The Spider's Venom...
I was dowsing last night when a long legged spider climbed upon my pillow. It said to me, "why don't you crawl out of your head and visit my web, I've woven a piece of art to deceive and entangle, we can feast upon those of poor sight and weak mind, and you need not pity them for they have chosen their fate through their own indecision. Come follow me to my home and you'll see that from the ceiling all those below are game for your sport."
I replied, "you don't fool me. You entice me to accompany you only to ensnare me within your webs. You are taking a risk by coming to such depths, for I could easily crush you under foot and that is why you appeal to my grain of identity rather than the constitution of my body. You only wish to feast and I refuse to be your meal. So leave me be before I indulge my own temptation and render you to pulp upon my pillow."
"You are mistake," the spider replied, "my intentions are sincere. Loneliness is the curse of residing at the peak. True, my web captures the unsuspecting, but that is certainly not foreign land to you. Do you not spin your own web? Do you not rely upon threads of reason to triumph over adversity? We are similar you and I. So my invitation places me at just as much risk of you as you are of me. So lets disregard our differing motives and cultivate our similarities. Come with me and we can learn from each other to enhance our craft for attaining our goals."
"My goal is purity of virtue," I countered, "and you will only serve to contaminate that which I'm working to cleanse. You work to compromise life and I filter my own decisions to advance it. While your threads connect only to yourself, mine connect with every component of my being both within and beyond. So go and climb back to your web of solitude and take with you the poison you've been dripping into my ear."
"You deny yourself in order to pursue an unattainable ideal," it rebutted. "When you distill your own filtration you will be as polluted as before you began. How will you know when to cease your cleansing? Will the cycle continue until your stream seeps into the earth? With nothing gained you merely loose. For millennia, those before you have understood this, and they alone have shaped the earth. If you continue your fruitless quest, it will be as though you never existed and your wasted life will serve as further justification for others to join me upon high."
"Others will come to the same conclusion as I have drawn," I explained, "and eventually you will have no visitors to your web and hunger will drive you to the surface where a scavengers life awaits you. Your former opulence will be replaced by shame and destitution, and everyone will avoid you for your web will no longer conceal the vile baseness to which you adhere. Everything is transparent upon the surface and your deceitful arguments will convince not a soul to relinquish themselves for the sake of your appetite."
"How you misjudge my nature," the spider exclaimed. "You only view me as wicked because I have no boundaries, but you fail to see that I am the artist drawing the boundaries you obey. I would thrive upon the surface as I do upon the ceiling and in the cellar. My resolve is greater than my venom and attracts and intoxicates those I meet. I only choose the peak so that I can train my pawns to act as rooks. But if they choose the tangent over the direct path, they find themselves circling back into my web to become my next meal."
"You act as though you're the only dominating power," I informed. "When another force encounters your own, you may find that you are the meal for the victor and the one on the deviating path. If by chance you are the victor, then when no one is left to battle your forces will fall into discord and will annihilate each other. Solitude will be your curse regardless of altitude. Your futile efforts at domination will only serve as a postponement from you confronting yourself, and when you finally do, you will be so repulsed that you will self destruct."
"You underestimate my self-esteem," the spider refuted. "Do you suppose I feel worthy of dominating because I consider myself inferior? My self confidence is the pedestal which raises me to great heights. Only by believing that I am worthy do I earn my merit. Your self doubt binds you to the surface. If you would only abandon the shackles of suspicion you could become the architect of the future rather than a nuance in the background of the present."
"You words of venom fail to befuddle my intentions," I assured the spider. "While you labor on designs for the hereafter, the present is left unattended. And you fail to see that the present encompasses the all, rendering your efforts superfluous. So weave and deceive as you will. You will find that your domain is limited to the margin, and from there the smallest step leads to the abyss."
"You speak of the abyss," the spider retorted, "without knowing that you reside at its nadir. Where do you think the surface rests? But as to our domain, the spiral directs us both. We journey down opposing directions. You towards the center, and I to the threshold. I concentrate on where I'm going while you focus on where you've been. You should turn around and embrace the unknown instead of evading it."
"But your widening revolution forbids you from ever identifying yourself. While I'll eventually know where I stand, you cannot and must continue on as a mystery unto yourself, never knowing certainty and relinquishing your past every moment, as though you never lived at all," I construed.
The spider laughed, "your sight has just befallen the seed of your folly and yet you fail to recognize it. You are no different than me, but you leave yourself vulnerable. Your quest to the origin has left you at a relative standstill, and that is the very behavior that I rely upon to ensnare those like you in my web. Your preoccupation with certainty allows me the opportunity to spin my web around you leaving you cocooned and no longer a threat but rather a supplementary resource to be used at my will. What is so laughable is that you don't yet realize your own tragedy."
"You forget that the present encompasses all, rendering direction of travel meaningless," I expounded. "And while you consider me within your web, you follow that which I determined. There is a greater web in which you are trapped and I am free to which you will never be witness. While my vision may become cloaked as you spin your web, it will just open it to the other. And you never observing the other web, despite your numerous eyes, will live in self prescribed darkness. My sight will grow and observe higher and higher webs that contain subsets and my understanding will blanket that which you call yours and that which you will never see, and as you spin your threads around your prey I will pity only you for you are the victim of your own short sightedness. While you toil the earth, preoccupied with pips and concerned with kernels, I till the seed and plant the land."
Thus spake T.S. Idiot...
I replied, "you don't fool me. You entice me to accompany you only to ensnare me within your webs. You are taking a risk by coming to such depths, for I could easily crush you under foot and that is why you appeal to my grain of identity rather than the constitution of my body. You only wish to feast and I refuse to be your meal. So leave me be before I indulge my own temptation and render you to pulp upon my pillow."
"You are mistake," the spider replied, "my intentions are sincere. Loneliness is the curse of residing at the peak. True, my web captures the unsuspecting, but that is certainly not foreign land to you. Do you not spin your own web? Do you not rely upon threads of reason to triumph over adversity? We are similar you and I. So my invitation places me at just as much risk of you as you are of me. So lets disregard our differing motives and cultivate our similarities. Come with me and we can learn from each other to enhance our craft for attaining our goals."
"My goal is purity of virtue," I countered, "and you will only serve to contaminate that which I'm working to cleanse. You work to compromise life and I filter my own decisions to advance it. While your threads connect only to yourself, mine connect with every component of my being both within and beyond. So go and climb back to your web of solitude and take with you the poison you've been dripping into my ear."
"You deny yourself in order to pursue an unattainable ideal," it rebutted. "When you distill your own filtration you will be as polluted as before you began. How will you know when to cease your cleansing? Will the cycle continue until your stream seeps into the earth? With nothing gained you merely loose. For millennia, those before you have understood this, and they alone have shaped the earth. If you continue your fruitless quest, it will be as though you never existed and your wasted life will serve as further justification for others to join me upon high."
"Others will come to the same conclusion as I have drawn," I explained, "and eventually you will have no visitors to your web and hunger will drive you to the surface where a scavengers life awaits you. Your former opulence will be replaced by shame and destitution, and everyone will avoid you for your web will no longer conceal the vile baseness to which you adhere. Everything is transparent upon the surface and your deceitful arguments will convince not a soul to relinquish themselves for the sake of your appetite."
"How you misjudge my nature," the spider exclaimed. "You only view me as wicked because I have no boundaries, but you fail to see that I am the artist drawing the boundaries you obey. I would thrive upon the surface as I do upon the ceiling and in the cellar. My resolve is greater than my venom and attracts and intoxicates those I meet. I only choose the peak so that I can train my pawns to act as rooks. But if they choose the tangent over the direct path, they find themselves circling back into my web to become my next meal."
"You act as though you're the only dominating power," I informed. "When another force encounters your own, you may find that you are the meal for the victor and the one on the deviating path. If by chance you are the victor, then when no one is left to battle your forces will fall into discord and will annihilate each other. Solitude will be your curse regardless of altitude. Your futile efforts at domination will only serve as a postponement from you confronting yourself, and when you finally do, you will be so repulsed that you will self destruct."
"You underestimate my self-esteem," the spider refuted. "Do you suppose I feel worthy of dominating because I consider myself inferior? My self confidence is the pedestal which raises me to great heights. Only by believing that I am worthy do I earn my merit. Your self doubt binds you to the surface. If you would only abandon the shackles of suspicion you could become the architect of the future rather than a nuance in the background of the present."
"You words of venom fail to befuddle my intentions," I assured the spider. "While you labor on designs for the hereafter, the present is left unattended. And you fail to see that the present encompasses the all, rendering your efforts superfluous. So weave and deceive as you will. You will find that your domain is limited to the margin, and from there the smallest step leads to the abyss."
"You speak of the abyss," the spider retorted, "without knowing that you reside at its nadir. Where do you think the surface rests? But as to our domain, the spiral directs us both. We journey down opposing directions. You towards the center, and I to the threshold. I concentrate on where I'm going while you focus on where you've been. You should turn around and embrace the unknown instead of evading it."
"But your widening revolution forbids you from ever identifying yourself. While I'll eventually know where I stand, you cannot and must continue on as a mystery unto yourself, never knowing certainty and relinquishing your past every moment, as though you never lived at all," I construed.
The spider laughed, "your sight has just befallen the seed of your folly and yet you fail to recognize it. You are no different than me, but you leave yourself vulnerable. Your quest to the origin has left you at a relative standstill, and that is the very behavior that I rely upon to ensnare those like you in my web. Your preoccupation with certainty allows me the opportunity to spin my web around you leaving you cocooned and no longer a threat but rather a supplementary resource to be used at my will. What is so laughable is that you don't yet realize your own tragedy."
"You forget that the present encompasses all, rendering direction of travel meaningless," I expounded. "And while you consider me within your web, you follow that which I determined. There is a greater web in which you are trapped and I am free to which you will never be witness. While my vision may become cloaked as you spin your web, it will just open it to the other. And you never observing the other web, despite your numerous eyes, will live in self prescribed darkness. My sight will grow and observe higher and higher webs that contain subsets and my understanding will blanket that which you call yours and that which you will never see, and as you spin your threads around your prey I will pity only you for you are the victim of your own short sightedness. While you toil the earth, preoccupied with pips and concerned with kernels, I till the seed and plant the land."
Thus spake T.S. Idiot...
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