No. 251 – Insignificance

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriters: Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Binaural

Year: 2000

Definitive Version: 6/16/00, Spodek, Katowice, Poland, 2000

The Fall of 2000, as I mentioned, marked the beginning of a significant change in my life. That timing, I’m certain, made a couple of small, unrelated incidents that happened during that time stand out more than they might have otherwise.

The first one had to do with the hate-hate relationship I had with spiders. Whether it was the light over the door to the deck or the motion light, Debbie and I had a light shining on the deck one night, and a huge spider sat in its massive web on the edge of the upper level of the deck. This spider was the size where you had to hit it a few times with a baseball bat just to subdue it.

Yuck! Off went the lights. We couldn’t see it, but we knew it still was there, lying in wait. Going outside to use the grill meant certain death, as the spider would spring from its web and sink its blood-dripping fangs into your face.

The next day, I went outside to do lawn work, and no trace of the brute remained—or of its web. I figured the spider just moved beneath the deck, ready to reach out and pull me in if I went to mulch the rosebushes. Nothing.

The next night, the spider was back in the same place—its dozen eyes trained on me as it licked its lips in anticipation. The day after I looked outside, and again it was gone.

What gives? I went outside to do something and noticed that a trace of the web remained. It was just one thread connecting the deck railing and a post that formed the trellis overhead. Another thread bisected the larger right triangle into two perfect 90-degree triangles.

It was a few days later when the mystery was solved. I happened to flip on the lights earlier in the evening and saw the spider building its web. It was working fast, with purpose and precision. The more Debbie and I watched, the more the spider seemed to shrink in size as we got over the ick factor. Watching it create this intricate and ornate beautiful thing was fascinating.

I realized right away that the spider built its web every night to catch its prey and then took it down in the morning, only to rebuild it the next night. Debbie thought maybe the web was destroyed over the course of the night from various bugs that got trapped, but I doubted it. No, the next day there was always the perfect-triangular strands. If something wiped out the web, those would have snapped, too.

Maybe they did, and the spider rebuilt its basic foundation before it went off to hide during the day. I like to think that the destruction of the web was as carefully and purposefully carried out as was its creation. I left the spider alone. As long as it wasn’t jumping on my face, we were cool.

And with that, we’re three-fourths of the way home.