On Webs, Internet and Otherwise

Under the sidewalks of WSU, there is a curious natural phenomenon. Down below where students mindlessly walk from class to class in an ipod induced stupor, there are a collection of underground tunnels that connect building to building. They feed heat, power and information to each building in a crude pattern. Here and there they intersect. Here and there they start and stop, pipes climbing and weaving around each other. These places are unseen by most, they go unnoticed.

However, there is a section that is a little different from the rest. For whatever reason (only an entomologist might know) there is the perfect balance of humidity, altitude and heat. In this section of tunnel, thousands and thousands of spiders gather and coat the walls of the tunnel with webs. An entire twenty foot section is a lattice-on-lattice interwoven symphony of silk. For whatever reason, insects gather here in the tunnel more so than any other section, and the spiders jostle each other to get at the endless source of food.

And of course, it's through this section that we were chosen to pull our fiber optic cable. If you are not comfortable with being in close proximity with spiders, manual labor mere inches from them being overhead is not pleasant. In fact, I'm fairly ok with spiders and yet I found myself moving a little faster with a little more panic in my voice while working there.

But here's my point.

It takes a special person to appreciate the beauty in the tunnel. It takes a special person to appreciate the beauty in just about anything related to the manual labor involved with the magic of the internet. It takes a special person to wander around on the job site marveling at the simplicity of this world, how all the parts fit together to make something and how that something is gradually eaten up by the world again, no matter how diligent the maintenance or design.

I am such a special person. I am a Type B personality. I love the obvious metaphor between spider webs and fiber optics. Just as my hands are shaking from fear, I appreciate that the venomous hobo spider looks like a harpist's fingers as she plucks away. I wonder how that spider came to be weaving a web here in this dank tunnel. I wonder what that spider thinks of me, a large, large insect clumsily weaving a thick black single strand web.

These days, it's hip to be Type A. Type A's are go-getters; they are people of action. They have action statements and life plans. They don't have jobs, they have career goals. They are stressed over their house, their car, their career, their spouses. These are the bread and butter of this nation and this is their time to shine. They take charge of situations and engineer and inspire solutions. These are great, great things. I am horribly envious of Type A's. Somehow I want a bit of their drive and ingenuity. I want to feel stressed over things. I want to have a calendar in my head down to the year, month and hour. I feel guilty for not feeling stressed. I feel wrong to not go-get goals. I feel silly not having any bullet points on my plans of action.

Unfortunately, I am a member and an advocate of the much less hip and trendy Type B's. We're sometimes erroneously referred to as hippies or slackers or other such disparaging terms. These days it's much less hip to be a dreamer or a visualizer. We don't make much money, we don't get too many spotlights. It's the aggressive Type A's that fight and compete as the thrill of competition is lost on us. The adrenaline rush of the fight, of the conquest means nothing. Sometimes Type A's are completely mystified by us. They do not see the point in our wandering musings and consequently, they are mostly amused by us, but nothing more.

And oh, what I would give to trade away my appreciation for metaphors, for common and uncommon beauty. I would trade it all in. If I could only anticipate the structure of the tunnel, how the cable must be pulled, the angles and trajectory and footage. The math and the sequence of steps that must be performed. Sadly, these things elude me. I have only so much brain space, and it is occupied mostly with memories I've had, both real and exaggerated, with useless trivia, with songs I've made up. With comparisons between spiders and glass. It's all used up, and has no room for potentially useful information. If I could reach inside my head and turn my right side down and my left side up I would, I swear it. I could be a useful member of society. I could be really, really important. If I could just set my mind to it, I could. But I'm quickly distracted again and all is lost. Just as the inkling forms in my mind it evaporates again and I'm left singing yet another ridiculous song in my head.

At the same time, I'm a bit proud of us Type B's. When athletes stare glassily into the camera and utter the time-tested phrase "I play for the love of the game." That's us! We really do play just for the love of the game, and not for money or competition. It really doesn't occur to us who wins or loses. It's not that we are morally superior, it just doesn't really occur to us as being that important. It's just that we have a bizarre listing of priorities and sometimes they don't jive with a normal, or say, rational person's. It's normal to be competitive, it's normal to want to win. It really, really is. It makes me feel horribly guilty to sometimes got to a baseball game and have no recollection as to who won or lost. These things make me sad.

So I work my job, same as everybody else. And sometimes I even pretend to be concerned about things I'm supposed to be concerned about. Sometimes I fake trying to be stressed about important things. But really I'm just faking it and you can tell if you look closely. Sometimes I stroke my beard and consider important thoughts, but it's only to keep up appearances. In reality I'm probably trying to think of what color green I like best, or if the car behind you had a name, what its name might be. I might be remembering what the name of the girl was in second grade I had a crush on, or what the lyrics to my favorite Ren & Stimpy song were. These are not good things to spend a long time thinking about, they are not terribly useful at all.

So I work my job. And I pretend to be diligently pulling cable. But really, I'm just staring at spiderwebs and getting paid. I do an ok job of it, that is, pulling the cable. But I do a fantastic job of appreciating the beauty and the ugliness of the universe on a daily basis. Everyday I'm awestruck by how the planet works, by how life is. Every single damned day. Maybe that seems charming to you, you Type A's, but really it's not. It's just distracting, and it becomes hard to explain to the bill collector that they need to start over, because you were just remembering a tree named Mr. Needles, and how much raking you had to do for him. It becomes difficult to explain to the mechanic that your car's name is Jenny, which is why you keep referring to her in that manner.

So until I figure out a way to fix my brain, or a pill I can take, I'll keep doing these silly things. I'll grow older and older, and still be not useful. The only thing that will change is that my musings will grow more and more wildly, and be less and less tied down to reality. I'll just get crazier and crazier and never any wiser at all. This also makes me sad. On the other hand, I hope and pray for vindication. In my fantasy I rise to heaven on the wings of an angel, and old Saint Pete will tilt his reading glasses to the edge of his nose and read off my sheet. "Says here you had the priorities right the whole time. I see that you caught that thing we did with the spiders, clever metaphor we thought, but maybe a little obvious. Oh, your sheet is missing the name of that girl from second grade, her name was Abigail."

The reality is that I might never receive any vindication or proof that this is the right way to go about things. And truth be told, I'm not sure I have a choice even if it isn't. But one day, maybe someone will look me in the eye and tell me I was right, that I wasn't crazy, that this is how life is supposed to be lived. But maybe I shouldn't be concerned at all.

I mean getting all stressed about right and wrong is a Type A thing anyway, right?