The other day I wrapped my palm around one of the trunks of some laurel trees in a place where I practice. Immediately, I felt… strong, rhythmic strikes that permeated the wood. One of the stellar’s jays that knows me there, was talking into my hand. With its whole body. And not just the body that was there, with me… somehow, all of its ancestors and relations where included. His »time-body was talking into my hand through the wood we were both grasping.

And when I reflect upon this I am astonished.

But what do you suppose it was saying?

∞

In lucky years, there’s a specific species of small garden spider that would make a web outside my door. I have never seen a male make a web.

I became extremely intimate with a few of these spiders. Sometimes, they are missing a leg. This is usually due to either having repelled a web-stealing kind of spider (very dangerous) or a wasp (extremely dangerous).

I watched them often enough to see males approach the web. The ensuing communications were profoundly complex. Something far subtler than the jay’s wood-strikes. Of course, wood is not web…

But there was something else.

Young male spiders would sometimes select an anchor strand, and just live along with the female as a satellite-spider. They might occasionally feed on extremely tiny prey that the female overlooked. But they would study her. Through the strands of the web. As they developed. Sometimes for more than a week.

I strongly suspect that males who do this… probably enjoy special advantages later, when they mature, and it is the time when they embody the origin.

Maybe of everything, everywhen.