ATDDTA(10) Paging Dana Medoro [269:15-19]

[Keith]

They took her down to the Four Corners and put her so one of her  
knees was in Utah, one in Colorado, one elbow in Arizona and the  
other in New Mexico---with the point of intersection exactly above  
the mythical crosshairs itself. Then rotated her all four ways. Her  
small features pressed into the dirt, the blood-red dirt. [269:15-19]

"Working from the premise that the Puritan construction of America as  
a return to Eden endures into American literature of the 20th  
century, Medoro focuses on the rhetoric of cyclical regeneration,  
blood, and damnation that accompanies this construction. She argues  
that a semiotics of menstruation infuses this rhetoric and informs  
the figuration of a feminine America in the nation's literary  
tradition: America, as a New World Eden, is haunted not only by the  
Fall, but also by the "Curse of Eve." Placing Thomas Pynchon, William  
Faulkner, and Toni Morrison within this tradition, this book  
demonstrates that their novels link variations on the figure of the  
menstruating woman both to the bloody history of the United States  
and to a vision of the nation's redemptive promise." http:// 
www.greenwood.com/catalog/GM2059.aspx

Also:

Another key feature of the Native American spiritual outlook is found  
in the powers ascribed to the Four Directions, which occur either  
literally or in symbolic form throughout the stories. These are often  
represented by particular colours, or by animals.

The Four Directions have to be in balance for all to be well with the  
world, and often a central point of balance is identified as a fifth  
direction; for example, four brothers represent the outer directions,  
and their sister the centre.

Watch the wheel rotate here:
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/nativeamerican.html









http://users.ap.net/~chenae/spirit.html