Orb Weavers, Webs, & the World

Above: A little picture-in-picture action for you. Different views of this spider who has attached herself to my patio umbrella.

This is a female Neoscona spider, most likely Neoscona arabesca. (The second link has an awesome close-up of all the eyes!) Orb Weavers are known as such because they weave in the kind of concentric design most of us picture when we think of spider webs.

When I think of the prototypical spider's web, I think of three things, all of which are depictions of webs (one, verbal, one verbal/visual, one just visual) as much as any actual spider's web. The first is a Whitman poem, the second is E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, and the third is a series of works on paper by Vija Celmins.

①

A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated;
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres, to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

— Walt Whitman

I feel ya, Walt! O my soul, "the vacant vast surrounding"!

②

"Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting. 'See me now?' she asked." (page 36-7)

Charlotte is an Araneus cavaticus or Barn Spider, another Orb Weaver. My spider is much smaller than a gumdrop. She's about a quarter-inch across.

"A spider's web is stronger than it looks. Although it is made of thin, delicate strands, the web is not easily broken. However, a web gets torn every day by the insects that kick around in it, and a spider must rebuild it when it gets full of holes." (page 55)

Oh, the continual rebuilding!

Here's what else I love that E.B White said:

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."  — E.B. White quoted by Israel Shenker in  The New York Times, July 11, 1969

"All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. I guess you can find it in there if you dig around."  — E.B. White quoted in LIFE magazine, December 11, 1964.

I feel ya, E.B.!

③

“Maybe I identify with the spider. I'm the kind of person who works on something forever and then works on the same image again the next day."— Vija Celmins

"I found some scientific images of webs at the natural history museum. Very exciting. I thought these webs described the space I always wanted to describe — a surface that has small facets that rigorously account for and record every intersection; a lived on surface. Also, it was an emotional image that would draw people in, so the carefully accounted for space was contrasted with an emotional melacholic image. You know I like that combination of contrasts — a sort of double reality." —Vija Celmins (interview with Simon Grant)

I feel ya, too, Vija! That repetition, the tedious crafting! That seductive "double reality" of combining contrasts!

✷

So, to close, another pic of my little lady octoped: