Claire Bartlett's Stuff
Claire’s Journal
7 Days Since “The Appearance”
Inola Awiakta. She’s a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and a guardian of American indigenous history and culture. Of the people I contacted, she’s the only one that contacted me back.
She was not as easy-natured and forthcoming as Darri. In fact, she put me through an intense pseudo-interview process, I think to gauge the source of my interest and my intentions. I finally lied and told her that I was having persistent, lucid dreams about the Cherokee people, and about spiders (even though I’ve never had a single dream in my entire life). It was as close to the truth as I was willing to get.
After that revelation, she softened, but only a little. She told me about the Cherokee myth of Grandma Spider, how she carried a piece of the sun in a clay pot halfway across the earth to bring light to the darkness. I asked about other tribes and nations, and she described how spiders are sometimes tattooed on a woman who is held in high esteem. In Hopi culture, the Spider Woman assumes the role of creator of all living things, including humans. Among the Navajo, she is a heroic helper and wise advisor who protects the innocent and restores harmony. She said that regardless of the culture, the spider is usually associated with a woman or creation, and always a powerful figure of good and positivity.
Which is interesting, but tells me nothing.
I steered the conversation to dreams. She said that many American indigenous tribes believe that human beings have two souls, one of which travels at night and lives in the dream world, outside the limits of time and space, where they can visit the future or the past, enter the realms of the ancestors and make contact with their Guardian Spirits on a higher level.
This sounds a lot like a different way to describe the Aboriginal Everywhen, and the Dreamlands. The twin souls part sounds uncomfortably close to what I’m experiencing with the spider, which Inola referred to as my “manitou.” When I asked her what it meant, she explained it was like a Guardian Spirit, only attached solely to me, so close that it was now part of me. Which made as much sense as any of this does.
I asked her if there was a way to purposefully enter a dream to speak with…me. She said outside of normal dreaming, that I might try a vision quest.
The first step for a vision quest is to be purified in a sweat lodge, then bring a gift of tobacco to a remote spiritual location--a place that is felt to be unnatural, formed by neither humans nor nature--and remain there while fasting for four days and nights. I asked Inola if I could speed up the part where I go brain-dead with ayahuasca or mushrooms, and she said that I could, which definitely bumped the vision quest higher on my to-do list.
She said that during my time on the quest, I should focus on my manitou, specifically asking for its purpose. She said once the vision was done, I should report the interaction back to those capable of helping me unravel the meaning--that these visions were meant to be shared for the greater good of the community.
She also suggested I start carrying a representation of my manitou, something that evokes the essence of its spiritual power. In this way, I should be able to more readily call on the manitou for assistance, guidance and protection. I asked her what that representation should be. She told me to ask the manitou on the vision quest.
At this point, I’d become so comfortable with Inola that I asked her if there was a way to start remembering my dreams, so that I had a better chance of encountering my manitou on a more regular basis. She paused; I’d forgotten that I’d lied to her about the dreams so that she’d speak with me. She had not forgotten. She asked me what was going on. I hesitated; I could have shared with her the vision of the indigenous people in the cave, but something in me was saying that I’d involved her enough.
So I hung up. And took some stock.
Since the prison, my belief in the supernatural has waffled. At first, I couldn’t deny it; the two weeks locked away with the doctor were way too real to ignore. But the farther I got from the time at the prison, the more I started to convince myself that what I thought had happened hadn’t really happened, that I was buying into Andy’s vision of the world as part of my own trauma response, as a way to explain the truly vile shit the doctor had done to me. But, if I’m being honest with myself, I was enjoying Andy’s world, and so I didn’t question it, had decided I’d live there for a while, like an ex-patriot from reality.
Then the spider. That was a shade too far, a stretch beyond belief. Except now, as more time passes, it’s…I don’t know. Starting to make a weird sort of sense? Starting to track with shit from my past? And there's a basis for all of this in indigenous cultures, a way to explain it all that works even better than academia and science...
And honestly, what's the harm in a vision quest?
This message was last edited by the player at 16:46, Wed 17 May 2023.