“Can you dispose of it in a humane manner once you’ve done playing with it?”
These were not his exact words.
They were just what I heard…
I was slightly distracted by the voices in my own head to hear his voice, although it did filter through, a bit.
.
And no, he didn’t catch me in the act of doing something heinous,
like a serial killer,
doing serial killing stuff,
his words about what I was doing reflecting his unease…
his unease…
perhaps cognitive dissonance,
a need make sense of what does not make sense,
to cover up perhaps…
unease…
fear…
caused by his attention drawn…
to me,
what I was doing,
what was the focus of my doing…
fear…
that if he drew my attention to him…
Yet also fear causing him to draw my attention to him…
inadvertently…
deliberately…
the fine line between…
.
Nothing remotely like that…
.
Pause.
.
Breathe.
.
His exact words were more along the lines of – “Please can you put the spider outside once…
.
Hang on I just have to apply some reincarnation therapy to a fly buzzing around my head…
.
Okay,
objective missed and total failure achieved…
Now, where was I?
.
“Can you please, once you’ve done photographing it, put the spider, your model for this photoshoot, outside in the garden… I’m okay with it in the garden. That’s its territory, the territory of nature. But. In the house, on the ceiling, above a place my head often travels under… I’m not okay with that. That’s my territory. But it doesn’t have to die just because I’m not okay with that… it just needs to not be there, here, over here… make it go over there, far from over here.”
.
Those were not his exact words either.
.
It’s really hard to listen to what someone is saying when you’re busy writing a post in your head to go with the pics you’re taking on your camera… focusing on taking those pics… pics on your camera which will never live up to what your head has in mind, but that’s… okay… ?
.
And it’s not easy to recall anything, or to concentrate and focus, when a fly keeps buzzing you… that buzz sounds ominous, there must be thunderstorms in the air.
.
Playing with the pics which I took of the docile (to those whose kryptonite does not involve spiders) Harvestman spider, phalangum opilio (what a grand name), in Photoshop, using the rather delicious Topaz Labs set of filters…
I found myself exploring different views of an old foe… the foe of fee fi fo… phobia… of him, of some, of many…
but not me…
.
I don’t feel superior for not having that particular phobia…
.
If only I could…
.
But…
.
Luckily I can’t…
.
I’ve experienced it once…
couldn’t sleep because of it,
because of a small which seemed huge,
spider over my head,
my head on the pillow of a bed,
a bed is a place of rest,
but not always…
not when a small seemingly huge spider is above it threatening…
the threats only a human mind can imagine and build upon,
especially at night.
.
Human nature and the natural world…
sometimes the same,
sometimes very different,
worlds apart,
yet intertwined.
.
I don’t have arachnophobia….
.
Except for that one night,
long ago…
not forgotten…
.
Memory comes when memory’s old…
…on a bed of spider web.
.
But I have other phobias,
other types of kryptonite…
the same and not the same.
.
Phobia…
our kryptonite,
whether we’re a hero, heroine…
or not,
maybe,
who knows…
we all have something or someone which renders us vulnerable in some way.
.
Vulnerability,
is it a weakness or a strength?
.
May ‘we all’ is generalising…
.
Or personalising…
.
Empathy,
not empathy?
.
Through the eye of a photograph…
a photograph capturing what the eye could see and going beyond that to what it could not see, at first…
.
I saw a spider as..
.
A synapse firing:
.
.
.
.
A fearful spectre:
.
.
.
.
And just a spider, with a slight psychedelic (PS filter) glow:
.
.
.
.
.
.
An Upturned Soul 
I have been called someone’s kryptonite.
I had never heard the daddy longleg called a harvestman before. Learned something new here. But daddy longlegs are not really spiders. 🙂
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You’re right, Harvestmen are arachnids but not spiders. However they look like spiders more than the other subspecies of arachnid, so if it looks like a spider, even if it isn’t a spider…
There’s a hilarious Ricky Gervais skit about the Daddy Longlegs. Although he’s confusing the Crane Fly (also known as a Daddy Longlegs) with the Harvestman.
Don’t rely on anything you learn from me… I’m always a bit confused about everything.
So, do you know why you were called someone’s kryptonite, such information can be very useful.
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