3 minute read
Patrick Curran – She Waits for Eternity, Laura Barrow
Patrick Curran
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The rising sun cast dark shadows to the east of Spider Rock, as Spider Lass, slipped in hard, and fast. “Mattie” Franklin the Liberator, AKA, Spider Lass donned her rock climbing rack at the base of the canyon floor, the Tsegi. She, a NavahoWarrior-Princess was chosen by the Tribe to break the curse of Spider Man. Only then could the Eternal Tribe pass freely back to Earth and bring peace and everlasting life – iiná doo ninít’i’ii
She loaded her climbing rack for the nine pitch, eight hundred foot, class five climb. Hands and feet at first, then wide stem moves, then free climbing – crimping, jamming, clinging…then she’d build an anchor with cams, slings and hooks.
Sure Mattie could free solo, but this was a major assault of Spider Rock to liberate the Twin Towers. She needed to build rock climbing anchors and hang bivey gear to conquer her father, Spider-King-the-Chauvinist. Senile and off his meds, he had become a mad-rapping misogynist casting his deadly webs at the top of the towers. Climbing anchors were also needed to launch Mattie’s web shooter.
To be fair, Mattie was not a card-carrying misandrist (hater of men) yet, she did not refer to her father as Poppa-Dearest... she hoped to change his mind and free her mother, Spider Woman from bondage. When Mattie was a young Navaho Princess, her mother had taught her to weave cotton into cloth, and to weave beauty into life and spread the “Beauty Way” – the need for balance among the mind, body and spirit.
In beauty I walk with beauty before me I walk with beauty behind me I walk With beauty above me I walk with beauty around me I walk, it has become beauty again.4 *** Sure Mattie was a still girl, but an ardent girl on a mission. Hers was a rite of passage from girl to woman. Hell no, she would not wait for eternity to right the wrongs of the fallen world. She would seize the day. From the summit of Spider Rock, she would weave a lifeline to the heavens – so the “beauty way” could return. She bowed her head and took an oath to the Navaho Nation, “Naabeehó Bináhásdzo”, then gathered her courage for the climb. She alone took responsibility for the liberation–no room for victims on Spider Rock.
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To be transparent, Spider Lass was clairvoyant, a desert drifter, a shape shifter, and a time traveler. She knew the world had been spinning off its axis for years and was headin’ yet again for Armageddon; she also knew that ManGods with their “eye for an eye justice” could not save the world. And yes indeed, she knew of men like Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Mao and Xi Jinping; and yes she prayed for peace in Ukraine. Mattie would liberate Spider Woman, and they could weave a web back up to heaven and unite the earth with the Beauty Way.
Mattie conquered many monsters of freedom as she scaled Spider Rock: Ideologues in the fog; theocrats in the sand of Afghanistan, and Shadrack of the lightening and fiery nights.
All of them droning of existential threats and offering fast tracks to Utopia. Mattie learned there are snakes in every garden, and that we all must lean-into the eternal struggle for survival – to confront our snakes. No way! Mattie was not waiting for Eternity!
Mattie smiled as she thought of totalitarian regimes seeking to conquer the free world. Regimes that controlled the press and free elections, and those without democratic checks and balances or self-correcting mechanisms.
Mattie laughed when she read Stephen Kotkin’s biography: Stalin, Waiting for Hitler, and noted once again, how closed dictatorships often collapse from within. Seriously, who is going to tell Hitler, or Stalin, or Putin – Excuse me your High Holiness... but your grand scheme is not working?
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Mattie pressed her hands together and prayed that the free world would unite and triumph over tyranny; then fell to her knees and thanked Ukrainian Freedom Fighters for showing the world just what courage and resilience looks like. After liberating Spider Woman, she carved a petroglyph into the red sandstone summit:
We will have the beauty way, even if we have to fight for it.7
Footnotes
1. Photo of painting, She Waits for Eternity, by Laura Barrow, Steamboat Are Museum 2. Spider Woman Stock illustrations *https://thumbs.dreamstime. com/b/arachne-spider-woman-cobweb-hand-drawn-vector-illustration-engraved-line-art-drawing-black-white-doodle-see-allfantasy-88244572.jpg 3. IBID, Web shooter, Spider Woman Stock illustrations *https:// https://www.google.com/search?q=Free+Clip+art,+Spider+Woman,+web+shooters&rlz=1C1EJFC 4. Navaho Beauty Way, https://www.google.com/ search?rlz=1C1EJFC_enUS901US902&sxsrf=ALiCzsaukGar_O1AO1kXYrWLdP5cqoMVFQ:1656267465555&q=Navajo+Beauty+Way&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHyb-P3cv4AhWGKkQIHd8DCugQkeECKAB6BAgBEDI 5. IBID, Spider Woman Stock illustrations 6. Paraphrasing President Eisenhower comment u
