Remember my post from the beginning of this blog that began with a quote: Human beings differ profoundly in regard to the tendency to view their lives as a whole. To some it is natural to do so, and essential to happiness.... To others life is a series of detached incidents without directed movement and without unity. The habit of viewing life as a whole is an essential part of wisdom...and is one of the things which ought to be encouraged in education. Consistent purpose is not enough to make life happy, but it is almost an indispensable condition of a happy life. And consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work. ~Bertrand Russell

Well, today in the New York Times there is an article called "This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)" that I find fascinating. Any blogger might: "The way people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and reshapes their larger life story. And as it evolves, that larger story in turn colors the interpretation of the scene. '...just having a coherent story about who I am made a big difference. It affects how you see the past, but it also really affects your future.'”

“'The idea that whoever appeared onstage would play not me but a character was central to imagining how to make the narrative: I would need to see myself from outside,” the writer Joan Didion has said of “The Year of Magical Thinking". “I would need to locate the dissonance between the person I thought I was and the person other people saw.”

Lately I have had a growing suspicion that my "work" here blogging and chatting on the computer is important to my life in real time. It is not simply a self indulgent diversion and a place to put photos for our extended family. Look here, now science says it is so. Furthermore, I find the deeper I allow my voice to travel inside to find my stories, and at the same time, the farther I broadcast my voice outside for other folks to hear, the richer and happier my life becomes. I show up, I am seen, I get response, I grow. Lovely. Wish I knew that years ago. I might raise the children to believe it is a good thing to try and express not only yourself, but the coherence of your story, even if it is told in "bits and bobs". Huh. Not simply sitting around moaning, "Oh it was hard and it hurts." But to look twice or thrice, to notice cause and effect. To have the bravery then to say so. I know it is so because it is so. So so suck your toe all the way to Mexico!

I like stream of consciousness writing, a habit learned from a life long association with poets. By the way, I collect adopted people and I collect writers. Two unconscious truths running through my whole life, to date. I don't know why, yet. But last summer there was a hideous, horrifying, and mysterious supernatural occurrence in my life. It involved spiders. Dare I share? I could quote a letter to a writer friend:

"Do you know how I used to have a spider phobia? In my 20s. I got completely over it. It had to do with claustrophobia and abuse. Truly I saw it clearly and got over it. Completely. I could kill or save a spider at will. I could sleep in the same room with them. No prob. I am raising my children to believe that I love spiders and they should as well.

Then I moved into my mothers basement this spring. (That should be horrifying enough. cue the JAWS music) I KNOW the spiders live there. I expected to see those big wolfies every now and then. We all slept in one room down there. With beds in a row. And then the kids began to sleep restlessly. And awake with bites. Poo poo I said.

Then one night a big wolfie started to get all up in my hair. I sat up in the dark and turned on a light. There it sat on the wall over my head. Joe killed it. I thought about crying but decided not to. I GOT OVER IT. We never told the kids and we went on with our lives. Then it happened again. Repeat. Strange I thought. We went on as if nothing had happened.

Then one night I woke in the pitch black darkness with one in my hair. Again. Before when one was in my hair, it was like knocking a mouse away. Finding something soft and hefty and warm that is already trying to retreat as you are discovering it. But this big fella was all up in my hair. And doing a strange sharp dance on his toes. Even now I can feel it. As Joe was killing the shit out of it, I was in the bathroom peeing and wonderingly running my hands through my hair. That is when I found all the webbing. Like maybe I'd been having sex with Spider Man. I pulled hand fulls of webbing out of my hair. Then I began to weep openly.

I never again slept in that house. I uprooted my children, again, and moved them to my fathers house. I walked around for a day or two saying, "I was afraid of spiders. But I got over it. Why did that weird thing happen. It was like being visited by a Native American messenger, but what is the message?"

Months later I met a woman. I am just getting to know her. She has some witch about her. One day she said, "Did you know spiders are the Native American symbol of writing?" I gasped and she said, "Are spiders bothering you, they are trying to tell you to write." Then I said "fuck you bitch". I have heard you talk about the excruciation of writing. In fact, I have observed you avoiding writing when ever possible. Also, I will never write."

Well now, isn't life fun? I can't really say its always so fun to experience. But I can say it is fun to connect my dots or string my pearls and then share them. But I find, the sharing requires what feels like tremendous bravery. It also inquires (a word usage I will neither alter nor apologise for as it comes from my daughter and it is brilliant) changeability.