MindSpinner

I do not kill garden spiders. I admire their webs and am careful not to tear an especially beautiful work of spider’s art. Nonetheless, I have a certain fear of large spiders.

Last night I dreamed a spider - a big black and yellow one like the one that landed somehow on my shoulder when I was a little girl outside in the yard, occasioning my terrified screams.

The dream spider did not sit in the middle of its web in the sunny green of the garden on a summer’s day. Instead, I saw it from indoors, at night. The spider moved on the window screen outside, which trembled and shook with the tugs of its legs. At first the spider was impressive but of an ordinary size. Then it scuttled quickly across the screen, alarming me. When fear woke me, I thought the body to be some two inches in length and the span of its legs nearly a foot across, though I did not perceive its growing. I did not scream - I am a light sleeper and would have known if I had - but I woke panting.

I do not pretend to know anything of the interpretation of dreams, but today I found myself webbing and then cataloging certain worries and fears, taking measure of spiders, so to speak, the length of their legs, their capacity for startling movement. I make myself note that the spider in my dream, my archetypal scary spider, is actually a harmless one, even beneficial.