My panoramic window is my bird's eye view on life. It opens onto a park and an abundance of trees; the creek curving through, now shows its dry walls and the bottom. In it birds, ducks and squirrels bustle around. Closer, over my head, sea-gulls and crows swoosh over the roof above. Humming birds hover in the aura of a near plum-tree.
Sometimes far-flown visitors alight as well. One misty morning a flock of yellow-chested finches settled in the plum-tree’s naked branches preening themselves and hopping in ever changing groupings of two and three.
Another time a big bird settled in the lower branches; a hawk or a falcon, certainly a bird of prey, outfitted in a beautiful coat of feathers. As its feet clenched the branch, expecting some small prey to land on the bird-bath below, it kept jerking its head both ways, even looking up at me with its bright yellow eye, returning my gaze.
Not long ago the air was filled with ducks’ quacking, as they desperately tried to chase away the crows, laying waste to their eggs. My calling the park management didn't stir anyone's interest, just like in the 70ies, when I tried to stop the destitution of small, field animals running in front of the field-razing bulldozers, making room for the arising Silicon Valley. But here and now, after a few days, the quacking died down and the crows got sparser. In the night the life-and- death drama goes on in our bucolic setting, when out of the dark a bird’s screech seres the silence, like a solitary spark of spent fireworks in the black sky. Feeling sad? – that's life – beautiful, cruel and abundant. Animals respond to human compassion. Another time the "resident ducks" on our lawns, ran aflutter. A female, chased by several males, frantically tried to escape their courtship. Standing in the middle of it, I shooed away the males, even throwing small stones at them, without hitting any. The duck hen ran-flew right at and past me as if asking for protection.
Back to the window. Starting at the corners, generations of spiders wove their nets – not the classical, star-bursts of Belgian lace, but a double weave of native American “industrial strength” nets in a random pattern and shape, sometimes spreading over the surface of a window like a screen. I have the windows washed occasionally. Recently, I noticed a nickel-size and shaped spider hanging in mid air from the eaves. It swung motionless on the air current. On a cold morning, its legs folded, it seemed dead. But as the day progressed, it would unfold its check-off legs and show signs of life. I let it hang there for a week or two. In the past, spiders would appear and disappear, probably managing their other “properties”. But this one stayed on his post, never taking the time off.
Sofia, my perceptive art student, spied it first thing, when she entered the apartment. As it is close to Halloween, she drew a quarter web with a spider in it on a styrofoam square – our printing block; then she mixed the blue sky for it (video) and as we repositioned the block-image on the paper*, a full, round web emerged with a spider in all four corners ("it's all in the family"**) and a nice print to boot.
By now the windows needed “dewebbing” and washing. I watched the spider and wished it would go away and spare me killing it. But it hung to its rope, erroneously, as if to life. No matter how odious a certain species may be to us, their tenacious clinging to life stirs a congenial response in us. But my spider didn’t sense danger, even when I came close to it, taking a picture. It didn't sense that it was at the same time "eternalized" and soon to be sacrificed to the gods of clean windows. Few days after the windows were washed. The gods were silent.
Then, one morning, looking up at the trees, the sky, there it was, an incarnation of the previous spider, in size and form, dangling on his Sisyphus rope, continuing his toil; am I again to send it down the tube in a blind effort to get rid of its kind. I held off for a few days, both to delay the vacuuming chore, as well as destroying an innocent being which had done me no harm.
Next, another morning, the view of the tree-tops, the sky but – no spider. As if it felt my wishing to spare its life, it had crawled off, or was it pecked up by a bird. . . I rather imagine, it retired to its other haunts. It hasn’t been back since.
* my technique – "Painterly monoprinting"
**Humphrey Bogart's line in "Sabrina"
