Body, hope, heart, mind, comfort. All crushed in an instant and swept away as the spider is woken from his golden dream. The train he has rode on for three years jolts out of its heavy stillness. The charging steel lines silence the birds and demand movement and muscles tensed. Spider blinks the truth of the times over his eyes as he looks around him slowly coming to terms with daylight and waking life. I am not in my childhood web among a friendly morning, he wonders soberly, I am on my train. On my way home... Home. Train has taken me far and wide but we've yet to return to where I was first swept away from my family. I don't blame the beast for taking me away, I blame myself for the careless curiosity of those days so long ago.
...
Spider always dreamed of a place beyond his home web, he always wondered what truths he could not see, he desired all that life could offer. To his family and friends, the idea of another home and a different way of life was absurd, unnecessary. If one brought the idea up it was brushed away as naivety. Satisfied as they may have been in the place they knew so well, the spider felt something was missing. He had friends and family, but was different from his peers. Only a couple close friends and his mother truly knew him. The spiders his age all wanted a nice life, a happy family, and he wanted it too, but he could not picture having it in that place. He did not see it being possible there. He loved, and he was loved, but this feeling of otherness grew and every night he dreamed of the place for him, a more genuine land, one where instinct is all that is. He began by going beyond the edge of the tall redwood trees bordering their colony, and then to the river creek, and further over the log to the other side of the stream, every day seeing a little more, all while returning home by dinner to cast away any ideas of his actions. He found great solace in the free lifestyle of flying birds and they inspired him to keep exploring every day. He began to see the world differently.
Being on the ground, among the web, on a tree... there are plains beyond the simple surfaces of the physical world. Look at the birds, who sing their songs of whistle tune high... One can soar beyond! His thoughts of wonder above came to him as gospel. Truth beyond the physical, where does it lie? Do these birds know? Must I grow wings to find what I know is there? How do I know it? These feelings and thoughts rushed through the spider constantly, and for him, escaping the physical meant entering the world of the higher, a truer home, the land preceding, all the while including, Him. He always discovered something new in his day travels, the love between a family of inching caterpillars, the walk of frail injured deer among tall pines, the ribbiting frog and the chirping crickets ascending in harmony of observation. These things showed him glimpses of what he felt so deeply he must find. After a while, he began to leave for his day of travel as soon as his family went to bed, as he wasn't expected much in the mornings and was known to do his own thing during the day. Even a double in distance stood no challenge for his keen sense of direction, and there was not a worry in his head about getting lost. Truthfully, the idea of being lost was entirely foreign to him, and if anything, deep down, he desired it. He would go in all different directions looking for any answers he could find. One day, amidst travel deep in a new direction, he came across the metal beast, and oblivious to its nature, excitedly, he climbed onto it.
He had never seen anything like it, and he thought, surely, this must be it.
... 7177777
Our track shoots dead straight forever into the horizon, the world composed only of dirt and sand. Scattered grassy plains lay here and there, the space of a million billion webs between us and the mountains that run on each side of this giant desert valley. The sun is harsh and beats me with heat, no mercy. How can this be the same sun of my youth? The sun which kissed me sweetly between trees and leaves and made the blue breeze oh so pleasant. Can a thing really change so much? I'm hungry, and haven't had a fly in a while, I'm starting to thin more than I'd like. I miss the morning embrace and assuring smile of my sweet girl. Bee. How is she? We found the prettiest flowers a few months ago in these tall grassy hills and she wanted to start a home but I couldn't stay, I just couldn't, I need to find my family, keep pushing on, how could she leave me for some nice flowers? I'm starting to feel that my solo journeying on was a silly choice... I miss her, truly. Could we have created a real home there? Where is Home? The heart? Why must I push on? For me it feels there is only one home and it's my mothers and sisters and brothers. She told me I wouldn't find anything, my dream a distant illusion to her. How would she know, she's never had it! I don't blame her but I pleaded please listen to me. It's worth it. Come with me. Why don't you? If it's in the journey then why would we stop anywhere ever this is life?! Who's gonna tell me I can't find home? No one will tell me. Nobody knows! Nobody knows and those who know can't help you, it's different for any and all, where they've been and who they are and what they are to be. I am to be as capable as I see myself to be! I am going home, no matter what.
...
He was confused by it, it's metal mass running as far as he could see left and right, it's dominant place in the clearing so obviously made for it, almost like a wall it stood before him, but he could walk under it, and in between sections of it easily, so he knew it was not a wall, but something different. He ran around, on top of, below, and even inside the still train, with no cease in his amusement he lost track of time. Satisfied with this immense discovery and comfortable in the hospitality of a summer's afternoon shade, he relaxed, and fell into a deep sleep. He awoke in the dark, startled and shocked, standing on the rumbling steel, with the wind in his hair. In complete awe of his situation, he realizes what's happened, the beast is moving, and he is riding it. Amazed at his own ability to get into a situation so unthinkable he is without thought, and instinctually accepts his position. He knows he cannot jump, and knowing this is what he has been searching for, he smiles, he is finally lost, beyond.
...
Home... Who's going to tell me it's not right where I left it? Who's to say it's destroyed and everythings lost? A state of mind for innocent perception but with knowledge it's gone? An illusion to the ignorant...how do they know. Who's going to tell me the truth? It seems to me, no one. Nobody knows and those who know can't help you, it's different for any and each where they've been or who they are or they are to be. I am to be as big as I see myself to be! I am going home, no matter what. I've journeyed and seen! I crawled the blazing forests of Oregon and net my web atop the spiking peak of Lookout Mountain! Learned to swim stretching proudly across raging oceans in San Cisco and watched the homeless man yelling at the girl! And the liquor salesman, yellow at the great expanse of wheat fields worldwide, the mooing cows cry I talk back! The cartel on a vacation in the desert driving cars throwing sand and his parents died in a motorcycle wreck! The stillness of a lake and the cry of a loon over it, the cry of a loon, hear it once and never wonder... Love in the eyes of someone to care forever, and still, still!- cars press trying to crush me into the concrete of the Big Apple. What a lie that was. They want me to eat bugs but I want an apple! I'll be damned to hell before you tell me I'll never again see a warm summer Sunday morning in the comfort of my family!
The glassy sun shatters spider mantra and forced out of his head he is shocked into the day, here again. He observes how the train commands forward with such perseverance that a black plume of smoke billows in his very honor, I too must try, he thinks. It's not so bad of a day with the breeze of speed within my hair and the promise of being closer to something. He feels his hunger has started to go away, and has been replaced with a sense of fragility, he knows these are the signs of starvation. If he doesn't use his last energy today on a trap, it could be fatal. In the hopes of morning, a hope for all the effort may provide, in spite of many days of stagnance, spider nets a web on his train car's side ladder. He longs for a bite. Repeating his damn-be-all -who-tell-me-I-can't prayer throughout the long day building the giant web, he thinks of his early days on the train.
...
How have I done this? Movement for days, land I could've never fathomed. Metal beast rides gorges and gorgeous expanses of the world unimaginable to the tiny. There isn't much life up here, which I miss, but I am given to observe the world. How could I have known I'd be taken so. I gave into it, and was given the gift I so wished to receive, the experience. I could get off, where am I being taken? The oranges of crisp rub me comfort, the blue morning fog so familiar, and the hills keep rolling. This world is something I could've never imagined.
Its mass aliveness... Is. It.. Is. I am a part of it, no? Why does it feel like I am separate from it's flowing, I come from it, it creates me, it dies, I die. Isn't that the same as any other organism? Does it see me, care for me? I see it for all I can, it's unquantifiable, am I not too? It's funny that this experience of being me has driven me out of it, and into.. Myself? Myy self. Self. The earth, itself, is a self, surely, how could I have been so selfish? My family must miss me so, my friends surely wonder where I go?
...
So much change since then, and somehow, so much the same. Does this journey end? It's all in the journey. They said it's all in the journey.
IT is ALL in the journey... ?
The day flies by and flies fly by too, catching a few, he is able to make a stew. One more day at least, the spider thinks, one more day at least. Closer. Always closer. After a day of heat, the cooling setting sun and food make peace. His mind is blessed, silent for a while, he is comfortable. He has a full belly, and after no belly for days, a digest demands sleep. And so he slips, and as he withdraws, he draws deeper and deeper into comfort, ecstasy.. He thinks of Bee, her touch, her talk, her tone, her tenderness... Her buzz, the ever hope-full humming buzz.
...
It was so long since I'd been loved. We were beautiful.
