10 I contemplate a small spider that is checking, in front of me, the web it has spread between the two bars of an iron railing. There is a light breeze and the mesh trembles and glimmers faintly. The spider walks across it from end to end like an owner inspecting their house. Where it passes, I can guess the soft rungs of the web, more or less the cells of a silver beehive, the colorless stained glass of a Gothic window. It checks by instinct, perhaps it doesn't even know it, in the same way that I do not know which part of myself is instinct and which is not.

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