Monday, November 17, 2008

I have no head at all for heights, although you wouldn't know it by the way I keep climbing up to the top of the wrong buildings and peering down, just to make sure the ground is still there. I like the feeling of spinning, and it seems that the only way to get near to that is to trick my own brain. Outside of my head the world has a tendency to stay disconcertingly still.

Sometime in the last few days I tripped over my big stupid feet and fell back into this rut, which must be following me, or else I'm going in circles. I splashed down knee deep in memories, memories that are staining my tights and seeping into my shoes, memories which do not smell as good as one would think that they should. Feelings are pretty boring, especially since I keep having the same ones over and over again, and I think I have already used every single word I know in every possible order. I must be going in circles. (Fortunately, next week is Thanksgiving, and nothing hauls a girl out of a rut like a roomful of friends and a bunch of dance-off movies and a plate of meat wrapped in meat wrapped in meat and covered with meat.)

But you know what I've been thinking. In Trinidad there's a member of the order Embioptera, the web spinners, that makes sheets of silk with its forearms. It uses them to build a tent wrapped around trees, and it lives under these webs, safe from predators, waiting for rainstorms so that it can chew tiny holes in its covering and drink from the droplets. They might not be the cutest of creatures, but I think they have the right idea.

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