"A Fellow Spinner"

She was on the outside of my window, exactly where I prefer a large bulbous-bodied spider to be. I became aware of her when dear, sweet Sebastian did his "mesmerized kitty" routine staring out the window.

I tried to see what he was looking at so intently, focusing, of course, on the park across the street. My jump when I saw the spider was worthy of any surprised feline.

When I realized she was outside, I calmed down and found myself settling in, cheek to cheek with little Bast as The Lady built her web.

Getting past two natural tendencies; "eek, a crawly thingee" and "cobwebs, blech, messy", was easy once I got interested in The Lady's work. I rapidly began to feel an affection for this fellow spinner; she spins webs, I spin tales. Is there a difference? She was actually quite lovely. A delicate shade of cream, with an intricate mottling of beige and brown. Long, jointed legs were wispy thin and moved with a grace that a ballerina could envy.

She didn't seem to mind the audience Sebastian and I made, but went about her duty with the conviction of natural instinct. A back leg would slide down her torso and guide a filament of webbing to its proper place. I was sure I could hear her humming as she worked. It had no real tune, that hum, at least not as we think of a tune. Instead, it was a resonance with the rhythm of life.

One translucent thread after another was attached to the spokes of the web. It was very much, I thought, like connecting scenes and dialogue to lines of a story, play, screenplay or novel.

I couldn't resist it. I carefully taped a piece of tracing paper on the window and drew out the web. The spokes I labeled "characters", "time line", "setting", etc. The very center became the "resolution". Each bar between the spokes I labeled as "scenes" or "dialogue".

As The Lady moved confidently from spoke to spoke I traced out an old story of mine, scene by scene, just to see if my idea would work, and guess what? It worked. It really did work!

On rare occasions a thread would cast a shadow on the tracing paper, but only long enough to lead my eye to the next spoke. Just like a well written scene moves you on to the next scene.

Once again nature was showing me that all my clever planning, careful outlining, and crafty plot twisting was being done by a small creature with imprinted knowledge and a good case of the munchies.

Sebastian and I watched her for almost two hours. Through the following days, I checked on her from time to time. She'd caught a meal or two, storing them by wrapping them in more filament, and carting pieces away for a spidery feast. She repaired the web where it needed it, disassembled parts and rebuilt them, much like a writer revising his/her work.

A squall or two hit the area one afternoon, and when I checked on The Lady her web was in ruins. As strong as it had been, it had been heavy with little storage cocoons and the added stress was too much for the web to hold securely. I peered into the nest she'd woven in the corner of the window sill but that, too, was empty. Sebastian looked all over the window but didn't find her either.

I sat down to look over the tracing paper and the series of name, places and scenes I'd written out. Sebastian crawled sadly into my lap. The Lady had given him many hours of interesting observation. Now he watched my finger as it moved down the "character" spoke of the tracing and then across the "scene" bars.

It was, I thought, a strong and logical diagram to use for writing. One that I plan on trying out, and soon.

I looked toward the window and sighed. Wherever my little fellow spinner had gone, I hoped she was as safe and as cozy in her new web as I was in my office spinning my tales. She'd taught me much and I was grateful. And, I hope she wouldn't mind if I still preferred she stay on the other side of the window.

Sable Jak has been a belly dancer, actress, body builder and arm chair archeologist. In addition to a weekly column on absolutewrite.com where she muses about "organic writing" she fulfils her fiction writing needs by writing screenplays and radio drama. Her mystery series, "A Phil Byrnes Mystery" will debut on www.virtuallyamerican.com in May.

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