A guest from the past

Some interesting (to me) progress on understanding my longstanding spiderweb phobia; not surprisingly, it isn't exactly and only spiderwebs. Back when I went to Norwood's birthday party, the subject came up of random things that gave us heebie-jeebies, and I mentioned spiderwebs as usual. His other ex asked me "Is it a texture thing?" which nobody had ever asked me before. I said maybe, or maybe in part, because the texture of having a web on you is pretty gross. Even though I also remembered trying one time to explain that a strand of web, once clinging to me, isn't exactly doing the web thing anymore... so I said that beyond texture there's also something about an invisible unknown structure in the air, holding stuff up, but whose extent is not known. I'm not particularly scared of cobwebs that are covered in dust or in dew/fog/moisture, or not in the same way -- though I'm still not about to go putting my hand in them, maybe that's the texture part.

So then more thinking. Looking at a dust-covered cobweb in the Esh bathroom, thinking "I could touch that and it would be gross, but I'm not getting much of a fear response." (Maybe I should touch it tomorrow).

Then in someone's backyard, there was some netting over an enclosure, and it looked invisible in some places because of the shade and the angle of the light; I could see leaves caught in the netting, and looking at that made me uncomfortable in a recognizable and related way. As if the leaves, hovering there obviously in a plane and supported by something, were stuck in a giant spiderweb. Weirdly, having become aware of it, I even got a ghost of the same feeling with bubbles in a coffee pod later (there were little bubbles on the surface of a big bubble -- annoyed, I made myself poke it with my finger to pop the bubbles).

Unless I'm surprised by something, or there's a web I have to deal with, this is all more a matter of discomfort than real fear.

I'm not the only one. There's some recent-ish discussion on Reddit lately, sometimes calling it "araneophobia", sometimes talking about things stuck on webs and "floating in the air" as a trigger (I identify with that). There's an article on Medium too, discussing it as a sensory "fear of touching" thing. For me, I think it's useful to realize that the sensory thing exists but is largely separate from the fear thing. And, I guess, nice to realize that I can still learn more about myself at this point in life.

Overall: heat wave, with the bug briefly testing positive for covid but me not getting it, followed by a pretty nice weekend. It felt like a lot of time went to chores and things while the bug was sick, but a lot of good stuff and progress happened regardless:

• Last week's heat wave did a number on my plants, which crisped up and lost a lot of leaves. There's another one coming, though not as bad as last week's, and I guess I'll water them more often this time but I'm starting to doubt they'll survive the summer. It's only June, ffs. I finished the stump and planted a new plant in there, though, and that's pretty cute.


• Some cooking beyond just meal kits: apricot quatre quarts pound cake which came out really, really good. Might make again. Might even buy the proper pan! Then I also made beef bourguignon for a friend whose cat is dying, because it's her favorite... and I also had no idea how long it was going to take. Ahahahahaha, "what's her favorite recipe?" Famous last words. She was glad to have it though.


• The new session has started at circus school! I've got my Friday nights back, but am doing a walkover miniseries with the tumbling coach on Thursdays and the first lesson was fun. I just need a reason to keep backbending so that I don't lose it.


• Medical stuff: dermatologist on Tuesday (I talked them into slicing off a mole I disliked), and an ultrasound on Friday. The ultrasound was for a lymph node in my groin that had mytseriously remained swollen for 3 months in the absence of evident infection or sickness, which they really aren't supposed to do... welp, the ultrasound showed a dumb little subcutaneous skin cyst right over my normal, healthy lymph node. The little thing had everyone fooled, including my RN. So learning that it's essentially nothing is great news. I also had an eyelid-puffing thing that started on Thursday, got worse through Friday night and is now getting better. Mysteries.


• Finished Chants of Senaar with the bug on Tuesday, and Frieren Season 1 with the squirrel on Wednesday.


• Went kayaking on the Mystic River with apfelsingail and my squirrel! Super fun. We had temperate weather, clouds and a calm river.


• Not sure what to say about my progress creating a crossword, but my collaborator for the 2nd time thinks we have a gimmick & theme combo worth digging in on, and we are Doing Spreadsheets in pursuit of same. I also, separately, downloaded and played around with Ingrid, the latest crossword construction software, which has been fun. Digging through wordlists gets me into some really random corners of language -- like, did you ever notice that BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS contains both VINE and TUBER? No! I bet you hadn't!

OK, and here's one more thing that's weirder. I passed a message to Lioness, who hasn't really responded respectfully to me in five years, and got a perfectly reasonable response back! I am astounded. Passing the message through a mutual friend we both trust is apparently what made the difference. I think that what I care about here is that a) she responded, instead of insisting I don't exist I'm not part of her life, and b) now I know for sure that she knows that Lion is trying to re-start some level of friendship with me. The actual content of her message was the usual "I don't care" bullshit, but that doesn't matter to me as much as a) and b) do, because I already know she's avoidant. I wanted the meta-message, and to be a little less scared. So here's to long shots and making strange requests of distant connections, I guess.

Happenings:

• The bug is back from Oregon; his mom remains in the hospital, or more accurately is back in the hospital, with pneumonia and two small strokes (?) having followed her hip surgery. Prognosis is cautiously optimistic but it may take her a while to get home again. In the meantime, the bug seems to have picked up something on his return travels. We are quiet today.


• I have done rather a lot of circus since last time. Handstands, a semi-private contortion lesson with another Zillian person who is apparently twenty years younger than me, acro practice, more acro practice.


• Finished a drawing lesson. I don't like coffee cups anymore; they are annoying to draw. Screw you, coffee cups. Mushrooms were much better.


• Spent a fair bit of Saturday buying, transporting and installing air conditioner units for tenants. My co-landlords were all having Moments, and it really fit in pretty well around Porchfest, anyway, for me to take care of most of it. Then yes, also the bug played Porchfest, in the backyard of the same house because everything happens at Blue-Green Street now, and I sat between friends and felt relaxed and happy.


• Did I mention Moments? Yeah, Perse and her other boyfriend have broken up, creating a Disturbance in the Polycular Force. (Not very long ago the four of us usually ate Tuesday dinner together, so this does affect me... it kind of sounds far away from me but it really isn't.) Date nights are changing around, and my squirrel-family is losing their nice convenient poly-symmetry. This is gonna be a trip... in the meantime, my Sunday night date moved to Sunday morning and damn, Henrietta's Table is really delicious.


• I played with Cursor and Sonnet on Sunday morning, which means vibe coding, and it was very quick and very infuriating. I'm almost certainly going to do more of it, as my new crossword puzzle hobby drags me further into futzing with word lists.

On the macro level, there's a vicious heat wave here (I'm worried about the squirrels) and uh, the US has attacked Iran nuclear facilities. I'm reading that Iran has (or had?) an underground enrichment facility that only the US had the right plane and the right bomb to knock out, and I get why the world might be better off without an Iranian nuclear state... and this is still queasy-making.

I'm enchanted, at the moment, by thoughts of conscious flexibility and looseness. Twice in the last week I've learned very physically that there can be more (and easier!) motion of one part of the body when there's part that's held firm and part that is loose and able to move freely. And I'm messing around with this as a metaphor, as my schedule loosens and life flows along. This has been my problem with handstands, and handstand jumps, all along -- I actually have to be disconnected through a certain part of my body in order to let my hips rise. Tiny Coach got me to jump onto a yoga block taller than I ever have before by having me hold my arms firm, relax the rest, and jump repeatedly (boing, boing, boing) while allowing my hips to actually move with the momentum of the jump..... after we did that, I went and did hand-to-hands with my base and we had more success, both on Friday and on Sunday, with that too. I'm talking like several jumps to balance in a row on both days. We still seem to need a big pile of safety mats in front of us but they're not actually doing anything, they're just there. So yeah, isolations. Where to hold firm, and where to be chill and adaptable while taking in momentum from the world or from others, currently is a fascinating lens on the puzzle of how to plan a life.