The new apartment, everything is weird.  Today I learned that the local Safeway is closing.

On the good side, I made it to the local library, freshly renovated.  I got a library card.  That's pretty good for an idiot, for one in my state.  They have DVDs, in case you're feeling lazy.  Who could resist an old favorite, Gregory Peck, Moby Dick.  Who could resist, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Armageddon In Retrospect.

On the good side, after a talking to from the boss after leaving the place a mess--I must have rebelled, or just got tired, after entertaining good old friends, you know, those people who you become sincere friends with, just by waiting on them, but deeper than that, let the glassware go, etc., --I had a good long bike ride, squeal in the brakes mountain back down to the towpath of the C & O Canal, all the way out to Great Falls overlook.  They don't let you take your bike out on the over-look, a boardwalk through a very rare ecosystem, a foremost example of that ecology.

It's lonely out here, definitely, but on a Friday evening I have things to do.  I'm taking care of an apparent spider bite on my left thigh.  It looks like something with two fangs got me, and I have no memory, or feel of any pain, except now looking at it.  And whenever I bandage up something, or get anywhere near Neosporin, my skin reacts, as it does to other things.  My skin does not like being treated.  My skin gets claustrophobic, or something.  It riots.   The special island area above the magnificent channels of water that is the Great Falls Overlook, is known to be a wonderful haven for the Black Widow Spider.  Did one follow me home on my yellow bike, or in my spandex bike shorts?

The library hurts almost.  It is good to be close to it.  All the years I've not been able to get to a library and see, visually displayed, all the different books and resources.  I've been an ignoramus.

I get the bags of groceries back, catching the D6.

I never imagined things would end up this way, but here I am, a monk.  Here I am isolated.  Here they don't like when I modestly amplify my voice and my Martin D28 at 3 in the morning.

What else?  The move didn't go so well.  They told me the truck was full.  But my book cases...

Good God.  No book cases.  Imagine that... on top of all I lost, the other little things.

And when you move, particularly after being somewhere for twenty years, you can't find anything, not even a hat.


So, I get to the doctor, on top of other things.  The therapist.  Lexapro sweats that made me wonder how much of a wino I am....

Antibiotics for the bug bite.  It will get better.  Later, after work, there's a tinee-tiny spider who has, by the two knobs of this unfamiliar bathroom sink, roped in a tick, looks like, the kind that are small and black and not full of blood, the kind that you can crush easily almost with a pop.  She has got it.  Immobilized.  She has venomized it, it can't move, it's her victim now, and she will pick the right time to suck the life juices from it, perhaps the very tick creature that bit me.  I have always liked and respected spiders, and I wish they could understand that I like them as much as I do, given that they don't want to mess with me any more than I want to mess with them.  Sometimes on winter nights, well, there's one up a wall in the kitchen, and you approach, say hello, and they turn and look at you with their thousand little eyes, their little legs expressing curiosity, I hope, more than hostility or fear, and I think you can make friends with them.  Who knows.

So, thank you, little spider, here in this foreign lonely lonesome apartment with no working phone jacks, with creaking walls, and not much happiness, such that it has not been much of a joy to think of unpacking anything, except when you have to.

The dead husk, the shell of a small tick dangles from the spider's scaffold, and the spider has adjusted to my turning of the knobs of the faucet, not moving far.