Meh, I didn't go to Maxwell's in Hoboken. It was raining. I could have driven, but while I was there yesterday, I didn't check the parking situation. Besides, I'm avoiding driving at almost all cost. That said, I'm driving upstate tomorrow to go to the monastery, so I'll be gone until next week. After I get back, I still have to see if I can get my computer on life support. Need new Earthlink software to try to get internet back up.

My brother needs what used to be my car every Sunday this month for sailing. So I'm driving upstate in his car - a red 1988 Porsche 944. I hate driving it, not because it's a tacky expensive sports car, but because it's stick. I can get by with driving stick, but I'll never be good at it, and I'll never like it. This is all due to my early bad experiences and stress learning how to drive stick - specifically, getting the car moving in first gear. The cars I learned to drive stick on, including this one, were all really hard to get into first gear, and the memory of that anxiety of not being able to get the car moving and stalling out in the middle of traffic remains to this day. I'd probably be fine and a proficient driver of stick shift if it weren't for the anxiety and muscle memory that I might not be able to do it, that it's not a sure thing.

I remember the first time I did feel like I got the hang of driving stick. It wasn't in a Porsche or an ancient MG Midget or a likewise ancient Alfa Romeo. It was in a friend's Toyota minivan on the streets of Manhattan. If only I learned on a Honda or a Toyota.

Speaking of anxieties, I'm scared of spiders. I've been forcing myself to get over the fear by drawing on the realization that all living beings are equal. I haven't been tested in a while. My apartment in San Francisco was pretty spider free, and I've yet to come across one walking across the ceiling here in New Jersey *scans walls and ceilings of room* *whew*. What we do have here in this house are centipedes - the large ones (up to two inches long) with big spindly legs that move in concert and scurry across the floor like it was an Olympic event.

By any stretch of comparison, these centipedes should creep me out as much as spiders do. But they don't. They're fast, they look hairy, and those legs! Ugh! But every few days I'll see one, and if it surprises me I'll jump, but then I'll go about capturing it in a cup and flinging it out the window (for karma's sake I hope they're fine with the two story drop) into the bushes below. I won't kill a spider either if I find one. I'd probably go through the same steps, but I'm pretty sure that afterwards I'd be shaking involuntarily like a leaf.

I wonder if part of the difference is the metaphor of the web, the web of illusion, getting caught in a web. Maybe I was a fly in a long series of previous lives. *shudder* I shouldn't wonder that the experience of getting caught in a web, seeing a spider approach you and wrapping you up in silk, and then sucking the life out of you is something that might carry over into other incarnations. I prefer the metaphor theory.