the todos santos diaries, day #3: in which i encounter a spider with no name
DISCUSSED: spider hearts, friendship maintenance, the impermanence of memory
Today I killed the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. I’d seen him — I think of him as male, and I can’t figure out why — the night I arrived, legs splayed up against the wall beside the toilet. He looked dead. I let him alone, even though I know that dead spiders curl up: the thin tubes of their hearts pump something like blood into their legs, and the pressure pushes all eight outward. Anyway, he disappeared for a day, and I thought I’d seen the last of him. Until this morning.
I’d say we had a fight but that would be mischaracterizing what happened; I spotted him, hunted him, cornered him in my shower, and finally killed him with a bag of two-day-old tortillas. (Arachnid enthusiasts call it the “death curl.”)
Probably one of the better ways to know how much you like somewhere is to learn how well you can stand its pests. They’re omnipresent, and have a surer claim on the place than you ever will; the best you can hope for is peaceful coexistence, where an occasional sighting feels like when your most well-intentioned but lightly annoying friend texts you to make plans. You’re like oh, sure, I’m free then, and it feels like the good kind of relationship maintenance, until the day arrives and you find yourself dreading the prospect of leaving your house. Even so: you go because you’ve canceled too many times before. And the thing is, it’s fine! It’s always fine. By the end of a couple drinks you remember why you love them in the first place, and why you chose to spend an evening with them even though the whole thing was vaguely exasperating. I am still talking about bugs.
Here in TS the little creatures are voracious. I have more than a few new mosquito bites, and tonight at dinner — chile relleno con carne — I was mobbed by a pack of opportunistic house flies. (The ants, god bless ’em, are still doing their thing.) Last night, before I went to bed, I saw a pair of lizards sneak outside through a crack in the doorframe; before I fell asleep I heard a tiny thud near my bed and saw a dazed black beetle recovering on the ground next to my backpack. And further on the night is full of life; I can hear all of it.
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Lately I have been making a point of watching the sunset. Today I spent it on the roof of my casita reading Lorelei Lee’s fantastic essay about the business of sex work in the latest issue of n+1, while the mosquitos added a few new bumps to my skin. I took a picture of the sky, even though I know phone cameras — and while we’re at it, cameras in general — can’t really capture the infinite gradations of prismatic color that happen in those few minutes that mark the border between evening and night. I have a lot of photos like this, ones that aren’t good and aren’t particularly memorable (or, I guess, photos that mark times that aren’t really worth remembering? — although what’s worth remembering, and is that even voluntary?), and I take them because I feel like the act of taking a picture means that I am giving this moment the kind of emotional weight I feel it deserves. Like, I think, Yes, this moment is worth giving up this portion of the functionally infinite space of my phone / the cloud. I mean, I don’t do it for everything. Does that makes sense? I’m trying to do beautiful things justice.
Itchily yours,
Bijan