When we moved into our new refuge, the place being reasonably larger than the Studio we departed from – our lost sanctuary of old with a combination of relief and remorse. Settling in wasn’t too hard, just getting over the fact that the place we’d grown so accustomed to had suddenly lost its sense of purpose to us, betrayed all its flaws and faults and made us walk away from it without ever looking back was weird. The new place has independent rooms, a hall that was neatly converted into the corporate work area, everything from the kitchen to the bedrooms were just ace. A separate wing to the place offered an extra room overlooking my bedroom – that section being the rehearsal space. Now my bizarre little tale is about one of the washrooms. There are 2 in the premises you see… One nice, spacious one and another that’s tiny, almost child-like but poorly maintained. Initially the rare few who used the ‘tiny, not so tidy one’ tolerated a part of its mess: and mess being really that there were cobwebs here and there, a damaged toilet seat and a leak from the bum shower, and dirt smeared in many of the tiles. The shower area and sink were kept relatively clean in the name of hygiene and like most good things, that little toilet was somehow neglected. By the previous owners for some reason and then by us for a certain period of time. But since it was functional; always keeping it at the back of our minds that we will get a guy to come and clear it up and see to the necessary refurbishments later on. So one day while letting go of a terrible dump I noticed mimicked on the walls, were iridescent silver strands dancing in the caress of its shadows… it was a web; still in its infant stage right above the left hand side of the shower. Leaving spider-man aside I’ve really not shared much love for spiders, though I’ve often wondered about how strange they were. So after unloading gratifying toxic karma and when I was done, I looked close and saw a little spider. Not one of those big ass furry ones directly related to Tarantulas or other nasty kinds but here was a tiny thing – that didn’t honestly look petrifying at all – but like a little ball with little strings for legs. I took a shower and although the web was a fair distance away from the gushing spray of water, the rushing cosmic flow of h2o caused the little web to dangle vehemently and the little spider looked like it was bumping up and down – moshing almost - at 200 beats per minute. So feeling an emotion I couldn’t quite rub a finger to, I turned the angle of the shower and somehow subconsciously practiced this same showering system for some time.
One day I hit the shower and upon opening my eyes I notice that the web had grown in wonder and on it were little insects stuck on it, imprisoned with no hope of escape. Then my eyes moved just above my head and there was a spider; not the same little thing I had seen weeks ago but instead was a bigger, more defined shape, still with spindly legs but they were much longer and arched giving it a certain image and character (if it is the right word I wonder) that made it look almost terrifyingly cool. I marveled at how much progress it had made in the past few weeks and I realized that this handsome looking thing was in fact likkle spidy. But how in fuck’s good name did it get so big, so soon? Had it been that long since I last paid it any attention? And the few strands of silvery web had become a structured design, patterns of beauty for someone who’d admire it and a terrible snare for the unsuspecting victims who’ll waltz into the hands of death without a blink. So on and on this went… sometimes me wondering at the time what on earth we were really smoking up and the effect it was having on us; here I am spending quality time in the loo (time in the loo is always precious) and I am almost indirectly entertaining and actually allowing a spider to grow and build its kingdom. It was just one of those amazing things that you never ever think of in life. I mean the intricate detail that goes into a web being weaved, its scientific precision and I dare say it… It looked really beautiful… almost. The patterns zig, zagging and every scenario I’ve watched where a little insect, a mosquito or some other bug would just head to its doom.
I hate mosquitoes. So there were many times while I was laying a crap where I’d let one or two to settle on my skin and draw blood, then catch them in my palm making sure I don’t crush them to death and just fling them across to the web. At first it was a miserable situ, where they’d whiz past the web and break free. But then with practice I grew better at it and many of the damned mosquitoes soared into the mysterious diagram of death and stayed there.
That, my friends is the sadistic little part in me. It was always only mosquitoes though. It was their price to pay for sucking my blood. It didn’t bother me either that I actually enjoyed tossing them like darts into their proverbial death beds. I was gaining satisfaction from it. Because they had caused me some discomfort.
Now here is the thing about intervention. Was I ruining the natural ebb and flow of the mosquitoes? I mean if it doesn’t suck blood what the hell is it supposed to do? I can’t really picture anyone sitting, shaking their legs letting mosquitoes suck them dry and infect them with disease.
I’ve questioned this sense of intervening with nature’s cycle and design… Ok… so a couple of times I may have moved a little ant or two out of the web’s way… But then the most significant piece of fractured reality dawned on me. It’s the natural course of things. It’s just how things are. The way it’s meant to be. Leaving all sentimentality and nonsense aside point is the Spider has to eat, it needs to feed and as much as many of us may admire Lions, Wolves, Pythons, Leopards and Panthers… They need to eat to. They certainly don’t stop by McDonalds and order a Big Mac. So the fucking mosquitoes need to drink blood to. Just not my blood, if I can help it. Once again the sadist in me. 
This very cycle became an illustrated metaphor for me, as I watched each building block by building block set in place, the spider growing larger, damn thing must’ve been adrenalized on sex ‘cos soon it had spawned a legion of microscopic things with lean legs. I could hear Warrel Dane’s voice ringing in my head ‘My Children You Are My Army!’ But then very few of them survived. That was just how things were. How it was meant to be.
Did you guys notice how none of the other people using the loo ever did anything about the Spider? I mean it wasn’t a case where we sat in harmonious bonging sessions and discussed our friendly neighborhood Spidy in my washroom right. But it’s funny – these patterns random or intended how circumstances bleed into consequences. Just like life. Just like living. Just like death. Now had I done something about the spider initially I could’ve prevented it from causing such havoc in the loo; very soon there were countless other webs all over the loo and it became one big feeding frenzy sitcom. The web’s began to get thicker and more grotesque, grown heavy and weary of itself, of the contestant weaving, and weight of the dead, spiders of all shapes and sizes dangling like marionettes on the black web engulfing all its prey. Sometimes you’d almost imagine that it was like some twisted milky way with glinting and shimmering stars; all the numerous creatures wrapped in whole and hanging till their life was methodically sucked dry.
With all the stuff that was happening in my life I reasoned out and managed to thread piece by piece, web by web, strand by strand and metaphorically give it some kind of symbolic relevance. The spider could be objectively looked as society, developed from its primitive ignorance, to its masterful form to the vicious hunter it truly is… but then something happened that it surely could not have anticipated. Either due to greed or gluttony (or perhaps its very nature is incapable of discerning and differentiating between the two) the beautiful structured kingdom it had so majestically weaved begun to look disheveled, haunting and almost ghostly. A ghostly world that captured, tortured and consumed its prey without a hint of sympathy. Very much like society isn’t it? Where it becomes so essential that we are enraptured by it and what it offers, but then we just end up being either another strand in its grand design, its grand web or the victims. Just slaves oiling the grand machine so it would eventually unveil its true horror, its purpose and fate. A society that mirrors and masks our fate and lives. A society we are all exclusively a part of. To live or to die.
The second metaphor was somehow that subjectively, the spider could symbolize any of us. It could be me, it could be you and how carefully, strategically we weave our thoughts, ideals, beliefs and daily rituals into something cohesive, into something tangible, we mold our gifts and talents into a network of fabricated illusions and realisms, fantasies and opportunities only to finally seek what every human being seeks. Wealth, power, sex, legacy, status, reputation, acceptance, love, lust, more power… and at what cost? Would we succumb to every desire that craves success and triumph overlooking every possible tragedy? We’ve seen it smudged in the very pages of history haven’t we? How arrogance, ignorance and our thirst for greed has not only resulted in cacophonies of bitterness, countless wars and destroyed civilizations and cultures for power… for money… for megalomania. So to build our dreams, to weave and stitch it seam by seam how far would we go? How many of us really live and let live? How many of us will carve our own webs of opportunities knowing that those who oppose or deface us will be caught in it and lost forever? How many of us care enough to be a hunter that just needs to eat and feed and separate it from our gluttony to consume and deconstruct? 
Last weekend a guy comes over who is given the hefty task of mopping, rinsing, dusting and cleaning the entire premises, little garden, balcony, rooms and the washrooms. Life is so hectic at the moment, and its at times like these that I wish the friendship or its very concept that had been etched as an emblem at the Studio all those months ago would still be apparent… still alive… and breathing… But save for a precious few, many have become spiders and others have just become ornamental fast food in a nasty fucking web. It ain’t our web…certainly ain’t mine. And it makes me think that by staying together we could’ve outsmarted the web somehow, even made sense of every disaster… but is it too late? Is it?
As the cleaning guy was rinsing and wiping out every cobweb, every particle of dust from every corner of our Home something very obscure tugged at me, like a scythe slicing open my rib cage and leaving it open for the world to see. Something caught between illusion and reality. I thought of the little spider; and although it made a mess of the washroom eventually, and although what was beautiful was now ugly, and although its penchant to survive grew malignant… I was still able to appreciate those early infinitesimal details, the time when it was a wonder to watch and admire… Just before the cleaner hawked into that tiny, twisted washroom built for children I knew that the cycle itself had spun its monolithic invisible wheels and fate, time and circumstance was now upon the spider and its kingdom. The web of fate vs the web of a hunter. The natural course of events was simple: the spider would be killed, the sinister web would be destroyed. I don’t know what prompted me to do it. But I took a little cup and took the spider in it – the one I was sure was likkle spidy turned Venom and set it free, tearing it away from its web, its home of corpses. I don’t know why I did it, surely I couldn’t have grown attached to the spider? Nay. I had grown attached to its concept, its place in nature’s equilibrium, its function, its purpose, its very design. And I watched it grow from nothingness into something, from that into something else.
Perhaps I did intervene with nature again. Maybe I should have just let it be swept away like the rest of its kind all over the washroom. Along with its heavy, crumbling kingdom… How long before it has to start re-building everything from scratch somewhere else? Why didn’t I save every other spider in the washroom? Will it survive? Of course it will. It’s nature’s way. And if a little spider could survive an entourage of human beings; the most savage and merciless hunters on earth… then I honestly do believe the bugger would survive anything. So I tossed it out of a window and set it free.
I saved a spider… but allowed its world and kingdom to be destroyed. Which is the greater evil? Which is the lesser?
But one thing I do know about spiders is… they’ll rebuild another kingdom from scratch and start feasting again before we know it. Very much like humans. Very much like many people I know. Spiders I may be able to handle, and the intricate, ethereal labyrinth of a web I can always admire from now on… But even with the black and white winter canvas of right and wrong, the whys and why nots firmly tattooed within me.
I am certain of one thing. I will not tolerate bloodsuckers. Bloodsuckers of any kind.
I still fucking hate mosquitoes.
Don’t you? 
