......................................................................................................................................................... A steeper path this morning takes me past a tattered prayer flag flapping from the same boreal wind winding through layers of knited sweaters. There is no where to hide here; no shelter. Running as in a dream, I lift onto cold currents of air...too restless to navigate, I depend on my legs again, walking by a field of grass ruffling like a green dog's coat, while on the other side of the path gossamer dances on a loom of leaves. Spider Woman, Na'ashjéii asdzáá, mistress of the underworld, helped create a place where many people would come together to work, eat, or sleep. There was practically no privacy and very little family life. It was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that houses became transformed into the Fourth World. Then she modeled humans from its clay and taught them how to weave, "each knit of the net a soul." Earth is a basket of molecular beads, Latticed, whorled, invaginated, Leached horizons of soil, Downward thrusting sky, cold gray Gelatin seas, worlds and anti-worlds Unraveled, and raveled again. [J. Weishaus. From, "Earth: A Basket."] Living in "a tall, inaccessible spire in the middle of Canyon de Chelly, or "a small house in the ground," Spider Woman can't be pinned down. I see her like Kami, who "does not abide: it's nature is to arrive and then depart;" or a Humpbacked Fluteplayer carrying a loom on her back. Beyond our senses, reality is woven strings vibrating in "domains or swaths of several spatial dimensions within a higher-dimensional space," maybe looking like the warp and weft of Navaho blanket, with a thread for the spirit to walk out. ......................................................................................................................................................... a place where: J. Hall, At Home in the World. New Orleans, 2010. each knit: E.L. Smith, Sacred Mysteries. Nevada City, CA, 2003. a tall, inaccessible: D. Sandner, Navaho Symbols of Healing. Rochester, VT, 1991. does not abide: R.B. Pilgrim, "Intervals (Ma) in Space and Time:Foundations for a Religio-Aesthetic Paradigm in Japan." History Of Religions, February 1986. domains or swaths: M. Holloway, "The Beauty of Branes." Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-beauty-of-branes