Tag Archives: compassion

Duster

Yellow and pink feathers sneeze around my face on the end of a dangly wooden pole. As I teeter on the chair in my socks, I can reach the ceiling corner cobwebs and twist them into a candy-floss chaos. Spider scuttles, stumbles and descends on an abseiling wire.

When I’m done, I don’t want to touch that sticky mass. Clicking the grimy dustpan brush out of dustpan’s grip, and swatting the duster clean into the fish-smelling kitchen bin. Picking the last remnants off the bristles by hand. Job done.

I feel bad about the spiders, and yet also ruthless. Sometimes, the long-extended pipe of vacuum cleaner pops them away. Do they live on in the hoover bag? I guess that’s barely conscious, thoughtless cruelty from me. If told as a human story, rather than arachnid, it would be news of horror and murderous violence.

Visiting friends at the weekend – even the solitary weevil on their kitchen drainer was a being to be rescued and cherished. What a contrasting world view. And yet, the taste of bacon is fresh on my tongue, and was on theirs too then. Just a confusion of inconsistent caring.

Hedgehog

Sigh. Somehow, it represents my broken self, hiding under a mound of leaves, hoping the world will go away and leave me alone.

The sweet smell of gently decaying leaves. Wood smoke burning – hopefully not too close at hand. The damp flakiness of was-brittle foliage on my cheek and down my neck. Tickling.

I can hear sirens wailing in the world outside – alien to this earthy retreat. Not a successful retreat, if invaded so. The ground wavers underneath me like an uneasy boat. My head is spinning.

So sad to see the futility, ineffectiveness, of a hedgehog’s curled up defence, exposed on the shelterless tarmac, responding to dangers beyond its ability to avert. Only if the drivers care, show gentleness, slow down – and have regard for some accidentally different creature or soul who stumbled into the path of their life. Just to really feel – to take time to care – despite their own busy concerns and closer friends.

Even the fleas on the hedgehog’s spines have their place, seem benign.

I poke my head out and test the air on my face – then turn around and hide again.