The Weaver: Before Time
In the beginning there was only darkness and cold without form. When The Weaver began to dream, she dreamed first in sound. The sound became vibration and the reverberation of her dream song became mist. The mist gathered and danced warm. The warm became liquid, and from the miasma there was heat. The heat became fire and from the crucible, crystals took shape and carried the song of the beginning in their hearts.
She dreamed deeper, and crystals sought other crystals, and the collision birthed stars and the closest star to her dream spawned molten eggs from its rays. The volcanic rock children cooled, and the beauty of their birth brought tears to The Weaver dream, and the cooled egg that would be home to her people was covered in the water from her joyful weeping.
She sighed in her dream, and with the heave of her breast, the mountains formed, rising above the water. The crystals with the song of The Weaver’s dream in each heart sang in the mountains near the sea. The water yearned for the land that was now the precipice, and kissed the rocky shores below, and the forest grew from the muddy union of water and mountain, and the crystals sang beneath the stone and the waves and the trees.
From the dream; the song, the crystals, and the forest offspring of mountain and water, The Weaver awoke. She opened her eyes, flexed her fingers and began to spin her people and their stories.
Into the weave she wove the pain of the galaxies that bloodied her hands as she worked; and the joy which was so light, it required careful attention to remain in the weave.
When the sun at noon split the sea, shattering through the clouds into green, blue, gold, amethyst, she reached into the deep water and gathered the beads of the sun, and at each knot in the weaving where a bead from the watered sun she twined, laughter came to the people.
At night, she gleaned the pearl tears of the moon from the dewed stones dancing in the forest. She wove the moon tears into the raven hair that would belong to all sleeping beloveds forever.
In the deep mystery of winter, she gathered the diamonds on skeletal petals that formed diaphanous daisies of shimmering snow. Snow daisies she wove into enemy eyes, sparkling to reveal the ancestors the enemies shared and the people would know that to fight bravely is good, but to fight without need is to kill a sibling.
In the early spring, when the frozen water returned melting to the earth, she gathered the lace ice skirts from the tree trunk dresses. The lace ice she wove into the costumes of the dancers who would call the spirits from the ice around the fire, and the people would believe in the power of the dance, and the conjuring strength of flame.
As the wind blew hot in the summer, she gathered its breath in ribbons, so weightless and mighty that the breadth and strength held the weave of the world to itself and the people would worship the wind song and gather strength from its release.
When the maples shed their golden stars in the autumn, she gathered these into her apron. The golden maple stars she wove into a mother’s dreams for her newborn child, and the child would dream of stars then, too. She wove the mother dreams into the stories of bear, fish, tree, heron and all living things.
The singing crystals she wove into the darkness of the mountain caves and the depths of the sea so that only those of the people who could hear their song would find them, and when found, would take the song into their hearts to be sung from generation to generation to generation.
The Weaver edged the weaving North the color blue, cold and deep so the people would remember the universe before The Weaver began to dream.
The East she wove red for the heat that created the crystals that birthed the stars. South she wrapped white and warm, celebrating the peaceful slumber of her people who are heir to the love of their creator.
Then West spun black: the wheel come full circle around, the people returning to join The Weaver in dreaming, the circle now sacred for those who heard, then sang, the crystal song and followed it to its end.
The Weaver sighed, held the stories of her people she had spun above her head and let all move from above and below to the center of the place her people would call home. The cloak of creation drifted for a long while and then, settling over the round egg of water, mountain, forest and crystal, disappeared into a brilliant sunrise.
The Weaver returned to dreaming as, on the shores of the Great Lake, near the mountains and the trees, a copper child awoke and began to cry.
Reading "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" which combines Johnson's travelogue with James Boswell's "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," chronicling their trip around the Hebrides in 1773, I was struck by Dr. Johnson's description of The Highlands. He discusses the opportunity to "investigate the reason of those peculiarities by which such rugged regions as these are generally distinguished."
