The web is already there when the light comes.
It hangs between the branches, almost invisible in the early morning. A few drops of water rest on the threads. The air moves through them. The whole structure trembles.
The spider waits.
There is no sound in the web, but there is movement. A small vibration travels along one thread and fades. Another comes from somewhere else. The spider remains still.
Light grows stronger.
The web becomes visible for a moment, then disappears again as the angle changes. The spider moves across it, touching the threads with its legs. Here one has slackened. There another has broken. The spider reaches the damaged place and begins to repair it.
A thread is carried outward.
It catches.
Another thread follows.
The web grows again.
The spider does not make a picture of the web. It does not need to. The web is under its feet. It is around its body. It carries movement from one place to another.
The air changes.
A leaf moves.
The web moves with it.
Then something larger touches the outer threads.
The vibration arrives.
The spider stops.
Another movement follows. Stronger. Irregular.
The spider moves towards it.
An insect struggles in the web.
The web holds what the air would have carried away.
The spider reaches the place where the movement is strongest. The insect moves again. The threads answer.
The spider responds.
Soon the movement becomes still.
The web has changed.
Part of it is torn. Some threads remain. Others have become tangled around what has been caught.
The spider begins again.
Later, the sun warms the leaves. The web becomes dry. Small particles settle on it. A breeze passes through the branches and the whole structure trembles, not from anything that has touched it, but because the world around it has moved.
The spider waits.
A fly passes nearby.
Nothing happens.
A small insect lands on a leaf.
Nothing happens.
Then, suddenly, the web moves.
The spider knows the difference.
It moves.
By afternoon the web has become part of the changing space around it. A shadow crosses it. A bird passes close enough to disturb the air. A leaf catches against one of the outer threads and hangs there.
The spider removes it.
The thread breaks.
The spider repairs it.
Nothing about the web is permanent.
Nothing about the spider's world is still.
And yet the web remains.
As the light begins to fade, the air cools. The vibrations become fewer. The spider settles near the centre.
There is movement beyond the web that the spider does not encounter.
There are sounds that do not reach it.
There are places it will never touch.
But the web extends the spider into the space around it.
A movement far from its body can arrive at its legs.
A disturbance in the air can become a disturbance in the web.
Something that happens elsewhere can happen here.
Night comes.
The web is difficult to see now.
The spider remains.
The threads continue to move in the darkness.
Nothing has to be seen for it to matter.
Nothing has to be understood for it to reach the spider.
The spider is not simply in the web.
The web is part of the world through which the spider lives.
And the world is moving.
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