HEAVEN’S WEB

In the ancient days before writing was given to the sons and daughters of men, people learned through dreams, which were such powerful openings into the inner psyche that their lessons were always remembered. One particular dream was endemic to a large segment of the population. This is the dream:

A man stands in the ocean casting a net into the sea, which is calm and smooth. The sun is just rising, even though the moon is still high in the sky. The man moves effortlessly out into the water; his net is quite weightless, floating like gossamer on the waves. Far in the distance a small black cloud is seen. Suddenly it grows larger and larger. A squall comes up. Rain and wind beat down, gusting around the fisherman. A great shout of wind picks up his fishing net, which settles onto his head and begins in the terrific wind to drag him down and out to sea. Only with the greatest effort does he free himself, yet the second he is free of the net, the rain and wind mysteriously disappear.

He pulls his net to shore, and finds to his surprise that the black cloud he had first seen in the sky is now caught in the net. As he gingerly unwraps it, it takes on a strange glow, sending out feelers and tentacles. It oozes into the sand and over the net; the feelers and tentacles grope their way slowly toward the sea, until the cloud merges into the water and is gone.

The fisherman stands looking at the ocean. Then he glances down and discovers that his net is now full of starfish, but even as he sees this they begin to glow and rise and drift upwards until they all disappear into the heavens.

Even more astonishing, his net is now full of birds — large birds, small birds, all struggling with their wings against the net. Yet somehow all at once they manage to free their wings and lift up effortlessly into the air. The force of their wings is so great that a wind arises and blows toward the fisherman, bringing spume off the waves. The flung-up waters sparkle in the light like stars. Blown by the wind, the moon sails across the sky and lands in his net, her horns stuck briefly into the knotted rope.

“Aha!” thinks the fisherman. “I have now caught something worth keeping!” Quickly, he flings the net around the moon before she can escape, and he bundles her up and puts her in a hollow on the shore. All the rest of that day he sits beside her on the sand watching her. Before night falls he has fallen in love with the moon, so beautiful is she. But as the sun goes down, the moon begins to fade and become pale and weak, for she can not reflect the sun unless she is high in the sky where the sun can find her. The moon weeps and weeps, and the fisherman sees that she is dying. At last with resignation he realizes that he will have to let her go, and so he reaches around her tenderly and lifts the heaven net off her horns.

The moon begins to glow softly, and lifting up she speeds like a bird, but as she rises the net is still caught in her horns and so the net rises into the night sky as well. All the starfish fall from the highest heaven down into the net, where they spread their arms and cling to the web that hangs from the moon.

The fisherman lies on his back watching the starfish sky all lit by moon, and wonders at what he has seen.

With the first light of dawn he awakens and sees that a spider has spun a web between his foot and a nearby rock. The spider is still busily spinning even as the man’s sleepy eyes watch him.

“Oh spider,” thinks the man, “how very alike we are. We hope to catch what never can be caught, the light itself that shines through nets and webs. Yet everything we catch has life, is life, and in the end it is we who spend our entire lives spinning and weaving in hopes that we ourselves will find the light.”

With this, the spider speaks: “Oh man,” he says, “our net is death, and it is we who live off death. Do not delude yourself that you are doing anything noble when you cast your net. Like me, you live to kill so that you may live by eating what you kill. Is this nobility? The only moment I have seen you do something worthwhile is when you let your prey go free. As for me, I must live, must I not, by killing others. This is the way of life.”

The fisherman grows drowsy, and falls asleep again. While he sleeps the spider spins and spins until it has spun its web over the man’s entire body. “What a meal I have here!” thinks the spider. “Surely I shall live forever.”

When the fisherman wakes again he laughs to see what the spider has done. Sitting up, he easily breaks the web, and the spider falls to one side of his now destroyed but once magnificent creation. “You,” says the fisherman, “are not my master. I am too big for you. Your net can only catch what is appropriate for you.”

“Well said,” answers the spider. “So how is it that you thought to retain the moon?” “Oh THAT,” replies the man. “That was for love. I could not bring myself to let her go, she is so very beautiful.”

“You feasted on her light, just as I feast on my flies.” And since this is a dream, and things seldom make sense in dreams, the spider becomes enormous and its web, which now weighs a thousand pounds, settles inexorably over the man. He gasps for air, can not get himself free, is paralyzed by the nearness of the gigantic spider. In terror he cries out, “Oh moon, help me, help me. I let you go. Can you not help me?”

But the moon is nowhere to be seen. Only the sun shines in the burning sky.

Now the fisherman resigns himself to death, and even thinks that perhaps for him to die in such a manner is a queer kind of justice, since his net has dragged so many creatures to their deaths. But as he has this thought, the net disappears, the spider disappears, and all is clear and calm just as on the morning when his dream began.

He sits on the shore looking at the sea, for the first time ever seeing the water as just water, the ocean as ocean and not a place to cast his net, the day as a day and not as a time when he must fish, the sun as light and not the moving indicator of how much time is left in the day. He watches some miniature crabs scuttle across the sand and feels no urge to toss them into his bucket for supper. He sits until the sun goes down and the moon and stars appear in the sky again. He lies on his back and dreams a dream until he doesn’t know if he is the dreamer or the dream.