fun

This morning, early, I took my camera outside to capture what looked like froth covering everything. Trees, long grass, bushes and the fence. Closer up I recognized the froth.

Spider webs.

They got me thinking.

Yesterday, in the hot bright sunshine, I saw not one of them. They were all invisible until this morning’s heavy dew painted them clearly for my eyes to see. And that is the whole plan. If I was a fly, this could be dead dodgy. I could ping into one of those sticky tendrils and be lunch in seconds. If I was a wasp or one of our honey bees, I might be dinner instead, for no spider will attack things with stings immediately, for very obvious reasons. And they always know, the spiders. I have watched, many times, a stinging thing fly into a web and become part of it whilst the spider dashes out, stops dead and dashes back again to wait. Things with stings have more time for an escape plan.

In life, we all know the feeling of being caught in a web. The ‘spider’ in charge may be bigger and more powerful than us, or half our size, but this fact matters not one jot in the end. Once we are trapped, and held fast by the web, we can either struggle ourselves into an even tighter fix, or we can work ourselves free.

It might be our job or aspects of it that spins an invisible web to catch us. It might be a relationship, or aspects of it. It might be habits, contacts, colleagues or our own mistaken need to repeat old patterns. Whatever is holding us, weakening us so that we ever so gradually dull our own wits and lose purchase on our freedom, we have to recognize it, and therein lies the rub, for we will blame anything and anyone as our wings grow weak and our fears take control.

As a result of becoming trapped in a webcage, I might take on and develop bad habits. I will probably grow fat or I will grow thin. I will become a bit manic (if it is possible to become a ‘bit’ manic) about a fitness routine, or my own private space or the way I like things done until I can no longer see anyone but myself in relation to the rest of humankind. What I will not see is that, if I just rest a little, I can probably work out an escape, because resting means dilemma to me. I cannot stop moving, because if I stop moving, I will have to think and the inside of my unhappy head is the last place I want to spend any time at all.

But this is exactly what I need to do.

Someone, possibly more than one someone, once said that in order to find a way out of the pain, we have to stay inside it, engage with it, to accept it, and to move on beyond it. It sounds ghastly at best, but from experience I know it to be true. The alternative is a lifetime of running, and not from one bad situation to another, although that is exactly what it will be, but from our own self.

What we all need to do to free our wings is to stop and say…….ok, Pain, talk to me.

If our job/partner/lifestyle is slowly killing us, we must find the courage to acknowledge it and take action. Yes, it is scary, but I have done it and felt terrified in a strange land, one I now know well with views and spaces and light and fun; not one of which I saw before I acknowledged the dark pain and fear, reminded myself that I have wings and a sting,and rose myself up and away into a new sky, trailing a strand of web.

This morning I set off along the single track road from my little stone built home in warm sunshine. My task today is to help paint the school shed in a small (but vital) island primary school. The head teacher had already talked with me about what she would like the shed to look like, using as decoration, all the beach litter the children had collected since last summer. Each time there is a high tide or a high wind, the beaches are covered with flotsam and jetsam, some of it intriguing, some disgusting. Obviously the disgusting bits are appropriately disposed of, but the colourful bits of plastic and rope and twine, shells and bones, and all those things careless folk toss overboard, all are gathered, cleaned and stored for the Grand Shed Occasion.

Which is now. Well, the beginning of it is now. It may take some time to assemble, not least because little children have attention spans extremely short but sweet and by the way, not one of them can stand still without fidgeting.

We walked them around the brown slatted shed, and asked them how they would like to see the end result. We fed them the odd line as they began heading off into Disneyworld, just to reel them in a bit, but not too much. We explained the deck chair stripe idea and the starburst of plastic milk bottle tops on one side; the butterflies and daisies on one end, to compliment the big tubs of wild flowers already established to encourage butterflies. We said that once the stripes were finished, they could play with spatter paint, flicking brush loads (well, not LOADS) against the wall. The boys arms were already flexing and they did have to question whether we really meant it. Their mouths formed a WOW.

Throwing paint at the wall…..like THIS????

Can I use a gun? asked one boy.

Er……I think brushes this time, we told him and there was a chorused ‘Awwwww’ with that sweep up at the tail of it, as if we just might say…….Ok then, why not?

We plan a sort of mural on the side nearest the road, to impress the tourists. Deck chairs, they thought. We could stick one on the wall! chirruped one girl.

Not with PVA, I said, sorry, but you can paint one on. I could hear my voice go all dinky winky but she was no fool, and lost interest immediately. She decided, instead, to paint a square rainbow.

Excellent.

A pair of swallows chattered at me as I worked. Birds on the wire with plans for nest building arrested. Sorry I said, but I’ll be gone soon and there’s plenty of daylight left. A pair of lapwings serenaded me from the seaward field, and sparrows dived in and out from the eaves; everyone so very busy.

It’s good to be busy, among little fidgets, in the sunshine with a salt wind blowing my heart around.

Oh, and a square rainbow about to appear.