February: The Stuff of Nightmares

I return to the Spiders room and stand in the doorway to try and get some unpeopled pictures of the sculptures. I’ve come to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on a February Friday, dragging my friend along with me to see this exhibition specifically. He’s off staring at neon light art, and I’ve wandered backwards. Back to see again the one tall spider alone by the window, the cascading series of five spiders in a line like an unusual version of Russian nesting dolls, the ten-foot-tall spider just there, the spider the size of my mother’s cairn terrier set on a round pedestal, and another one only slightly smaller than that affixed to the wall. 

“It’s the stuff of nightmares,” a woman says, hovering at the edge of the entrance.

It flashes through my mind to keep silent, but I can’t bite my tongue quickly enough. “I love them,” I say, “I think they’re beautiful.” For they are with their delicate legs and cocoon shaped bodies in their iron and steel casings. I gush on with something like (but perhaps not as eloquently), “Bourgeois’s mother was a tapestry weaver and Bourgeois wanted to show the spider as something nurturing and loving, not simply as something to fear.” But by this time, the woman has walked away. Fortunately for her, she knows how to get out of being explained to. Afterall, she didn’t come to hear me give a lecture. Making a face at myself, I shut my mouth and take a step into the room.

The spider, for me, has become a symbol of freedom and of befriending fear. It’s become the emblem of adventure. It’s a sign of my individual fortitude. The spider reminds me to take the time to understand what I haven’t previously understood; that which I’ve only reacted to and been afraid of. To see the beauty in what isn’t commonly loved. To appreciate the life of all living creatures. It stands for a lot.

My nightmares are made up of other things.

And yet, as I think about it actually happening like a movie in my mind, I do have to admit if that spider on the wall came to life and started down toward me, I might move pretty quickly in the other direction. Or if the pedestal spider turned and came my way, I’d probably say something that my grandmother would be shocked at hearing. Something that might rhyme with “spit.”

Once, while sitting at my writing table in my apartment in the Scottish Borders, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. A ghost. A visitor. Startled, for I thought I was alone, I turned my head to see a giant wolf spider heading toward my feet at something close to Mach speed. To be fair, it was only the size of a half dollar coin. Even so, I said, “Oh spit,” and moved my feet up off the floor.

After that initial shock, and before I lost sight of it, I caught it and let it outside. Yet, while having squelched my flight response, my adrenaline had kicked in and I had to turn some circles before I could sit down and work again.

So, I get it. The stuff of nightmares.

Certainly, it’s smart to have a healthy respect of spiders. We’re biologically conditioned to avoid things that might kill us advertently or inadvertently. So, there’s that.

But it’s funny how we always assume the worst of things. It’s not as if the Scottish spider running across the floor was out to get me. It probably didn’t even know I was there. And, unless I suddenly had the extreme misfortune to find myself in a horror flick, it’s not as if one of these steel or bronze spider statues—if one came to life—would immediately attack.

I like that Bourgeois rejected the traditional portrayal of the spider as evil. Her spider is not the oozing, fat, sly demon of Tolkien’s world. It’s not the wicked, opportunistic gang of spiders in one of the Harry Potter books. It’s not the red-faced and fanged Empress of Racnoss from Doctor Who. It’s also not quite Charlotte of Charlotte’s Web, but nevertheless, I like that Bourgeois called her 30-foot-high version of the spider Maman. Mama.

I like that I’ve seen one of the Mamans in person.

I guess in the end, the stuff of nightmares is subjective.

The day after I write the previous sentence, at bedtime, I reach to turn out my lamp when I see a good-sized wolf spider making its way up to the top of my yoga mat which stands upright next to my bed, which is right next to my face (apparently, I run across a fair number of wolf spiders. Or, more likely, I tend to call all non-web making spiders wolf spiders. This might not be completely arachnidly accurate). When I move the mat, the spider drops to the carpet and hastens in the opposite direction, away from me. For a moment, I wonder if I can feel comfortable sharing the room with it. With a sigh, I decide I cannot. I like spiders. When I can see them. From a decent distance. Not in, not near my bed. We’re cool, but not that cool.

Getting up, I gaze down at the spider. It’s still in motion and I don’t have an appropriate container near to hand. My tea cup still has both a smidgen of tea and a teabag in the bottom and I don’t want to clean tea off the carpet or drench the spider. I don’t want to go to the kitchen for a glass because then I might lose my new friend altogether. What I do have is an empty Ziplock bag.

Carefully, I manage to catch the spider in the bag without hurting it or myself. I slide a piece of paper under the opening and cart us all off to the back door. Letting it free into the night, I say, “Sorry to put you outside.” I go back to my room and sleep the sleep of one with a clear conscience (or at the least with a room cleared of known spiders).

Acknowledging the contradiction between what I’m going to say next and the fact that I just put a spider out alone into the dark, I like to imagine that if those Bourgeois spiders came to life, they’d be my friends and I’d be their friends.

After all, spiders are really good for the world. They help keep bug populations down which diminishes disease-carrying pests and fosters a healthy ecosystem. Not only that, but web-weaving spiders create astounding and intricate pieces of art (albeit deadly ones for those aforementioned bug populations) and can be used as examples of design mastery and patience, if one was inclined to use them that way. As far as strange spider facts go: more than one spider has been sent to space to see if web-weaving is possible in microgravity. As a matter of fact, it is. That’s pretty cool. Also, back on Earth, jumping spiders have some of the cutest little faces you’ll ever see. With over 35,000 species of spiders (on Earth and in space), there’s a lot to appreciate. There’s a lot there to love. More than statues, though there are those too.

When it comes down to it, in reality, we humans pose a much greater danger to spiders than they do to us. The truth as it stands now, for spiders, is that we are the stuff of nightmares.

I’m sure the museum-visiting lady is glad she got away from me when she did.