Spider and Cat

I was looking down on the pastures from the deck on the back of the farmhouse.

There is a strange sense of disorientation as I settle in to the place. Frank, the local guys who whacks the grass for me, has done a nice job and the place looks great even after all the rain in the last month. The things that are different always surprise me, and sometimes in a hostile reminder of nature red in tooth and claw.

Those discoveries come after the mild surprise that the place is there, not just an idea, when I pass the big-ass rock in the circular gravel turn around.

There were several modest surprises this time. I was hauling some crap up the steps to the side door and almost stepped onto a dead bird, flattened and looking like the fossilArchaeopteryx, feathers and bones extended in surprise.

I stepped over thing myself it was better than finding the nest of burrowing wasps in the barn, or that evil fast-growing razor-spiked vine that had threatened to take over the side yard.

I reminded myself to bring the shovel up from the garage. The mail from the box out at the road contained stink beetles, something I didn’t notice until I went through the stack looking for anything real.

Then, there I was, mostly moved in and drinking it all in along with a frosty beverage. I turned to go back in the house and found myself eye to eye with a large arachnid who had used my absence to craft a web from the deck surface up to the outside lamps next to the door.

I don’t particularly hate spiders, but the size of this one so close was a bit startling. I grabbed my phone and took a picture so I could identify the species and figure out if I had a potential killer outside my door.

While the vast majority of spiders are harmless and retiring, their appearance and predatory habits—not to mention their ubiquity at the farm- generate major curiosity, and sometimes outright terror, on the part of humans. While there are tens of thousands of spider species, and exact identification must often be left to seasoned experts, there are a few characteristics to look for—and I marked in memory the four white dots in the abdomen of the beast.

As best I could tell, hunched over the iPad, it was a Black-and-Yellow Garden Spider,argiope aurentia.

Or I hope so, anyway. I came away thinking it was probably not a Brown Recluse or a Black Widow. But for about the hundredth time I marked how Steve Jobs had changed our lives, and more the life of the spider by my door, since I did not kill the arachnid, but went to Mr. Job’s invention to seek knowledge.

It is an epiphany Sunday. The display on the iPad conveys the full text of the New York Times on my lap, sitting on the porch not far from the spider’s web. There were many perspectives on Mr. Jobs passing, at 56. It was beyond cool to sit in the rising dawn, the light advancing over the fields, and streaming music.

Sundays in Arlington I usually stream KRCC on the MacBook computer Mr. Jobs invented. That is the NPR outlet at Colorado College, which most mornings has Dan Damon broadcasting out of Bush House in London. Their overnight guy on Saturday night-Sunday mornings is a guy named Tino, whose Tino Tunes sets are a lot like The Loft on satellite radio, the station I blast at the farm.

It is nice not to worry about the neighbors.

Decent coffee and the iPad were acceptable companions, along with Cat. I stroked her idly as I scanned an article on prostate/PSA screening. The consensus is that all men get the cancer, if you live long enough. That is where or pal Mac is- he feels fine and thinks the meds they give him are impairing his ability to live.

“Quality of Life,” I said at lunch the other day. He nodded in agreement.

That is what Steve Jobs did for all of us. I would never have believed how effectively the tablet has altered the waay I do things- just as the iPod made my exercise sessions tolerable.

Or the New York times app on my iPad, for example. Sundays issue featured a  bunch of Steve Jobs articles- and ones about hobbit houses and yoga and Wall Street Occupiers, too, which another source told me is an ACORN-SEIU plot.

Life is a hoot.

One of the articles cited Steve’s commencement remarks to Stanford a few years ago. A pal in Michigan told me to look it over just after the word spread that he was gone.

I don’t manage my time very well, and had not gotten around to it. So, being at the Farm, I clicked on the link this morning.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

It is a great speech by a thoughtful man. In part, he said:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I stroked Cat, who seems to have missed me. Being here is very liberating.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish,” said Mr. Jobs to the graduates. He was quoting the dance-off of the last issue of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Damned if I don’t agree with him, and them.

Great music, great to have the windows open and Cat mewling in pleasure at her second can of mixed grill this morning.

I need to be here more often, and I need to work on my relationship with Rosemary, the owner of the big Summerduck Farm horse barn up the road.

If I am not in Michigan next weekend I will be back shortly

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com