The Haudenosaunee First Nations people, or Iroquois, tell a creation story that begins like this:

Sky Woman lived on Sky Island, far away on the other side of the clouds. Her husband, whose name was the Ancient, had dry, withering bones, and he grew jealous when Sky Woman became pregnant with their own child. In his anger, he uprooted the Tree of Light whose glowing flowers lit all of Sky Island, and he pushed Sky Woman through the ragged hole where the tree’s roots had grown.

Sky Woman fell through the heavens, all the way down to the primeval waters. Birds flew with her to help slow her descent, and then, in the sea, a mighty turtle caught her on his back. Muskrat brought her some dirt from the floor of the ocean, and Sky Woman danced and sang to turn that dirt into the whole world, also known as Turtle Island, where she gave birth to a daughter who would continue the process of creating the world.

This story comes from a matriarchal people in a land where hypnotically green hills undulate along serpentine lakes. My mother lives in a fold of those hills, a valley where time runs strangely and a different sun shines through the clouds. Last time I visited, I asked a Haudenosaunee woman how her creation story feels different in its original language. She looked off into the distance and said, “It feels clear, and bright, and like every word is the perfect word.”

Which brings us to the news today, in which a federal judge named Brett Kavanaugh finds the foregone conclusion of his Supreme Court nomination suddenly in doubt, due to allegations against him of sexual assault. The judge is now the judged, and he doesn’t like this turn of events. He’s supposed to be the honorable one, handing down judgments from on high. But with no dais to hide behind, he acts like a drunken high school jock who can barely string slurred sentences together. He displayed his rage on live video, perjuring himself for all to see in an attempt to discredit Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against him — trying to silence her much the way she describes her attacker doing. He sounded muddled, and dim, and like every word was the wrong word.

When the Ancient attacks Sky Woman, he destroys his own source of light. Without the goddess, he remains alone in a darkness of his own making.

But the assault also liberates Sky Woman. She is, in a sense, born through the wound in the ground of Sky Island. The trauma frees her to do creative work, dancing and singing to make the earth. Perhaps Dr. Ford was similarly born through the wound of her assault. The experience seems to have shaped her world, and, like Sky Woman’s, her story sounded clear, and bright, and like every word was the perfect word.

The Haudenosaunee people live in a world made by a goddess. They created a thriving society where women owned and inherited property. Women appointed and removed the chiefs who conducted diplomacy. I imagine those women asked themselves questions: Would this man serve his own urges, or would he serve the greater good? By answering those questions, they created their world.

Sky Woman’s story happens every day. The Ancient continues to rant and rave, and Sky Woman keeps dancing Turtle Island. In smaller ways, we all make our worlds, for ourselves and others. Sometimes choices are complicated. Sometimes they are astonishingly simple.