The Furious Spinner

Woke up feeling disconnected from everything this morning—probably because I was in great pain. Sickness and pain does that, disconnects us. It's as if Lachesis has temporarily cut all the threads that hold us close to the visible world, and we are left freefalling through life.

I got up and took a walk, hoping the pain would fade. The world of dawn was suffused with this glorious golden light—sweet light—yet everything seemed black and white to me. I heard only crows calling out as I passed by, not looking up from whatever charmed them in the gray dirt. Beyond them and the mudflats, a flock of white doves floated in the curve of the stream. Above a vulture rode the thermals. A black cat walked across a yard as I passed by. I walked to the bridge over Rock Creek and looked down, hoping to see some salmon trying to reach their spawning beds. Saw only still mossy water. Kept walking.

A woman dressed in white walked toward me. The sunlight lit her from behind. I had to shield my eyes to actually see her. I wondered what it was like to get up in the morning and dress like her and go out into the day beautiful, perky, and businesslike. And then I realized she was coming to me. "Excuse me," she said. She held papers close to her chest. I held up my hands. "If you're selling something I'm not interested." "I'm not selling anything," she said. The papers were copies of the Watchtower. "But I do have something that might interest you." I suppose if I believed in signs—and I often do—I would have thought, "Gee, you're feeling disconnected, Kim, and here is this woman trying to connect with you. You should listen." But I was not reading the signs this painful morning. "I'm not Christian, and I'm not interested." I kept walking. I suppose I should have been nicer to her, but I was as nice as I could manage. I almost screamed, "Can't you see I'm in agony! Leave me alone!" Many expletives added. And I am fully capable of saying such things outloud. But I left her alone to take her crazy talk to someone else. I might have been hanging by a thread, but I wasn't interested in grasping onto whatever she was selling.

And speaking of connections, I kept thinking of Spider Woman, even as the Woman in White was trying to sell me the word of Jesus Christ. Spider Woman is all about connections, even though I couldn't find any myself this morning. A while ago I wrote Spider Woman's story. Various versions of Spider Woman exist in different cultures all over the planet. The version below relies heavily on the Navajo story of Spider Woman.

Spider Woman Has a Thought

Spider Woman walked around the emptiness and yawned. She had not yawned before and thought about what it meant. While she thought about the yawn, she held out her palm. From the center of her right palm golden thread emerged. She let the thread drop on the ground—like a line of tiny golden bread crumbs—going from the East to the West.

“Interesting,” she thought.

She held out her other hand. From the center of the palm of her left hand shiny blue-black thread unraveled, dropping on the ground—like a line of tiny crow feathers—going from South to North and intersecting the line of golden thread.

Everything shifted then. And was the same, only different.

“Ahhh,” Spider Woman said. “Out of emptiness we have order. Out of thought we have intersection.”

Spider Woman walked around the ordered world for a time. Then she felt another yawn coming on. No, not a yawn. Something else. A stretch, like after a long sleep.

“Mmmm,” Spider Woman thought. She realized she wished to bring joy into the world. She looked down and saw two medicine bundles on the ground before her. She squatted next to them. How lovely they were. Round and soft. She began to sing. It was a wonderful sound, this song Spider Woman created. It was a chant like no other chant. The ordered universe pulsed with this wondrous sound.

After a time, the two medicine bundles began to stretch and expand. Spider Woman watched with delight as she continued to chant. It was like watching a pumpkin grow from a flower to a tiny pumpkin to a huge orange gourd. Or a tree sprout from a seed to a sapling to a full grown tree. Soon Nau’ts’ity and Ic’sts’ity, the Divine Sisters, sprang from the medicine bundles and were still the bundles of medicine, dancing and chanting with Spider Woman.

As they danced and chanted and Spider Woman thought, danced, and chanted, all kinds of thing popped into existence. The Universe. This Galaxy. That Galaxy. The Moon. Sun. Stars. Milky Way. The Earth. Trees. Coyotes. Crows. Rabbits. Turtles. Lakes. Hills. Mountains. Clouds.

The whole of existence shook with the sound of chanting, dancing, and creation.

“Look,” the Divine Sisters cried, and held out their hands for Spider Woman to see. They had scooped up clay from the Earth. Clutched in Nau’ts’ity’s left hand was black clay, in her right white clay. Ic’sts’ity showed Spider Woman the yellow clay oozing through the fingers of her left hand and the red clay dripping between the fingers of her right hand.

Spider Woman clapped. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with these colorful pieces of clay. She and the Divine Sisters began rolling the clay into interesting two-legged shapes. When each one looked as though it could make its way in this world, Spider Woman put it in her mouth and rolled it around in her life-giving saliva. Then she plucked it from her mouth, carefully licking open the soft spot at the top of its head and attaching her thread to it.

She whispered a message just for it before she set it on the ground and it became a real live two-legged, running away from Spider Woman and the Divine Sisters, all too big and awesome and wonderful for the two-leggeds to see, except for a momentary glimpse remembered in dream time.

For a time, all was as it should be. Joy blossomed everywhere. In fact, everything blossomed everywhere. The two-leggeds remembered their connection with Spider Woman, chanted each day as she had instructed, and kept the doors of their minds open and pulsing with life. But somehow as time went by, many of the two-leggeds thought about other things, forgetting completely about Spider Woman, closing their minds to her and Nature and the Divine Sisters. They still walked the Earth, but they were less than dead. This made Spider Woman very unhappy. Creation had not turned out as she had planned. Not that she had really planned it. It had been a thought, actually. Maybe not a complete plan. In any case, it was not what she had had in mind. She did not like the weave of this particular web.

So she unraveled the web of this life, sparing all those who had kept an open mind, and she began another web, another thought, another chant, another dance.

Again, for a time, all was joy. But then the web once again shook with the living dead. So she unstuck the sticky thread, raveled the thread she had unraveled, unwove the web she had woven. She created a third web, whispered to a new set of two-leggeds, admonishing them to keep their minds open, to keep their connection to her and the world.

This third time, the web seemed to hold. Spider Woman and the Divine Sisters were happy. The world pulsed with Joy...

...Yet even today, Spider Woman will remind you that what she created she can destroy. Step onto the path that goes by her nest unprepared for her instructions, step onto that path as if you are bound for a picnic, and she will flick her fingers across the thread that binds you to her, that connects you to this world, reminding you that you had better pay attention.

And when she is feeling charitable, she might drop down onto your shoulder, or even your earlobe, and give you exactly the advice you need...

Only remember this: She does not come when she is called, and always expect the unexpected. Who do you think taught Coyote the ways of the trickster?

0 comments

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Ashcroft Calls Librarians Hysterical....Them's Fightin' Words