Enough to Settle the Dust

I raised the toilet lid this morning and found a spider treading water. Apparently it had just fallen in. I rolled up a small piece of paper, which it quickly climbed onto, took it outside, and let it climb off onto our front step. It wasn’t too large — maybe half an inch across, including its legs. It probably rode into the house on my hair, as I run into spider webs outside every day. They’re draped everywhere, as they always are in the fall.

Imagine sitting in your office, or boardroom, or a henchman’s villa, thinking genocide and mass expulsion is the best way forward.

Then remember some of the little things you’re angry about.

The clerk ignored me.

I hate their new packaging.

Last night it rained enough to settle the dust, but there is still some smoke in the atmosphere from wildfires south of here.

Two of our neighbors are raising pungent marijuana crops in their backyards. When I was out running early this morning, the misty atmosphere made the smell even stronger, so much that it was unpleasant to pass through the invisible skunk-like cloud.

Freedom is a funny thing. So is law. Funny, because people love and abuse them, and don’t really know which is which, or what they are.

Read the thirty-second and thirty-third chapters of Middlemarch, finishing Book III, “Waiting for Death,” and bringing me to Book IV, “Three Love Problems.” Vol. II, Page 68.

Rain.

September 24, 2023.

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