Maybe you can’t tell what this is—I couldn’t when I was doing warm-ups this morning. It looked at first like a ring of smoke, or a ghost. I stopped and walked up to it, found a web, a spider weaving round and round, 36 spokes, working inward. The web overall is kite-shaped, cords from the outer diamond points stretching to branches and ground—fifteen feet high, ten feet wide. The business part of the web—circular—a foot plus in diameter. The ring of smoke.

I stopped and watched the spider's progress, the glistening net, a universe trembling before me. A soft breeze made it bulge and expand, made it pulse. I saw just how our threads interweave across time and space. I saw how metaphors work, and the bending of time. I saw the web as a perfect iteration of universe, its construction frought with intersection, the weaving of threads. Even with all of its empty space, it still catches wind like a kite or sail. Flexes as though a great force pulls its center. Outer connection points arch closer to inner, just for a moment, and then release.

Space, time, synchronicity, metaphor, iterations, intersections, bending of light—in short, connection—all modeled by this industrious spider, small and undramatic in appearance. My photo doesn’t do her effort justice.

I went back to my practice. I arched at the waist, my arms tracing circles 360 degrees along horizon. The spider worked the vertical plane—I the horizontal—touching each spoke of universe.