It was a nice night.  The sky was clear and the city was cooling off after the heat of the day.  Looking up from my book out the window I noticed a large spider floating right in front of me.  Her legs were working hard and after a brief pause she climbed back up another invisible thread to connect in the middle.

I watched her for awhile.  She wasn’t systematic, the way I expect spiders to be when creating their webs.  She was flighty, bouncing from working at the top to working at the bottom.  She’d lay a few lines here and there, then jump over to work on the more foundational lines that she had forgotten earlier.  She remind me, in fact, of myself.  Running from doing a few dishes, to writing a few lines, to folding half the clean clothes, and then off to another task.  The curse of a multi-tasker in an ever more distracting world.

I once read that workers in an office will only work on any one project for 11 minutes straight before being distracted by something else.  A pressing email, a phone call, the birthday celebration in the break room.  There is just no way to focus on one project for very long.  

Somehow, though this spider moved in unpredictable ways building her nest, she didn’t seem harried or confused.  Her movements were still graceful, purposeful, but erratic in an artistic way.  She was like a painter who spends a full day getting one tree perfect while the rest of the painting looks like stick figures.  Or a sculpture who obsesses over the shape of their subjects nose, and ignore the face.  Her web was her art, not just her source of food, or home for the night.  It was her creation.  Her little contribution to the beauty that is nature.

And the more I watch her work away at this part and that part the more I could swear I saw a bit of pride in her movements.  Maybe a swell of her chest, or a triumphant move of her legs.  She knew I was in awe of the thing she was creating.  And she was proud that someone noticed.

Finally, tearing my eyes away from the small web in front of me to the larger world beyond the window I started to worry.  Here this small spider was, working for hours on a one of a kind creation.  An expression of herself as a creature of the world.  And in a little while rain would come and wash the work away.  Or a strong wind would snap the threads holding her up.  A child could come back and, in an act of humanly selfish curiosity, smash this delicate net.  The idea filled me with a kind of despair.

I wondered, if this spider worked the same way I did, if she shared my same predilection for multi-tasking and creativity, did she also share my feelings on the destruction of creation?  Tomorrow morning would this spider feel the overwhelming depression of a destructive and inattentive world.  Would she have just as much trouble starting her day as I do?  Did she need to screw all her courage up with the rising of the sun just to convince herself to begin all over again?

And, more, did she look at me from the other side and feel the same need to reassure and protect me as I felt for her?

Is there hope for the webs we weave?