If I’m not going to be writing, then I won’t let myself watch TV. So I got off the couch and got on my bike for a short 40 minute bike ride on the lake. I wish the that I could capture the images from my ride with my digital camera, but I can’t.
Lately, like I keep saying, I keep seeing spider webs everywhere. I notice them so much, that I’ve even started to notice the differences. There are three main types in my neck of the woods (or city, whatever) the typical Charlotte’s web, geometrical super star that we all grew up drawing. Then there are the tightropes that spiders keep spinning from finnial to finnial on the wrought iron fences. Then this weekend I noticed some dense funnel shaped webs on shrubbery in the parking lot behind Metropolis.
Now I’ve seen those webs all summer, but Sunday was the first time I noticed that each shrub covering web has a distint funnel in the middle. I suppose that the monstrous spider lurks inside it’s silk cave entry.
Noticing things is part of the Art of Amazement–the jewish mysticism book I keep picking up and putting down in annoyance. The bad writing makes me put it down, but the new twist on why I should say a blessing keeps me picking it up. One exercise (the one that made me buy the book) centers on eating two pieces of sweet fruit. The first you just eat. The second you notice before you eat it. The texture, the smell, the blemishes. Ponder how it came to be in your hand–the seed, the tree, the farmer, the grocer. The generations of farming to get to that type of fruit. And then eat it and be amazed. (Okay, I admit, it sounds cheesy. But if you just stop to say, Baruch atah Adonai, this fruit is amazing–you’ll be more connected to that piece of fruit and to god.)
THAT SAID.
Tonight I noticed clouds of dragon flies. I took the bike path that was gravel and closer to the water. It is underneath a canopy of trees and that might warm up the air. Looking up, there were swarms and swarms of dragon flies. Swooping, sweeping, dancing at leaf height. I was worried that I might run into one and worried how bad of an accident I might have. (The worried about having to go to work and explain, “I ran into a dragon fly last night and fell off my bike.”)
The sky was thick with them and it lasted at least a mile. THen when I turned around and started heading north again, they were gone. WHen I’d been southbound, it was dusk–still light, warm, a light breeze. When I turned around it was past dusk, the sun was definitely gone, and with it the dragon flies.
Does anyone know–are they mating? What insect mates in the fall? Not that I want to admit it is fall, BECAUSE IT ISN’T (I still have my air on for pete’s sake.) or did they blow in from Michigan? Do dragonflies migrate? Are they here to be goose food?
I want some answers.
Although, maybe they’ve been there all summer and I’ve been too busy looking at the spiders.
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