Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Spider and the Fly: Make A Wish

Ever feel like "things aren't what they seem"?  Or perhaps, it's that things are what they seem but are also quizzically something else as well.  Something extra, that wasn't in your initial intent when you were searching on google for pictures of Maggie Gyllenhaal and administrative work and that's when you come across a mix of the two with Secretary and whoopsydaisyBAM.


You're in a BDSM website with very graphic images and/or audio.


I find adages, such as "Things are never what they seem," while good advice, tend to have a sinister quality about them.  As if we should beware the things that we are already unable to control.  Sort of like that other adage, "Be careful what you wish for..." That line just seems so unfair.  Wishes are meant to be filled with hope, joy for the future, and exuberance over the possibilities of life.  Being careful states there is a future involving a certain level of pain and/or death.


Turns out, from my experience, both are possible from making one wish.


And turns out, there's more drama in my window than the entirety of my life in the year of 2010.



Not that I was wishing, secretly, for drama to break out in my room.  No, in fact I generally avoid the window specifically because of my neighbor outside the window.  But, this morning was different.


**Note:  When I say morning, from now on, I mean technically after noon but it felt like morning because it was foggy outside.


So, this morning I hear this Fly buzzing around my room, making a racket.  It's loud.  It's annoyingly constant.  I consider opening my window, although it was freezing.  But, I don't.  Instead I just wish, "Something please make this Fly and this noise go away."


For a moment I forget about it, typing in Maggie Gyllenhaal into google search.  But, then I hear the buzz again only this time it is FEROCIOUS BUZZING.


I look up and there is the Fly, up in the high corner of my window.  And it's staying in this one spot, vibrating with a fury.  The shaking becomes more and more frantic, as if it's trying to win the Best Of award from Good Vibes. 


That's when this huge, giant, Shelob-Is-My-Bitch Spider comes creeping down to the struggling, now very much caught Fly.


I could hear the Fly respond to its surprise company a la "Oh FUCK THIS." and it starts buzzing/vibrating even more.


But it's too late.  The Fly is caught--the struggling only seems to strengthen the hold the webbing has on it.  The web continues to vibrate at a hummingbird rate and the Spider is like barely able to walk along the planks of it's web.  After walking around the fly, surveying it's very upset prey, it seemingly walks away.  Only it doesn't.  The Spider has taken a thread of the net that surrounds The Fly and slowly pulls on it and thus, the Fly, back up to it's layer, hidden in the wood work of the window.


And I'm standing there staring, horrified.





And I can't look away.







The Fly keeps making it's horrendous noise.  But, all I can hear is my wish I had made minutes earlier.  Please just make this Fly and this noise go away.


In a twist of dark humor, it occurs to me that the later half of the wish has yet to come true.


But then fly then stops buzzing.


I freeze.


It buzzes once again, in a final whimper attempt to flee, even though I can't even see it from my stance, five feet below in the Safe Zone of no-web.


And then there is silence.






Wish granted.
-Beryl


Woo Update:





Woo does this thing my dad likes to call "Crocodile Eyes."  

This is Woo asleep, as per usual.



This is Crocodile Eyes:



**Edited again to add:  Thank you for the anonymous tipoff of the Rapper Graphs in the last comments section; I totally used them as inspiration (and will continue to) for my blog.   Awesome.

8 comments:

  1. I like this post. It was like a Simpsons episode. At first, it was like: I'm all about how much drama there is (with a nice chart and everything) and then it turned ever so deftly to be about a fly in your bedroom. "Ze goggles. Ze do nothing!" I'm glad the spider won. Go Buddha!

    Is it appropriate to cheer for Buddha? Ah, fuck it... Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaa!!!!!

    I have to agree with you father; Woo has crocodile eyes.

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  2. Mark-- MCBAIN. Oh my god, I love McBain. And I just spent way too much time on youtube, watching clips of him. I hadn't actually read The Spider and the Fly poem until I read this post--it's quite a wonderful children's fable-poem, although slightly unnerving, like what I witnessed yesterday, ha. Thanks for reading!

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  3. You have a bigger problem: time to clean your room (at least to get rid of the spiderwebs).

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  4. Amy- I did! I swear I did! It's like my window has a permanent "For Lease" sign on the outside I can't see that invites big spiders in.

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  5. Brilliant. Love the drawings! <3

    Your post reminded me of the time I fed a dead fly to a rather scraggly-looking spider in one of my grandma's windows. Would it help my case much if I wrote that I think it was recently after watching Charlotte's Web?

    I'm also reminded of the time I killed a fly but couldn't find where it went...until my mom went to the kitchen, filled up the glass by the sink, and after drinking for a second...you guessed it...proceeded to choke and eventually spit out the fly.

    Thanks for taking me back, Beryl. Thank you. So much.

    hehe :c)

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  6. Alana--I love the original Charlotte's Web animation series. For some reason she wasn't a spider to me--she was a sparkly creature that sang and wrote stuff in shiny material. Apparently my arachnophobia is sparkly-dependent.

    The fact that you left a fly in a glass because you "couldn't find it" leads me to be wary of taking a cup from you from now on. Just saying.

    Ah, the blog these days is becoming exciting--thank you and thank you everyone else for reading; keep doing it, I shall only persist.

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  7. The "Shelob-is-My-Bitch" description made me simultaneously shudder and laugh out loud. Congrats.

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  8. Snapespeare - I take your fear and laughter as an enormous compliment.

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