Meetings with web masters

Whenever a photographer is looking at a spider through his lens, he is looking through a frame at ancientness – of 380 million years at least. Though spiders have gone through many types of evolutions, still they carry the same silence of that very beginning – yes, the serious silence – with themselves.

Their silence is similar to that of seeds under the soil. We can’t say they are waiting for the season; they are awakened, not sleepy at all, but that’s all. No expectations, no complaints, no desire or despair. Once the right moment comes, they just sprout from within.

Spiders are also living in an altogether different time-zone. Their waiting on the web is not ordinary waiting. There is no scratch of thoughts and impatience blurping inside. Turning the lens on a spider is almost like tuning the telescope towards the farthest acreage of space in the sky.

My spider shots shared here are stories of my lovely encounters with the ancient spinners, weavers or web masters. How else can I be thankful to them?

Weaver,
absconder to
the beauty
and the silence –
enters, wearing
the woven garb
of bliss.

Golden net of
care and creativity.
A prayer woven for nothing –
prey may be just an excuse.

Dial a web,
time’s yours.

Neither the string
is broken by clouds,
nor any cloud
is blocked up by the strand.

The sea-blue sky breathed with them
and wove a smile
like breezing silk.

Spider goddess never attempted weaving a web,
but no beings could escape her presence –
like an ancient prayer.

I am carrying all faces one by one,
all distances leg by leg.
I am all those grasses grown by themselves,
am the very thumbnail of sitting.

Isn’t this universe, a universe of thumbnails?
Or the thumbnails of universes?

Your presence was
the very camouflage –
so that the lens didn’t know
of your entry.

I might have looked like a victim of the web,
but I’ll go untouched
like a tricky street magician.

Be still and know
that I’m not an abandoned palette.
All my cosmetics
make my web more invisible.

Spider gazed at the galaxy
for nothing;
and vice versa.

Empty stomach
filled with here and now.
Still hungry
for an ample buffet of nothingness.

Dream a web
of dream stuff
and live the dream
as real as dream.

Outcasted
because of some chalk marks…
Otherwise the ocean of darkness would be mine.

Mindful threads for
thoughtless beings.
Am I already in?

Once the casting
and weaving
are finished,
he/she will be waiting on the same spot
for days together.
OMG! There won’t be a single thought crawling into him?
It is said that everything happens in absolute silence –
net casting, waiting, killing and eating the prey, and sitting back.

No-mind lessons are thriving around here… Wow!

Black spider
stood behind a veil of silence, and
Basho could hear her voice,
even in the autumn wind.

Come follow to you,
but I’ve cast my net all over.

Everything has turned grey.
Still my waist belt is red,
silent and alert.

Fancy dress for
trespassers who are blind
and meek.

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