoughts of socially worthwhile deeds and sacrifices for the greater cause to comfort me.

I'm thinking about spiders for two reasons this week. One, I found myself perched on the side of waterfall this weekend, facing a perilous ascent and possible (though unlikely) death from climbing a 10-foot rock face at the top of 500 feet of sheer cliff, or scrambling up a muddy and dirty path, totally accessible to the uninitiated hiker, except for a brambly patch of nasty cobwebs with a plethora of spiders taking their respite inside.

It's the jungle. It's not like one doesn't expect to see spiders. So I tried. I really, really did, to take the less dangerous path. I made it half way up the hill -- only a few feet really -- on my hands on knees, looking at the spiders in a web above me, aiming for the clear patch of air between me and the gauntlet of webs.

But I couldn't stop looking at the largest of the spiders, a black one, with a painted yellow and red back, lying in wait along the hillside.

After ten minutes of groping my the green weeds in a panicked asphixiation in front of my perplexed co-worker, who had just watched me brave the side of six waterfalls, I gave up.

I slid down the hill, dove in the pool at the bottom of the falls to get the spider feeling off, and then took a deep breath and climbed a wet, rotting rope up the side of the waterfalls. And it was easier than facing the spider.

The second reason I am thinking about spiders, is that later that day, or the next, it's hard to tell with the time difference, I came home and talked to my boyfriend. He is very far away, entertaining himself in New York while I have my adventures here.

He and his friend, either a recovering mormon hipster with an unfortunate h and y in her otherwise normal name, or his out-of-town former internet pen pal from middle school, I can't remember which, had explored the West Village together. He found one of those crystal-selling, incense-burning shops, I think, or imagine, and bought a deck of cards he and I have wanted forever.

It's the animal power medicine deck, or whatnot. And in it are a bunch of cards, sort of like tarot, but that tell your fortune through animals.

Apparently, you can also use the deck for a one-time only reading to give you your nine power animals, which align you with animal soul guides, or whatever. The catch is, of course, that you only pull seven cards. The other two come to you in a dream, apparently, and are the animals that are with you throughout your life's spiritual journey. You know.

The first card Keith pulled was the spider.

I don't know if he has had any dreams about animals since them. I, however, have dreamed about spiders every night.