I saw a long-legged spider on the kitchen floor, crouched between the trash can and the stone counter. It looked lost. I took a glass and maneuvered it outside onto the terrace, gently depositing it on a leaf of the Red Robin. The night was chilly. I went back in and observed the spider through the kitchen window. It didn’t move and looked cold and miserable. I decided it was a she and named her Esmeralda. After half an hour, I took her back inside and looked for a potential mate, without success. When I put her on the kitchen window shelf, she let herself drop to the floor and crept into the corner next to the fridge. Worried that she might get accidentally crushed, I picked her up again and put her on a houseplant. She seemed to enjoy it and stayed there for the rest of the evening.
The next morning, she was nowhere to be found, and I started to panic. She was sitting next to the dog’s water bowl. No place for a spider, I decided, and made her move into the closest corner, where she decided to cling to the leg of a wooden chair, her home since then. I think she might be dying; I wonder what it feels like to be a spider. How does the world feel on those long legs?
I think about the 14,000 sheep and 2000 cows trapped on a boat at the Australian coast on their way to Israel. Their agony, their fear, and pain. Their lives suspended in a limbo we cannot grasp. Only to be slaughtered in a foreign land. Where others are being slaughtered every day. They don’t have to wait on a boat at 40°C. They wait in their own land, in tents, in camps, in shelters, and hospitals. They wait for the world to come to their rescue.
But the world cares about things, not people. Living things matter less than gold. Life matters less than death.
Because whoever controls death controls the world.
All souls weigh the same, and the world is weary of weeping
I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul
Paulo Coelho, ‘The Alchemist’