just a spider

This is an excerpt from a paper, so it may seem a little disconnected, but I wanted to share it anyway.

"I’m watching a spider slowly make its way across the ceiling. It falls, catches itself with web, and climbs back up. It falls again after travelling a bit further, and appears to be trying to find ground, sinking a bit lower in exploration, before giving up and climbing up again. I do not know how it got up there, and it probably has no recollection of that either. However it happened, we find it there now and it must fight gravity and rough terrain to continue its journey. Persistence is required.

Sometimes I look at myself and am not quite sure how I got here. Sometimes I fall off the ceiling and hang there for a bit, hoping maybe ground will appear beneath me. Then I climb up and keep going. I could catch the spider the next time it falls off the ceiling and move it outside, which would keep me from having a spider web in my apartment, although I am not sure the spider would find it helpful (even though we usually like to consider that a rescue)."