Black Widow comes to visit

Now this was brought on by my partner finding a black widow that was apparently living quite happily behind the bedroom curtain above his head.  She was fat, happy, had a nice collection of fly bodies.  We...however...were not.  Black widow has always, at least to both of us, been seen as really bad.  You hear about the bites, and how they hide.

Telling a few friends about it, they tried to convince me about how beneficial she was.  How she didn't bite either of us so she was looking out for us.  Spiders are for change.  Don't worry they're quite docile.  I don't know about you...but being told their docile...is not going to make me pick up one of these.  I don't like spiders, I don't think I've ever liked spiders.  As far as I'm concerned...they're unnatural creatures that can stay far away from me.  I know I'm supposed to see the beauty in each living thing, bla bla bla.  I know all this...I still don't...like...spiders.

All that being said.  So I try to be nice, because she sitting nicely and not moving.  Instead of spraying her with something deadly...I have Branden get her in a bottle.  I'm willing to pick her up and look at her from inside said bottle...but other than that.  She can stay there.  I try to thank her for not being an evil bitch and biting my face, and that I will try to understand what she has to say.  Which may not have been the nicest way to put it...but it was about all I had after having the crap scared out of me by having her IN MY BEDROOM.

I was figuring that this is the end of the encounter.  We searched the bedroom, took down all the curtains, moved the bed out.  Life seemed okay...or so I thought.  We found one or two more on the porch, but they were outside so I gave them passage.

In comes the not-a-dream sequences a few days later. 

I find myself on an open path, walking along happily...spider free.  There were some butterflies, some trees.  It was beautiful.  Walking along the path, just chillin'.

Along a different, side path, was a girl I hadn't spoken to in a long while because of a falling out I had with her.  Recently I had been considering talking to her.  I had missed our almost daily chats and I had hoped, maybe, there was a way to move past the problems.  I made a step towards that path and a HUGE black widow scurried out in front of the path.  And when I say huge, I mean her fang was about the size of my upper body.  HUGE. 

I had backed away...there was no way I was messing with that thing.  Forget it.

So back down the main path I went.  She stalked me in the woods next to the path...keeping my pace.  Do you know uneasy it makes someone when there is a monster black widow trying to keep you company?  Uneasy doesn't even begin to cut it.

I saw another path up ahead.  There was another girl with pink hair that I had a falling out with that I had started to think I needed to maybe talk with.  (Bit of back story, I had recently decided to step down off a podcast I was doing due to some differences of opinions and some unneeded stress when handling recording.  I felt it was just time to part ways.  The people on the roads are people that I had singed bridges with while recording on the podcast.  So while I didn't think I needed to fix everything, I was considering and readjusting my perceptions on situations)  I was curious how life had been for her and how her blogging was going.  She had stopped talking to me in some strange mess of something a co-host of mine had said. 

Being she was on the other side of the giant spider of doom...I walked towards her.  Not because I thought I wanted to be her friend.  But she was SO much better than the spider of doom.

Well...let me tell you...I would never think a spider would ever move that fast while being so big.  It darted out of the woods and poked me with its front leg and moved it's mandible mouth parts.  It sounded horrible to me, and I was convinced she was going to bite me.  She was so close I saw her eyes move.  Not the whole eye move...just the inside so I could see where she was looking.  While it was cool to see spider eyes move like a snake's eye...I tried to back away...very quickly...toward the girl I used to call a friend. 

That spider lifted itself high enough to go over me, walked over to the girl...and ate her.  Just ate her.  Didn't even bite and wrap like a normal spider.  No...this spider of doom had some strange mouth parts where it just ate her.  There was some web involved somewhere along the line...but at that point I was just so horrified I didn't really care.  She just ATE someone I knew.

Then she turns around and wiggles her little fang-mandible parts and makes a weird hissy-clicky-squeaky sound while waving her one front leg.  I just stood there, figuring I was going to get pounced and eaten.  But she just took a few spider steps toward me, did it again, and poked me with her leg hard enough to nudge me back towards the other path.

Then she lowered herself and just stopped and looked at me, occasionally moving her fang-mandible things.  I'd see her eyes catching glimpses of something moving, then going back to me.  She cleaned one of her feet.  I made a small step forward and she raised up very fast, taking a step towards me and poking me again with her leg.

I back up a few more steps toward the other path and she settles back down.  I don't really want to take my eyes off of her, but she seems somehow...strangely...calm and okay.  Which just geeks me out more that I'm somewhat okay with her being huge and that close to me.

When I glance down the other path there's no clear distinction anymore to the end, it just kind of fades out.  I look back and she is still calmly watching me.  I slowly side-step to be more directly on the path...and still she doesn't move. 

Just to be safe, I walk backwards down the path so I can see her...what she's doing.  She slowly moves to the intersection of the two paths.  She still, for some reason, is less intimidating as she moves closer to my place of being...but she stops at the crossroads.  We stare at each other for a while, I hear clicking of fang-mandible things.  Then the strangest voice whispers in my head.  It sounds like someone who's been smoking a carton a day while gargling gravel.  "Time...move...on"  There was a long pause, more furious mandible-fang clicking.  "Time...move...on...go...now...new...chapters"  The mandible clicking slowed and if I am to believe what I experienced, she let go a wave of relieve and gentleness almost like one would feel when a little girl would sigh as she flopped down in a bed of wildflowers.

She then backed up a bit and moved into the woods.  I woke as she moved out of sight.

Coyote and Red-Tail Hawk, an unlikely pair

I stopped focusing on my dream-not-a-dream experiences for a while, they still happened but I managed to kinda-sorta ignore them.  Which basically means they still happen...I just pretend they don't.

So in the middle of the dreams that weren't supposed to be happening I was talking to a lovely Native woman off and on, trying to make a bit more solid sense out of what is going on in my little head.  She spoke to me about how different medicines can be perceived badly by others not because they ARE bad, but because they represent harsh medicines.  Like how Owl can represent a lot of deeper understandings of things, and looking into the dark...a lot of people still equate Owl with death.

Along that conversation I had mentioned how Coyote was coming along more often and kinda being a pain in the ass.  I had laughed about it because he would often give snark his disapproval when I was being stubborn.  I had also shared my experience where he told me I was a Red-Tailed Coyote.  She got quiet and warned me very solemnly that that Coyote leads people astray and never to trust him.  EVER.  Coyote would like that bastardization  and I don't have ANY Coyote in me.

At this point Branden piped up that he could see Coyote in my and that's another story for another day.

But long part of the story short, Branden and I had a long talk about it on the way home.  I'd love to be able to say that it was long and insightful.  But mainly it was just the normal "re-evaluate EVERYTHING I thought I understood".  It was pretty sad looking back on it.

So of course the not-a-dreams get to a point where I can't ignore them.  It only follows I suppose.

I found myself in the circle of trees Coyote brought me too last time when he turned me into a twisted totemic chimera.  He was not pleased at all with me as he paced back and forth in front of me. "Do you really think that if I was really leading you down some horrible path that your Hawk friend would not step in?  Really?"

I felt a mix between embarrassed and very offended, "How do I know?  You ARE the Trickster spirit.  How do I know that you've not just been lying to me so I learn a huge lesson the hard way?  I don't know..."  I always hate when I can't look at variables and see a solid reaction and this was kind of the epitome of what was going on.  There was no definite way to answer.  I knew how I felt...but this was Coyote...what was I next to Coyote?

Whether he heard my inner thoughts or not, he stopped pacing and padded up to me, looking at me straight in the eyes.  He no longer looked, or felt, angry...but more a mix of disappointed and sad.  "Have I ever done anything that put you in danger?"

"No...not that I know of"

He sighed, "Have I ever done anything that hurt you without warning you that you were doing stupid?"

"No"

"So where could I be leading you that is so bad?  Hmm?" He twitched his head to the side like a normal coyote does when it's trying to listen.

I sat there for a while.  I really didn't know...I had no adequate answer.  There was no sure answer one way or another.  There was only uncertainty  "Because there's always a chance that I'm wrong.  I've been wrong before when I trusted the wrong people and thought I was doing okay.  I could be misunderstanding, or misreading, or just way too trusting.  I don't know!"

He sat down and looked at me for a long time.  After a while he told me there wasn't anything that he could do with it and got up and walked away.  I was shocked and hurt and confused...and left sitting in the circle of trees.  So I sat, and looked at the trees.  Listened to the breeze.  Listened to distant water.  Continued to sit.  Found myself thinking that sitting in a different space of reality was actually quite comfortable, so I just kept sitting and enjoying the surroundings...till I heard footsteps behind me anyway.

It was a person that was coming out of the trees behind me, sort of round-middled and kind of short.  The closer he came, the more familiar he looked and the more a feeling of excitement grew.  It was my Red-Tail Hawk not-a-hawk guy!  He looked more biker-ish today with dark jeans, a black shirt with worn away white printings, a leather golf hat, and hiking boots.  "Hey there red head, what's all this going on?"

I got up and walked towards him to meet him and considered whether giving a hug was appropriate.  He took the initiative and gave me a brief, but big, bear hug.  When he let go he gave me an inquisitive mixed with reprimanding look.  "Well, what's all this about Coyote being bad for you."  He said it more as a statement than questioning what was actually going on.

To cut out a lot of retelling, I basically told him everything from my normal questioning, to my encounters with my new Native friend, back to questioning, and anything else that I felt was important.  He listened very patiently.  Somewhere along the line we ended up sitting on a log bench.  When I finally finished he smiled and lightly laughed.  "If I had to live in your head, I wouldn't get anything done!"  I just kind of dipped my head, but he just patted me on the back and laughed a bit more.  "I didn't mean you anything buy it.  But really, didn't you just hear her say that some people see totems as bad because they don't understand them?"

"Well...yes.  But she's also much more experienced that I am.  I know that she's been hurt by a coyote medicine before, but she's also been hurt by a red-tail medicine before.  Yet she gives me a warning about Coyote and not about you.  So I'm seeing that there's something there I must be missing, right?  And if she is that worried about me, and if other people have said that coyotes are dangerous, what if I'm just bullheaded and running full tilt down the wrong way?  And I haven't seen you around, so I don't want to lose having you around because I started talking to Coyote either"

He apparently found this quite amusing "Love, you're not going to lose me being around just for bein' part of Coyote pack.  You still got feathers wherever you're goin'.  You gotta stop worrying so much, you'll burn yourself out at this rate!"  He yelled out for Coyote, who came lightly trotting back from where he came from.  "Did you hear this?  You got her worried that I've not been bothering her since you're here."  He turned back to me at this point. "Darlin' you're going to have many different people comin' and goin' here.  You listened as much as you needed to with what I was telling you, so it was time for someone else that would work you in a different way.  I'm not going anywhere."

Coyote jumped up next to him on the log bench and looked intensely at me. "Didn't you get the point from our last encounter...there's much more than just one important part of you"  The man-who-is-a-hawk laughed a bit more, patted my shoulder, shook his head, patted Coyote's shoulder, "She's all yours on this one"  And then I woke up when Coyote blinked at me.