Odilon Redon: The spider, she smiles, her eyes look up (1881)
"Poison can displace purpose in any life."

I'm a sucker for spiders. Were I a fly, I'd have long ago been wrapped in web, sucked dry, and displayed like a trophy. I'm fortunately no fly, but I still seem to try to get along with the spiders in my life. Most, I just leave behind. Considering them trolls, I unfriend them and abandon any further attempt to tame or relate with them. Others, I cannot so blithely dispense with. They're dear friends of dear friends or, shudder, ex-spouses. These manage to corner me unaware, though I could argue that I should never let down my watchfulness when they're near. They must be out to get me because they always seem to catch me. I might enter an encounter hoping for better, but they dispense their worst, which they seemed to have been saving up just to bushwhack me with again. I've tried hardening my heart, holding deep suspicions as if they were reasoned conclusions, but I never seem able to maintain that stance. I let down my guard and they commence to have at me again, leaving me stunned and confused. Lucys snooker Charlie Browns again and again and again. I might be a Charlie Brown.

I come to learn that I committed a sin so grievous that it could never be forgiven. It apparently deserves a life-long sentence with additional punishment due whenever our paths cross. I might hold no particular animosity, but that doesn't matter except as further evidence that I remain clueless. I could, they seem to suppose, demonstrate remorse I must be incapable of convincingly delivering. The harder I try, the more I seem to have always been guilty, guilty of the original sin and also guilty of demonstrating no convincing remorse for having committed it. These encounters don't always turn to shit, for predictable results might somehow lessen their impact. Better, I guess, to leave me believing that bye-gones might have actually passed and leave me defenseless.

The following day, I can't seem to find my spot. I still have no clue how the spider construed such scathing motives for my behavior, much of which I very much doubt I ever actually committed. I become a projection, one constructed from least generous interpretations. She told me what my action meant, which she should recognize I could not have possibly intended that. The worse for me are all the sins I somehow committed in my absence. Had I been there, the story unfolds, something might have been averted. I'd shirked some commitment I doubt I ever explicitly made. Still, there were apparently expectations I utterly failed to deliver against, further evidence of just how clueless I have always been. There was a once upon a time when I firmly believed we'd accomplished a mind meld. That state went to Hell eons ago.

Poison can displace purpose in any life. The Trumpers who can never forget a slight come to live for their grudges, forcefully rejecting any and every attempt to make them right, upping the ante whenever resolution threatens their purpose. They seem to live to nurture the memory of the wrongs committed against them, whether or not anyone intended to produce those outcomes or were in any way complicit. If you're not helping them nurture their wound, you become the source of it. This perspective works like magic, a sleight-of-hand trick the aggrieved never notice themselves performing. It leaves them wondering where that ace came from. They play that card as if it trumped everything, proud of their prowess, spewing poison. I remain uncertain just who's the victim, the spider who seems compelled to victimize or the fly who continually falls prey to the venom.

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #HeadingHomeward, #PureSchmaltz