YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE your shirt then.
No.
Let me ask you this: how are you going to get on out here? You told me you are sixty-one. You are very active, I can see that. Still, there is water to be carried every day, there is wood to be gathered, food—how long can you reasonably expect to live here with such limited resources? From where we sit I don’t even see a juniper tree.
Have you ever seen a spider make a web? The thread comes out through little holes right above his ass. It is so thin you can hardly see it. He makes a trap for the bugs in the air. Before the web is made, before the bug is caught, the bug knows nothing of webs. It’s as if the bug and the web didn’t exist. The bug dies, he is eaten, he becomes material for a new web. The wind tears the old web down.
The point, then, is to hold still, to stay in one place?
Yes.
To wait. Is one supposed to wait for… what? Do you wait for something, for some thing to appear? Someone to come? Are you suggesting a mental thing?
You wait for yourself.
I’m already here.
No. Not really. You are stretched out like a string all over the place. The end of the string is here, the rest is there and there, back there in the mountains, on the other side. You must reel in the string, you must roll yourself up in a ball and then unravel yourself out here where you have the room and the clear light to study the condition of the threads.
Once you have the string all laid out, once you have repaired the worn pieces, you will establish certain points. Between these points you will line out the string until you have made a web, strong, very taut. The impact of a breeze at one edge will be felt at another. Sunlight will bounce when it hits, as though it were a trampoline. The sunlight will turn somersaults and you will know you have made the thing well. Then listen for the wind. The sound of the wind on the threads.
I must tell you this. I think this is bullshit.
It’s bullshit because you are afraid your string will be too short. You are afraid it is too frayed, that you will be making knots all the time, that your web will be small and ridiculous.
I don’t trust metaphors.
I am not talking metaphors. I am telling you the truth.