spiders

I started work the other day.  After a number of hours of lectures regarding school organization and reporting structures, countless slides of faculty with names I can't pronounce, let alone remember, my small preschool staff came together to play a little game.  Picking six tarot-like cards we attached various symbols to positive professional qualities we were bringing to our new school, or aspects of professional support we required from our new school.  And of course as in Tarot, projection is the name of the game.  You see what you want to see in the cards, and through that semi-conscious connection you see what you need to see in life. Magic.  Can you guess what my cards were? Can you guess what they represented? "Saying yes to the unknown" certainly made the hit list.  But I was actually way less interested in what I had to say than in what my new colleague crafted.   

She chose the card with a fantastical spider crawling across its web.  She said she likes spiders. She said she likes them because they are everywhere--they are everywhere and no matter where they are, they make their home.  

I don't like spiders.  I don't like their cobby little webs and how they perch there watching--a tiny little voyeur planning the next time he's going to spin down and bite me on my eyelid while I sleep, so I look like I lost last night's bar fight-which I didn't.   Why on my eyelid spider man? What's so tasty about that thin piece of skin covering my precious commodity of sight?  No, I don't like you spider man, I don't trust you and your need to build webs right at mouth level in high traffic locations, like door ways and hiking paths.  I don't like your sticky little cottony ways.  But I do like home.  And I do like the idea of building it where ever I am....but this web here in Istanbul is taking way too long to weave....no matter how much I try to force it.

I think the truth is I'm jealous of spiders.  I don't feel at home and I don't know how to make my new apartment here into a place that feels like home.  We found an apartment full of potential, and god knows I'm a fan of potential, but its been a non stop battle to make it into a functional space.  One month later and we still don't have hot water for a shower, a sink that believes in keeping its water inside it, a stove that can cook, or a couch that anyone would want to sit on... and yet I have trouble believing that those things, those random amenities, carry the essence of home.   Even though the Indian life science of Ayurveda call hot water life and cold water death, I have trouble believing that the difference between a sense of peace and groundedness rests in access to a hot shower.  

So, what is the essence of home? What makes a physical space become an emotional haven? Whats a spider got that I don't got?  And how in the name of mighty allah, can I get it?