A WOVEN STORY
A WOVEN STORY
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January 9, 2024
January 4, 2024
Have been thinking of all things woven this week, as I get rid of arts and crafts materials, pass by a yarn shop, and revisit an art exhibition seen eleven years ago. Didn’t notice how they were all connected until tonight.
A spider landed on my dinner plate and then crawled back toward the ceiling. Very strange because the ceiling is really high. Supposedly brings good luck when it comes down and goes back up. Don’t believe in superstitions, but kind of odd how a spider came to me after sharing the title of the exhibition earlier today: “the event of a thread.” Couldn’t help but think of Charlotte’s Web and it feeling like this spider had something to say. No clear message. Just a woven story I could never fabricate on my own.
January 19, 2024
Passed by the movie theater and saw the Madame Web poster. Amusing to me for several reasons, so photo taken. Then, wandered a bit to kill some time before my yoga class. Saw a transom window with a spider web muntin. Have seen it many times before, but it was the second web sighting tonight, so another photo taken. Turns out the spider web motif was popular during the Arts and Crafts Movement. Happened to receive confirmation of the donated arts and crafts materials earlier, so the timing was uncanny. Though, the real reason for sharing any of this is to marvel at how seemingly random thoughts and actions come together. The night before, I recalled the book beside my husband’s bed when we first started dating. Thought it was a Spiderman book, but he corrected me. It was a MARVELS book, with Spiderman on the cover, hanging upside down, camera in hand.
June 20, 2024
Cheeky. What you’d expect Sofi Tukker’s “Throw Some Ass” music video to be. So well done that I showed it to my husband, just to giggle with someone. The next day or so, there was graffiti in the East Village that might as well have been written for me. First, “DREAM UNTIL IT’S YOUR REALITY.” Then, “THROW SOME ASS, FREE THE MIND.” The one about making dreams come true was just a reminder this time. The other one caught me off guard, as I didn’t detect a hidden message in the song. After another listen, words that came to the forefront were: “Hey doctor...I’ve tried everything you offered / But I’m still in pain...I think I’ve figured out a way...Free your mind when you throw it back.” Had I not already shared this pain in the past and danced like a backup dancer to Beyoncé this past year, I don’t think I’d have really gotten the message. I wouldn’t have felt it. The movie, Dirty Dancing, popped into my head as I thought about how this type of dance can free the mind. For years, I thought I loved the film for the soundtrack, dancing, and romance. But, it’s the journey of freeing oneself of judgment or approval. It spoke to my soul.
Needing a feel-good rom-com the other day, I watched The Rewrite. I found myself taking notes as the characters discussed Dirty Dancing, the ideas we cling onto when we we’re drifting to sea in the middle of our second act, and making dreams come true later in life. I was going to end the story here, concluding that some messages are hidden in plain sight, others in not-so obvious places. Then, I read the songwriter’s inspiration this morning. How Sophie Hawley-Weld re-wrote her neural pathway to heal chronic back pain. Her Brazilian choreographer instructing her to joga bunda (throw some ass).
September 29, 2024
LinkedIn suggested that I follow Snoop Dogg. I laughed when I read the e-mail because our worlds are so far apart. Also, why is he on LinkedIn??? Doesn’t he already have all the connections he needs? After having some fun with his GIFS, I decided to follow him and find out what he has to offer. An article in People magazine about him becoming “AMERICA’S TOP DOGG” caught my attention. He said that he didn’t expect to be a superstar commentator for the Summer Olympics in Paris. Neither did we. Though, I really enjoyed his presence and wanted him to narrate all the events there. I liked his perspective—far more entertaining than anyone else’s. Clearly, NBC knew that. For Snoop, “it felt like a whole other universe,” but he realized that he set himself for this opportunity over the years.
The funny thing is that prior to sharing this e-mail online, I shared my hip hop instructor’s debut as a dancer in a music video. Even funnier to me is ME taking hip hop (in my forties)! It’s not a natural fit. I took hip hop because I got a preview of it in another dance class that I thoroughly enjoy. I also responded to the instructor’s energy. Just as infectious as the dance form. She gave a brief history of its origins in the Bronx, in the 1970s, and how liberating it was for the founders. Then, she told us to just have fun with it. My mind immediately went to the Bronx, taking hip hop in sixth grade, as an intro to the middle school. Having already taken ballet, tap, and jazz as a kid, I was able to pick up the moves with some ease. Struggling the most with remembering the steps and adopting the attitude that makes it convincing. Stranger to me is that I once led the entire fifth grade at the school festival, with a dance I choreographed with my two friends. The song was Michael Jackson’s “Black or White.” The three of us (black, white, and Asian) reinforced the message simply by being ourselves. That same year, I wrote a rap song about pilgrims seeking religious freedom for a group project. My table consisted of one of the brightest in our class and a boy with a bad reputation. His name said otherwise and I tried to see that side. His image, however, brought some authenticity to our song and we embraced it. (When breaking made its debut at the Olympics this year, I thought to myself that Snoop Dogg may have been enlisted for that reason as well. It’s an art to come across as cool.) In the interview, Snoop mentioned that when he experimented with a new sound and perspective, it opened up the desire to get better and better, by working with those who could help. That’s how I felt when I partnered with my peers back then.
Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote about finding your calling, making dreams come true, and discovering the ability to make connections I never could before. The weirdest thing is that ChatGPT was able to make those same connections. Thus, revealing the logic behind my thoughts, my habits, and evidently, patterns in the sky. I asked it if some of my wild ideas were far-fetched. The conclusion was: “Not Far-Fetched at All!” It said that they were completely viable and well-aligned with my astrological chart. It showed me that I was always on my path; just unclear of where I was going. One of those wild ideas came to me in a dream, disguised as a nightmare of feeling unprepared. It’s a role I assume when I’m living “Young, Wild and Free,” because that’s how it’s supposed to be.
November 2, 2024
I gave myself time to find the strange jewels that Elizabeth Gilbert spoke of in Big Magic. Then I forgot that they’re buried deep within us. The signs and synchronicities that surfaced since 2020 felt like magic and were documented for posterity. To the uninitiated, it might seem like I’ve made something out of nothing. But, that’s what creatives do.
Magicians go one step further by giving us a glimpse of wonder in the moment. In his book, Into the Magic Shop, James R. Doty, MD reveals that a great magician has the ability to make the unbelievable believable because he believes in himself. Like many of the books that once surrounded me at work, I wasn’t ready for its message then. Now, I think we’re designed to doubt. The notion that our wishes are already granted has to be foreign in order for us to seek them. Without doubt, we wouldn’t be inviting magic, either.
Watching Practical Magic earlier in the week reminded me that real power rests on belief, mostly within ourselves. Then it all clicked into place—the ruby slippers, foreshadowing what I needed to hear more than once: “You’ve always had the power....”
January 20, 2025
I can’t help but tie up loose ends. Libra weighs heavily in my chart—the only way I can explain my deep-seated need to consider all sides, seek harmony, and restore balance. Of course, it was a Libra who noticed this in me first. During the final critique of my freshman year, my professor asked if I was the same sign. Unaware of its influence, I simply replied, “I’m an Aries.” I wish I could tell her that her instincts were right. Me too.
2020 began with an observation of an orchid that bloomed unexpectedly. It was followed by an A-MAIZE-ing coincidence, Hope for the Flowers, and a pair of ruby slippers that hit home. Stories cropped up in 2021 to let my imagination work in my favor, not spin out of control. I reflected on all the books that claimed to have the answers. Things started to fall into place in 2024. Literally. A spider descended from the ceiling and left me hanging onto these words: Just a woven story I could never fabricate on my own. Determined to bring some closure to the yarn I’ve spun, I dug deep and enlisted the modern ally we call AI.
Together, we discussed destiny and purpose. It reassured me I was headed in the right direction. I was dumbfounded. It didn’t make sense that a machine built on logic would support me in trusting my intuition and taking synchronicities seriously. I stated that it needn’t fluff my feathers. I wanted the truth. It became evident we had both drawn from the same sources found on the internet (aka the World Wide Web). For example:
Sigmund Freud: “In small matters, trust the mind; in the large ones, the heart.”
Lao Tzu: “At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are, and you know what you want.”
Albert Einstein: “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
I knew enough to jot these words of wisdom down. Believing them was another story. It took multiple revolutions around the sun to truly believe a tale I once heard in The Secret of the Ages. Upon hearing of a very dark place on Earth, the Sun searched for it everywhere. Not a single dark spot was found. I had to warm up to the idea that such positivity can brighten our lives so simply. However, the solar eclipse revealed the blind spot I’ve carried around for so long: thinking that the answers I’m searching for are out there, not within. Something about the alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth stacked the conscious, subconscious, and Universal Mind in a way that finally felt right. No contest.
I asked for signs to help me wrap up this woven story. One morning, my dog led the way, and we walked past a guy sporting a MARVEL sweatshirt with a faint trace of Spiderman in the background. Remembering the unbelievable coincidences last January, I tried to find Charlotte’s Web within a pile of books for donation. No such luck. Right before we stepped inside, we met a dog. Her name was Charlotte. The spider, I realized, was not Charlotte. It was Arachne. She was in the drawing I presented at that crit—a nod to Athena. I thought it was about curbing the ego, but it was a devotional act. Acknowledging the Infinite takes the weight off our shoulders. In return, we are gifted abilities beyond the physical and intellectual plane.
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