MindSpinner

In my bedroom, beneath the gable, an arched window admits stars, sometimes the moon, white clouds dry-brushed on blue sky, inky washes of storm clouds, and the blended pastels of morning. Blinds obscure my view of the neighbors’ house below during the day and the neighbors’ view of me slipping out of clothes at bedtime, but the half circle at the top of the window remains uncovered to frame an arc of sky, a succinct heaven. I’ve long rejected the notion of concocting window treatments, the window being the point.

Beneath the top of that arch, a tiny spider wove unseen a month or two ago a radiating web not larger than the spread of my small hand. It has gathered dust now until it is a proper cobweb. One or two of its delicate threads have been torn by tiny wings, but it is still near perfect. The artist in me has overruled the fussy Victorian housekeeper who would swat the web down with a broom lest visitors glance up to see it. I feel too much affinity for the spider and the web to sweep the work away.

I think in webs that span void, circumference and even contradiction. It seems to me that there is nothing that is not connected to something else and even to its own opposite. There is no strength that is not connected to weakness, no virtue that is not connected to flaw, no ending that is not connected to beginning, no beginning that is not connected to an end, no gain that is not connected to loss, no gift given that is not also received in the giving, no selfish choice that does not incur loss as well as gain. Reality and consequence and perception are always webs, as interconnected as the forces that generate the trajectory of the ripple that rides the wave there and back again, in a foam of physics calculations the nimblest mind cannot follow. The web also represents connections felt across spans of distance, forged in conversation yet not absent in silence or difference or even death, rope bridges spanning roaring chasms between souls, precarious, yet sturdy enough for white-knuckled crossings.

The spider web at the apex of the arched window that greets morning, midday, and night, is mute. It only reverberates a little with currents of air and clings to the anchors that suspend it two inches from that plane where the world within meets the world without. I look to it daily from my chosen spot on the side of the bed nearest to the light and nearest to the dark.

So ends my apologetic for lapses in dusting .

Dark-haired daughter has an appointment for a haircut today.

She always goes in with a picture in hand, and she always comes out of the salon unhappy, almost to the point of tears. Her hair does not look like the hair in the picture.

It’s actually lovely hair, a river of dark silk when she brushes it, which isn’t often enough because she likes a “mussed up” style. And she always looks model-pretty after a trip to the salon (indeed much too pretty to be related to me). But she does not look exactly, precisely like the picture.

The appointment is at one o’clock, so she’s antsy an hour beforehand to access the MySpace of the girl whose hair she wants to emulate. She wants to print out a picture, a picture that will doom the poor hair stylist to failure because dark-haired daughter’s head is a different head than belongs to the girl in the picture, and her hair is different hair. I suggest, “Why don’t you just explain what you want? You’re always disappointed because your hair doesn’t come out looking like some other girl’s hair. Why not skip the picture this time and just see how it comes out? Your head. Your hair. Not compared to anybody else’s.”

Dark-haired daughter snaps back, a quintessential sixteen, “Mom (this is a word and a groan at once and requires expansion to two syllables the better to contain all her exasperation), don’t ruin this for me. Let me ruin it for myself!”

No doubt this is good advice, and I’m taking it.

I have three hideously beaten up, wheeled Rubbermaid trash cans, bought five years ago and brutalized weekly by the trash pick-up folks until not one of them is without broken places. Since the perfected technique of emptying is to tear the lids off and toss these aside, whether in yard or street, the lids won’t stay on now either. Their tabs are broken.

The trash cans are so disreputable looking that I’ve been on a campaign to procure a big rolling cart from the trash pickup company for two years. At first I requested a cart politely. A year later, I requested one again. (Trash cans do not merit my continuous attention.) This year, I finally got one. I explained that I wouldn’t be paying another bill until I had one and would be changing service providers if one were not forthcoming. It arrived week before last - large, heavy, indestructible, and an eye-popping royal blue. I question whether one needs one’s eyes popped by a trash can, but Big Blue Whale is here to stay.

That leaves the Three Uglies. It has become apparent the trash people have no inclination to accept the Three Uglies as trash. The Three Uglies are not biodegradable, nor would they make attractive planters. At the moment of this writing, the Three Uglies and Big Blue Whale crouch together in a sizable huddle by the garage. I’m debating as to whether Big Blue Whale makes the Three Uglies look even uglier or whether the Three Uglies make Big Blue Whale look even bluer, or whether both these things can true at once. (I’m leaning toward the last conclusion.)

My quest for soul’s inner peace as relates to trash cans requires that I find not only a suitable place for the Three Uglies, but also a suitable use. I think I can fit them between the blackberries and the dogs’ fence where they will be out of view. If I drill holes for drainage in the bottoms of them, I do believe they will make passable compost bins. No need, now, to order those wire bins from Gardener’s Supply.

As for Big Blue Whale, soul’s inner peace is harder to achieve. One needs to study the thing as Michelangelo studied a piece of marble to find the sculpture waiting within to be freed. Is that grill on the front meant to be baleen? Should eyes be painted on the lid rather near the hinges? And what about the placement of the dorsal fin?

Or maybe Big Blue Whale should just move into the garage with the bicycles and the gardening tools before whimsy gets me into trouble with the neighbors.

I am being assisted today in all my activities, including typing, by a marmalade kitten who could be yours. I heard small and plaintive meows this morning, thought I’d better check outside, and found the source instead in the guest room, eyeing me from the top of a bookshelf. A brief interrogation of the usual suspects turned up the facts. Catapult Kid and Dark-Haired Daughter found her on the side of the road last night; Dark-Haired Daughter kept her in her room most of the night but finally put her out in order to go to sleep.

After an hour of strenuously expressing her undying devotion, the marmalade kitten has relaxed enough to curl up next to my right hip to go to sleep. Before her green eyes close, she watches me with trust, even faith. She knows I’ve given her one dish of food and been here for an hour beside her, and on that basis, she is willing to believe that everything is better for now and for always. She has no clue that it takes money I don’t have to get her shots, to have her spayed and to buy twice the cat food and litter.

Yes, she could still be yours, but you’d better hurry up and claim her, or I’ll be asking for donations to the marmalade cat maintenance fund instead. More realistically speaking, I’d better get her to the animal shelter within the hour .

Last night I found myself at a Meijer’s store across the river, about an hour from home. I had some time on my hands, about four hours of it. I had ducked into the store to buy some fine-point pens and to use the restroom. I had no idea where the office supply section was, so I wandered the store for a little while and found myself in the sewing aisle. I looked wistfully at the sewing machines - mine has ceased working after many years’ use - but saw nothing to covet. I know the machine I actually do covet: it’s a professional mechanical Singer sewing machine with metal parts instead of plastic, no fancy electronics, just a sturdy basic machine. It’s not that I plan to do any sewing this summer. If I had money for fabric, I’d make slipcovers for the living room couch and love seat, but that project will have to wait.

Still, I was itching to make something, and when a pretty ball of cotton yarn caught my eye, I wanted the simple repetitiveness of crocheting. I haven’t crocheted anything since I was in college. I don’t know how to knit at all, though I suspect I will try to learn sometime. And I wanted the pretty balls of yarn. I settled on a project depicted on the label - a string bag. Instructions were promised on the reverse side of the label. I don’t need a string bag, to be honest about the matter, and I did not need four little balls of yarn and a needle. But sometimes it is good to make a thing, to do it instead of buy it, partly for the satisfaction in the doing, partly for the ritual, and partly just to remember how such things are done. Everything comes to us so easily in this culture. We hold out a piece of plastic and the thing we want is ours. We acquire things thoughtlessly, own things thoughtlessly, and dispose of them thoughtlessly. We are impoverished because we are no longer connected to the making.

Everything we own has a story. Everything we eat has a story. Sometimes the stories are stories we don’t want to hear, like the story of how the pallid egg came to rest on the breakfast plate, or how handiwork acquired at a desirable price represents hardship. Sometimes the stories are uninspiring, like the story of the plastic mixing bowl on the shelf at Wal-Mart or Target. I find myself less oblivious to the stories of things than I used to be. I feel the need to make a cotton string bag and use it for a very long time, until it falls apart. On impulse, I buy a small handmade bowl from a potter to mix my bread dough in, not a plastic bowl from a big box store. I plant a seed to grow food for the table. I want less, but the things I have - their nature and their origin and their impact - matter more.

So today, needle in and needle out, pattern ignored (who needs all that tiny cryptic print anyway), a string bag grows row by row, all purple, teal, lavender, and maroon, in the quiet of the empty house on a Saturday evening, while the cat sleeps nearby at the foot of the bed.