{"id":168922,"date":"2024-10-22T10:26:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T14:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=168922"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:44:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:44:22","slug":"arachnids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/","title":{"rendered":"Arachnids"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Colored engraving of a large scorpion, Buthus granulatus<\/em>. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London, and Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Licensed under CC0 4.0<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

1.<\/p>\n

In the weeks before I left for Mexico, the flies showed up. My apartment became overrun with them, the size of small red grapes, five to ten ripe orbs at a time buzzing around in any given room. A fly or two had never bothered me, so I was able to balance my pacifist instincts with a more rigorous approach to housekeeping; I took the trash out every other day, and if I saw an errant roach in the bathroom I would kill it, the way you wash a glass in the sink without thinking twice. The flies radicalized me. They wheeled through the apartment, attacking every cubic foot of open space, refusing to be ignored. It sent me into a fugue state of bloodlust. I wondered if there was a corpse they were drawn to that I couldn\u2019t see. Maybe I was the corpse.<\/p>\n

I became obsessed with stalking and killing every last one of them, fantasizing that if I could annihilate them all before the sun went down, the problem would be solved. But it never worked. I slaughtered twenty-five at a time\u2014my windows, ceiling, and rolled-up copies of The New Yorker<\/em> splattered with gore. I\u2019d wipe down nearly every wall and window in my apartment to keep other flies from coming back for the blood and guts. But they always returned.<\/p>\n

But I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight. \u201cDo better,\u201d I whispered, gently but not kindly, crouched over one little<\/p>\n

translucent creature
\ncoterminous with the dust
\nbehind my bookcase.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

I took the trash out again before I flew to Mexico City to meet Andr\u00e9s, bringing along a copy of my book for his family in Chiapas.<\/p>\n

On the far side of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas\u2014Andr\u00e9s insisted we go straight from the airport\u2014pyramids decked out with little spirals carved into the stones, like the phonemes of fingerprints. At the top of the square there was a massive Spanish colonial cathedral built with those same stones, stolen from the pyramids, punched through with blue windows glowing in the rain like the frozen blood of blacklight. Finally, across from the pyramids, a towering block of public housing\u2014on its roof, in 1968, President Ordaz had sent snipers to shoot the students gathered there to protest his government in what became known as the Tlatelolco Student Massacre. This place is a microcosm of what goes on here, Andr\u00e9s told me: Tenochtitl\u00e1n, the Aztecs, the Spanish, the communists, something keeps getting violently overthrown.<\/p>\n

In the morning we headed to Coyoac\u00e1n for breakfast. It was September 19, the date of not one but two devastating earthquakes, in 1985 and 2017. To commemorate this uncanny twin anniversary, and in honor of the thousands killed by a combination of terrible luck and criminally shitty infrastructure, the city now runs an annual earthquake drill. Sirens went off as Andr\u00e9s and I were having coffee. We walked outside into a small plaza, led by smiling volunteers in orange vests, and stood patiently, waiting for nothing to happen.<\/p>\n

From under our feet, a silent chord rippled through us. We looked at one another. \u201cDo you feel that?\u201d I said. Slowly at first, gathering force, a hanging lamp swung<\/p>\n

like a pendulum,
\nthe planet twisted inside
\nits elastic shell<\/p>\n

and then the ground went still. Purple jacaranda blossoms fluttered from the trees. Several people in the plaza crossed themselves. Later, a researcher calculated that the odds of a third earthquake happening in Mexico City on September 19 had been somewhere between 0.000751% and 0.00000024%. As we finished breakfast, Andr\u00e9s looked at his phone and shook his head. His father had texted: \u201cThe dead are kicking.\u201d We hit the road.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9s and I met in a freshman English class, gleefully arguing about the Iliad<\/em>. It was a deep and occasionally caustic bond. After we graduated, he and his brother Juan and I shared an apartment in Brooklyn. Juan and I never quite took to one another. He was a painter\u2014brooding, strange, and quietly volcanic. When we first met, he asked if I would make art as the world were ending\u2014that\u2019s the kind of question he asked people when he first met them. It was a test. My answer\u2014probably not\u2014was a drop of poison in our relationship. I had little patience for this brand of purity and found his pious death drive clownish and immature. We lived together for a miserable year in the depth of the 2008 recession and then parted ways\u2014Andr\u00e9s and I to grad school in different cities in the Midwest, Juan back to Mexico to paint.<\/p>\n

I wrote an elegy called \u201cThe Art Buyer,\u201d not long after receiving word that he had slipped on a rock and fallen into a waterfall he\u2019d been painting in Las Nubes, a remote part of the Chiapas rainforest by the Santo Domingo River, where Andr\u00e9s and I were now driving. Or was it an elegy? I loved Juan, but the love felt strangely vacant, like a doorway you keep expecting someone to darken. It was that kind of poem. One problem with elegy is that it tends to valorize its subjects, erasing ugliness in all directions, including in the poet\u2014I tried to foreground my strain with Juan in my own poem, which Andr\u00e9s liked. He likes conflict and disagreement. I like to remind him of it.<\/p>\n

At some point many years ago, I bought Andr\u00e9s a copy of The Mooring of Starting Out<\/em>, a collection of John Ashbery\u2019s first five books, which he never read. I found it on his shelf as we were packing and threw it in the car. We argued about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with Ashbery is he\u2019s too American,\u201d Andr\u00e9s said, driving us through the weaponized vegetation on the road between Puebla and Oaxaca, having never so much as read a whole poem, trying to bait me. In college, at the height of the Bush administration\u2019s war in Iraq, I\u2019d once tried to disavow my status as an American. The country was nothing but a bunch of jingoistic pigs, I claimed, and I wanted nothing to do with it. He was livid. \u201cOf course you\u2019re American,\u201d he replied, shaking his head. \u201cYou\u2019ve benefited from this country your entire life. Claiming you haven\u2019t only proves it.\u201d He wasn\u2019t always right, but he was that time. And that\u2019s how it is with us. He playfully asked me to fight him once, then punched me in the head so hard he fractured his hand.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t wrong about Ashbery either. Particularly in the early books, Ashbery is the consummate expat\u2014imbued with a folksiness artfully deranged by tangled, sublimated desire and grief, perhaps even violence. Some attribute this to Ashbery\u2019s sexuality, others to the death of his own younger brother in childhood. Andr\u00e9s had sniffed out the microtonal dissonance of a sublimely gifted, uneasy agent of American empire. It is difficult not to sense the covert action and longing that charge from the poems\u2019 margins. Even when he is faithfully describing a painting, his presence changes it.<\/p>\n

Humoring me, Andr\u00e9s listened intently as I read aloud from the book. I reached \u201cThese Lacustrine Cities,\u201d the opening poem of Rivers and Mountains<\/em>, and came to its final lines: \u201cYou have built a mountain of something, \/ Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument, \/ Whose wind is desire starching a petal, \/ Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was silent for a moment behind the wheel. \u201cWhoa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As we made our way into the mountains of northern Oaxaca, a cop pulled us over. Andr\u00e9s rolled down the window. He stared at her blankly\u2014she didn\u2019t frighten him enough, or she frightened him too much. There was a thin burst vessel in the white of her eye. She searched our car on the side of the road. As she flipped through Andr\u00e9s\u2019s passport, her face was stony. But when she saw mine, she looked up at me and smiled. Then she sent us on our way.<\/p>\n

We drove for three days, wending deeper into the forest, sometimes going hours out of our way to avoid roadblocks and checkpoints.<\/p>\n

On the third day we entered Chiapas. Around a bend in the road, a group of masked men flagged us down. I shot Andr\u00e9s a look.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re Zapatistas, not Narcos,\u201d he said, rolling his eyes, telling me to chill. He said hello and handed the men a few pesos. One gave us a pamphlet. They let us go with a friendly wave.<\/p>\n

Hours later, we were driving along a lush ravine. Below, the Santo Domingo plunged between mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to show you something funny,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He drove into a parking lot near a series of lakes. Deep mineral deposits had colored them a shade of otherworldly blue, like the stained glass windows on the cathedral at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. A slimy length of black rope hung awkwardly over the water.<\/p>\n

I asked what the rope was for.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll see,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

We entered a small gazebo with a sign bearing a faded painting of a toucan and the words BIENVENIDOS A GUATEMALA<\/small>, directly aligned with the rope over the lake.<\/p>\n

What is a line? It\u2019s not that borders aren\u2019t real\u2014they\u2019re just imaginary. Here in the rainforest, standing before an unmanned gazebo, they seemed almost childish. If they didn\u2019t result in mass death and dispossession it would be funny, the imposed psychosis of the whole operation coming into slapstick relief, a monstrous clarity\u2014<\/p>\n

enter here, not
\nhere or here. This side is space
\nbut this is domain.<\/p>\n

We strolled through the gazebo into Guatemala. A dog emerged from the woods and followed us as we passed small houses and shacks, chickens running between the yards. Then it got bored with us and loped back into the forest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

We continued until we pulled into the village of Las Nubes, paid for our cabin, and drove down a steep hill to the river. Summer was over, and there was no one else there. Hibiscus and bird-of-paradise flowers hung everywhere, and the spiked sunset skins of lychee covered the ground. A line of ants carrying hacked up bits of leaf five times the size of their bodies stretched into the forest. Toucan chatter fizzed from the trees. Beyond the cabins was the Santo Domingo, a faint roar. We dropped off our things in the cabin. Andr\u00e9s warned me to zip my bag. \u201cI accidentally brought a tarantula home once.\u201d<\/p>\n

We reached the path to the falls at dusk. We would perform our ritual in the morning\u2014this was just to get a feel for the place. The river had overflowed, and we had to remove our shoes and lift them above our heads. The water rose to our waists. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen it so high,\u201d Andr\u00e9s said. The path sloped up and we stepped onto a stone platform fortified with rough mortar. There was a railing.<\/p>\n

What can I say about what was beyond it? The water gave the most ferocious display of physical force I\u2019ve ever witnessed firsthand. Mist gripped my throat from the inside; it sensed us, and we were of no particular interest. Above us, a cave pinched the river\u2019s flow into a space the size of my bedroom, shooting through in a bone-crushing current that bloomed and tumbled down below us, widening hundreds of yards. This bottleneck accounted for the river\u2019s relentless power. The entire landscape looked ready to crumble. From this close up, the roar of the water erased almost every other sound. In the small space above the cave, a hole punched clean through a mountain, a doorway waiting for someone to darken it, swallows flickering back and forth, whitewater leaping behind their hollow silhouettes. Spray dripped down our faces. On the cliff overlooking the whole scene the rock\u2019s discoloration formed the unmistakable shape of a massive skull.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9s pointed to the railing. In this spot, for two years, some drips of acrylic paint from Juan\u2019s last painting had endured the elements. But the river\u2019s atmospheric cataract had by now stripped them away, save for one tiny speck of sky blue.<\/p>\n

The clouds turned gunmetal as the sun went down. It was time to get back to the cabin. We waded through the water, a brown spider the size of my hand gripping a nearby tree trunk. We ran up to the cabin and the sky cracked open. There was no electricity, and it was dark. We lit cigarettes under the awning as rain bombarded the roof. When he took a drag, I saw tears in Andr\u00e9s\u2019s eyes, but they didn\u2019t fall. \u201cThis place is so him,\u201d he said. Frogs called out a rough symphonic drone. The hands in his wristwatch<\/p>\n

phosphoresced, small v
\nrhyming with the glowworm
\ncrawling at his feet.<\/p>\n

We entered the cabin by the light from our phones. I opened the bathroom door to take a leak. On the floor, in the weak magnesium glare, I saw a large black scorpion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9s let out a low sigh, and I choked back a scream. I had never seen one in the flesh. Usually when we confront something we fear, reality turns out to be softer than the monstrosity our psyches have concocted for us. But the scorpion was precisely as horrifying as I\u2019d imagined, a creature plucked directly from childhood nightmares. \u201cIt must have come in through the shower drain,\u201d Andr\u00e9s whispered, though there was no one around for miles. \u201cThey travel in pairs.\u201d We didn\u2019t see its mate.<\/p>\n

We quickly hatched a plan: We would place a cup over the scorpion, and in the morning we would slip a piece of paper underneath and transfer it outside. But when we dug through our bags, we found we didn\u2019t have a cup or any other tools to deal with the situation at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Johnny were here he would just let it be,\u201d Andr\u00e9s said. \u201cHe let them crawl all over him. Never even killed a roach.\u201d I recalled Juan staring at a silverfish in our shared bathroom with a dark beam of murder emanating from his face, but I held my tongue.<\/p>\n

We turned our flashlights back to the floor. The scorpion was gone.<\/p>\n

We looked everywhere\u2014behind the toilet, in the corners, and, shielding our faces, on the ceiling. Then I turned my flashlight to the corner by the door. At eye level, between the second and third hinges, spiked black feet rippled slowly up the jamb.<\/p>\n

A pincer reached around the wood, and a long, segmented, prehensile tail dragged a venomous little knife behind it, curling.<\/p>\n

\u201cCute of Juan to let this crawl on him,\u201d I said. \u201cBut what about you? Do you want to wake up with this in your bed?\u201d<\/p>\n

He considered it for a moment. \u201cI don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was only one option.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Andr\u00e9s whispered. I pulled the door hard, slammed it shut, my knuckles white on the knob. When I opened it again, the scorpion\u2019s dead weight fell from the jamb to the floor with a sickening click. Our light fell on the little creature, intact but slightly flattened, motionless on the ground. Andr\u00e9s sighed. Johnny would have let it live.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sure it\u2019s dead?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know man, it looks pretty fucking dead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does look dead. It\u2019s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ripped out a page from his journal to scoop up the body.<\/p>\n

The tail curled. A pair of pincers reached up through the damp air.<\/p>\n

In a single motion, Andr\u00e9s pulled off his boot and slammed it on the ground five times until the scorpion was a black smear on the tile.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s dead,\u201d I said. I was uncomfortably aware of my pulse. Andr\u00e9s brushed black exoskeleton and guts onto a ripped notebook page. When you neutralize<\/p>\n

the the you fear most
\nback to its indefinite
\narticle, there is<\/p>\n

nothing you can do but confront it in your dreams. He checked his sheets, crawled into bed, and immediately fell asleep, breathing heavily. I lit a candle, sat down at a desk, cracked a lychee open, and listened for what was talking in the rain\u2019s static on the roof. I wrote this down. A green and black spider crawled across my notebook. I picked it up, cracked the cabin door, and sent it out to make a home between raindrops. I returned to the desk. Wind blew hot wax across the words. A second spider appeared on the page.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

The water had risen overnight from the rain, and by dawn, when we were back at the river, it reached up to our chests at the lowest point of the trail. We approached the platform and lit three votive candles. \u201cThese will go out in two minutes with all the mist,\u201d Andr\u00e9s said, \u201cbut whatever.\u201d We stepped to the edge of the platform, and he nodded at me to start.<\/p>\n

I read the \u201cThe Art Buyer\u201d slowly, almost shouting each word so Andr\u00e9s could hear, though he was right next to me. \u201cPoetry has done its work on you,\u201d I read, though I did not remember writing that. As soon as my voice hit the air it sounded like a whisper. The pages of the book turned pulpy as I read, the text blurring in the moisture. When I ripped them out they tore smoothly, without a sound, like flesh from a steamed fish. One by one I threw them in long, slow arcs into the Santo Domingo, which instantly whipped them away; they seemed to dissolve just before hitting the water.<\/p>\n

When I finished, we grinned. We were drenched. The cliffside skull above us stared into the clouds. The candles had melted into a pool of wax. We left them burning.<\/p>\n

All this actually happened, but none of it is real, except as poetry. I render this border almost automatically, without trying, starting with the word \u201cI\u201d: Here I am, in this line of text, where I am not. But this line is porous\u2014it has holes that no one can account for where poetry, reality, the living and the dead, slip back and forth undetected.<\/p>\n

\u201cReading you reading me,\u201d Andr\u00e9s texted me the other day, after looking at an early draft of this account, \u201cI feel perhaps distant, oracular. Priestly maybe. Which is fine, it\u2019s a role I can certainly play. But we have all kinds of disagreements that your more mythological retelling of the trip occludes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou love disagreement as an aesthetic ideal,\u201d I texted back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t agree!\u201d he replied. I laughed.<\/p>\n

The day after we left Las Nubes, as we were driving through Chiapas, a tiny chapel on a steep hill appeared up ahead of us. Apparently San Andr\u00e9s walked there, Andr\u00e9s told me, and sometimes people burned offerings by the chapel.<\/p>\n

I asked him to pull over.<\/p>\n

At the top of the hill I took the remainder of the book from my backpack\u2014\u201cThe Art Buyer\u201d now torn out\u2014spreading it over the ash as Andr\u00e9s watched, lighting the damp pages that somehow still burned, the flame turning blue and green as it crept up the spine and touched the cover, and when the poems crossed from one state of matter to the next the distance was next to nothing<\/p>\n

through the air\u2019s net, gray letters
\nlegible for one
\nor two seconds in the breeze.<\/p>\n

A light rain began to fall.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Daniel Poppick is the author of<\/em>\u00a0The Police and of\u00a0the National Poetry Series winner\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Fear of Description.<\/em><\/p>\n

An previous version of this essay misnamed Tenochtitl\u00e1n. We have updated it after publication.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-168922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nArachnids by Daniel Poppick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 22, 2024 \u2013 "I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight."\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Arachnids by Daniel Poppick\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 22, 2024 \u2013 "I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight."\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1482\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Daniel Poppick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Poppick\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"17 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Daniel Poppick\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/24318d0914cb0f3f699220d84c0adaeb\"},\"headline\":\"Arachnids\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\"},\"wordCount\":3416,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-1024x593.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Featured\"],\"articleSection\":[\"First Person\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\",\"name\":\"Arachnids by Daniel Poppick\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-1024x593.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00\",\"description\":\"October 22, 2024 \u2013 \\\"I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight.\\\"\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1482,\"caption\":\"V0022403 A large scorpion: Buthus granulatus. Coloured engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http:\/\/wellcomeimages.org A large scorpion: Buthus granulatus. Coloured engraving. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Arachnids\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/24318d0914cb0f3f699220d84c0adaeb\",\"name\":\"Daniel Poppick\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7840bf8fe8df062893933fb6462710af8b500a75a046975a0cc1013fadc6f64b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7840bf8fe8df062893933fb6462710af8b500a75a046975a0cc1013fadc6f64b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Daniel Poppick\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpoppick\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Arachnids by Daniel Poppick","description":"October 22, 2024 \u2013 \"I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight.\"","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Arachnids by Daniel Poppick","og_description":"October 22, 2024 \u2013 \"I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight.\"","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":1482,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Daniel Poppick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Daniel Poppick","Est. reading time":"17 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/"},"author":{"name":"Daniel Poppick","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/24318d0914cb0f3f699220d84c0adaeb"},"headline":"Arachnids","datePublished":"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00","dateModified":"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/"},"wordCount":3416,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-1024x593.jpg","keywords":["Featured"],"articleSection":["First Person"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/","name":"Arachnids by Daniel Poppick","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-1024x593.jpg","datePublished":"2024-10-22T14:26:17+00:00","dateModified":"2024-10-23T17:44:22+00:00","description":"October 22, 2024 \u2013 \"I never killed the spiders in the apartment, as a rule. I reasoned that they would help keep the place clean by catching flies. They didn\u2019t. I resented them for not pulling their weight.\"","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/a-large-scorpion-buthus-granulatus-coloured-engraving-wellcome-v0022403-scaled.jpg","width":2560,"height":1482,"caption":"V0022403 A large scorpion: Buthus granulatus. Coloured engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http:\/\/wellcomeimages.org A large scorpion: Buthus granulatus. Coloured engraving. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/10\/22\/arachnids\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Arachnids"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/24318d0914cb0f3f699220d84c0adaeb","name":"Daniel Poppick","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7840bf8fe8df062893933fb6462710af8b500a75a046975a0cc1013fadc6f64b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7840bf8fe8df062893933fb6462710af8b500a75a046975a0cc1013fadc6f64b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Daniel Poppick"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpoppick\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168922"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168939,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168922\/revisions\/168939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}