I came across the wee little spider in this picture as I was snapping flower pics on the Alcott farm. He was so hard to see, as his color blended in perfectly with the yellow of the petals on the sunflower. But what a delight it was to capture his image on film. Charming!
On another note, I keep thinking about this post from Liz. What does is mean to be a cancer survivor with so much enthusiasm for life who finds no one to dance with? And what about those moments when you realize that your body, your disease make you unappealing or untouchable? And what about the Gilroy test--the true test of love:
"The Gilroy test is the one true metric of real love. So-named because my aunt once had a large orange cat who was the most beautiful cat in the world before he got kitty leukemia and started wasting away. I was kind of an oblivious twit when I was a teenager and must have made some unthinking remark because my aunt spent some time gently explaining to me that it's very easy to think you love someone when they're beautiful. But that the test of real love is whether you love them with the same intensity when they're ugly.
"Everyone gets ugly from time to time," she told me, stroking Gilroy.
This photo and Liz's post evoke such a jumble of emotions for me, especially the connection between love and beauty. Can we only love what is beautiful? Or is true love the ability to see beauty in all things? I think the latter. My heart soars when I see how gorgeous my kids and my John and my flowers are. But they are beautiful to me because I already love them, not because they are inherently beautiful. Does that make sense?
I think our recognition of beauty is more about being aware and in tune with our surroundings than it is with seeing what's inherently visually appealing. An example: as I rode my bike home from the library in the dark last night, everything was beautiful to me--the sliver of moon in the sky, the taste and smell of the humid air, the taut feeling in my leg muscles as I pedaled home, and the joy of nearing the end of a well-spent day. In being completely there I felt so satisfied, so full of joy. That was beauty.
3 comments:
The Gilroy test is awesome.
My true love is my true love because of the many times and ways he passed that test, for example, how he massaged my feet every night -- both of them -- even when my right leg was bleeding constantly and obviously through many layers of gauze out of a smelly, infected, cantaloupe-sized tumor at the knee and he knew one of those feet was about to go as a result. He did it with love, sorrow, and tenderness, never revulsion, never any I could detect anyway.
And that was a very lovely spider, though I remember it being even more yellow than it appears here. Really, in person, it looked to me to match the flower petal precisely.
I found your blog through Sara from Moving Right Along and I linked to your blog as part of a series if series on 'beyond the breast and past the pink.' I wanted to let people know about great blogs written by people affected by non pink-ribbon cancers.
You are a wonderful writer and I am a new fan.
Sara:
I think the spider looks a bit darker in the photo because the light behind the flower is ever-so-slightly filtering thru the petals and not thru the spider.
What I'm wondering is was the spider born bright yellow or is it some kind of chameleon spider that can change its color depending on its surroundings?? Either way, amazing.
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