it feels like
the world is spinning
faster and faster
speeding up so that
we who bend down
to appreciate the insignificant
—droplets of water,
the colour of wildflowers,
the smell of the rain—
cannot breathe any longer
It happened just after I watered the garden. I saw the tiny spider climbing its web, covered in small droplets of water that I caused. What an insignificant moment in time, the tiny spider struggling to keep its web clear of the pesy droplets.
I could easily have walked past this scene, not giving it a second thought. So busy and occupied by my own thoughts, busy with the world engulfed in flames of war and perpetual capitalist growth, that this particular spider, minding its own business, could have slipped from my attention. And this would have caused a world to go unnoticed, this would have prohibited me from dwelling on the insignificant things in life.
The droplets of water (photograph above) presented themselves as perfect beads of glass which the spider did not like. It was in a matter of 30 minutes that the spider removed almost every drop from its web. How wonderful is this not, to see the spider actively removing every drop - drop by drop and nothing faster than this slow process.
I stood in front of the spider for a considerable time. I watched it drink - consume? - every drop, slowly and deliberately. How fast does time move in a spider's world? We have no idea. Our approximations will always fall flat in front of the conceptual divide that keeps them from us.
I could not help but find beauty in its repetitive movements. I probably caused the poor spider significantly more work than it hoped for that day - as the sun was shining and no smell of rain was in the air. My droplets of water must have been a great irritation.
We live worlds apart, but I could live myself into this frustration. Having made plans for the day, I thought, the slightest disruption turns my world upside down. What have I caused this little spider? Its defence, armour, and weapons rely on not being seen, on remaining hidden in the plants to catch bugs, to ward off anything that might want to eat it. And in my attempt to give some much-needed water to the soil, I exposed the vulnerability of its hunting, its defence, in a matter of minutes.
While contemplating this moment, I captured the spider, in its attempts to clear the myriad of droplets of water from its web. And how beautiful this moment is, fleeting and ephemeral, forever lost to time but momentarily and poetically eternalised in these photographs.
Sometimes when I find myself thinking, mostly when I walk in the garden, trying to clear my head, I become increasingly conscious of how fast our world is moving. It seems like it is speeding up. I feel like I could read so much more in the past; now, it feels like I can barely do anything without time running out. We cram so much into a single second of every day that we lose sight of what is in front of us. The flower blooming, the spider's web covered in water droplets... Life presents us with beauty but we disregard this because we are so busy with fickle things.
Alas, we can merely attempt to give more attention to the so-called insignificant things. We can merely live up to the ideal of allowing these things to happen, to allow them to take hold of these sections of the gardens without our desire to perfect them. We can merely allow things to happen on their own accord.
And we poets and artists can attempt to document life through out lenses, the poetic photographer, the photographic artist...
For now, happy photographing, and keep well.
All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the little spider doing its thing. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens.