webs

saturday night, and the world spins on, indifferent. i have no intention of going out or putting in any effort towards social interaction. every interaction these days seems like a test. each moment assigns itself a plus or minus. i say a joke +1, i struggle with eye contact -1, i don’t fuck up my eyeliner +1, i complain about my job -1 -1. every moment i’m counting, calculating if the value makes me negative or positive. sometimes i think i’m losing it. what if i missed a number, miscalculated the numerical value of my actions. people keep tell me to be more positive and i tell them i’m trying. it’s all just math i say.

i can feel myself getting more dull, running out of things to say. i can't tell if it's brain fog or if I'm losing iq points. i tried googling “brain cell mass suicide” but nothing came up besides a prevention hotline and something about alzheimer’s disease. either way i'd rather not be perceived. i recognize this is a fantasy. i've convinced myself that inaction and isolation makes me mysterious. really, it's just fear with a bit of self-pity mixed in there.

i decide that i'm going to an art exhibit opening. it feels safe. i like activities that position you as an observer. i don't want to talk, i want to be the receiver. i want to position myself in proximity with art and culture, without the effort of contributing anything of my own. if interaction is the sum of positives and negatives, then maybe passiveness is a straight 0. there's no equation. all i want is a mathless existence.

this is an ongoing pattern of mine. there's a safety in passiveness that i bound myself in. a security blanket that fails to keep you warm. it's wrinkly, stained, laced with holes. is its safety a product of the warmth it provides or the memory of the warmth that it provided long ago? regardless, i wrap myself tight.

i drive to the gallery, which sits across a gas station in west hollywood. it’s small and unassuming. i open the door and immediately get handed a glass of wine that costs more than my self esteem. the exhibit is by Tomas Saraceno, an artist who is, to put it lightly, obsessed with spiders. and not just the idea of spiders or spiders as some vague concept. the man quite literally has a space in berlin where he houses different breeds of spiders, analyzing their web patterns and behavior.

(some of my favorite exhibit titles include: Web(s) of Life, How to Hear the Universe in a Spider/Web: a Live Concert for/by Invertebrate Rights, Arachnomancy Cards, Arachnid Orchestra: Jam Sessions, AnarcoAracnoAnacroArcano. the list goes on).

he sets up these elaborate installations that serve as collaborative spaces for both the artist and the spiders, placing transparent nylon threads across the structure, and then introducing different breeds of live spiders into the environment, allowing them to roam freely and construct their webs according to their natural instincts. each type of spider contributing a different pattern and impression onto the space. the resulting artworks are not just physical structures but living ecosystems.

and these webs are not just physical formations, but extensions of the spider’s own psyche and internal timeline. a study from Oxford found that spiders have sophisticated cognitive systems and use webs as a form of extended cognition such that the spiders’ decision making and memories are outsourced beyond it body. the spiders use mental maps to construct their webs, tailoring the tension and size of each strand based on their immediate needs, as well as what they have learned from past weavings. in this sense, the web acts as timeline of memories, each section and strand acting as a placeholder for a certain period of time.

there’s something eerie about seeing a creature’s entire universe on a macro level. observing each surface and crevice from above as if you’re playing god. except instead of creating worlds and universes, i was just observing them, like a bored deity binge watching a reality show.

i think about my own webs—all that i have physically materialized in my life. how do you prove truth and realness without concrete evidence? my passivity lingers. watching, not acting. i struggle to uncover evidence of my existence beyond the ephemera of thoughts and emotions.

back home. door closes. bed calls. sheets cold. thoughts colder. tomorrow's another day. another test. another tally. pluses, minuses. but for now, there's sleep. and in sleep, there’s peace. i dream of webs. maybe tomorrow i’ll wake up as a spider and create my own universe.