« June 2012 | Main | August 2012 »
so...i thought it was IT. But it's not. i can't do it.
everything was really, ok but the mouth. just too small, the muslin shreading with the stitching. Close, but ....alas, Not.
so, ok. I can make these kinds of drawn faces:
but not what i thought might be IT. Ok. If i want to draw, then i can draw. If i want to make cloth i need to learn to work with cloth. and Cloth it Is. so..........
Tomorrow is another day.
and it IS. and it wasn't because there was anything profound to think or say, but just a dilema about using DRAWING in a cloth. that's all. i would like to incorporate simple faces...woman's face in the next cloths i make. Woman and Earth. and i really would like to have a simple ink image of the human face and the rest be represented with color. But this proves harder than i Imagine it. How to make it seamless????
So, since part of the day Friday and then all Sat Sun and today, the fence guys have been here. Of course it all is more complicated than anyone guessed and of course it is very HOT so they must come in and out for ice and relief, and then some more stuff, and then just as i was thinking there might be a break...Yet Another little goat is born. This one to Grace. a single. but a very strong and adept little buckling already. Yes, a buck. oh...eee. BUT he is very elegant. I don't know a color to call him. At first he looked all black. But as time has passed he seems a kind of black/grey/brown...so maybe walnut?, in spanish, nogal....so maybe that is his birth name, Nogal. He was born this afternoon to Grace who did Very Well as did he. And i'll tell you more than you need to know because it emphasizes the singular personalities of the goats. When her placenta finally plopped out, it was substantial. And as it is, she began to consume it inbetween licking and muttering sweet things to her baby. She consumed and consumed. She gagged and consumed. She rested and consumed some more. By this time, with the others, they gave up. ENOUGH. But not. She continued and since i was sitting out there to see how the rest of the herd were feeling about Yet Another Baby, when she was diverted for a few minutes by visitors, i took the last chunk of it and flipped into a bucket. To make a long story short, she cried and cried, as if i'd taken one of her babies and did not stop until i dumped the glob back onto the straw where she immediately FINISHED it up. gagging all the while, but following her Imperative. DONE. oh, eeeeeeeeeeeeee AND other good news is that a home for 4 of the little wethers, the neutered bucks, has appeared. They have 4 children in grade school. Perfect. So Sunny Ray, Darth Vader, Inky and one Dado will go. Maybe tomorrow. If not soon. Perfect.
so...here is where i am today. More dilemma's than even the face......I really want to get away from the Personal images, not having much luck with this one yet. How does that Happen????? hmmmm.
there have been many fragments placed and taken away. STILL very much un decided. Her hair will be stitched and will flow out and into some kind of a circle that embraces the whole. The thought in the moment is that in her hair will be lizards and birds. The lizards are again, a personal symbol and may or may not appear. And that whole right side......What to do? I like it empty, but that is not the way of a cloth.
So...that's today and it's becoming dusk and i need to ready everything in case i need to be up in the night with Them. I left the door to the Albatross open. I spread straw everywhere and put Nogal in the favored corner of newborns where Grace set up her SPACE. In a perimiter around them, i spread the birth towels in a semi circle. As it becomes dark, the rest will want to be in there. It's where they all sleep. Things might go smoothly. OR there might need to be changes. So, i want to be Ready.
So, That's Today.
words later.
it is a time of Rainbow rain. Each evening, lately, a storm. Sometimes great Electrical energy, sometimes, like just now, a soft rain from a single cloud. fast, from nowhere, and leaving a rainbow.
so....That pieces of cloth with things just pinned together has begun talking. there will be a face. there will be How the lizards, the birds have always pulled the Energy forward. I see it now. it has begun.
i was given, as a "going away gift" for Alz B, $2,000. Her son knew that i wanted to fence in the other half of this acre so the goats could go there on a "day trip". maybe not so much for the goats, really, but for sure, for me. I have this sense of Space Needed. This will ease this for me. On Saturday Paul will come and the materials will be delivered for the addition of the fencing, the wood privacy fence. This will reduce the possibility of any loose dogs from becoming attached to facination with the goats. Will keep them "safe"...if that can be. But as safe as i can keep them.
There was an urge to just keep this money. I have no other "safety net" anymore, money wise. But, what IS a safety net? What does a safety net DO? and so it goes.
This morning i got out some of the pieces of cloth that have occured over the 2 1/2 ~3 years with Jude. i pinned them on the wall. Amidst them, the one that is coming on now. Looking.
Then, i went out and fed the goats. I am seeing/feeling/felt sensing how this is all melding into One Thing. Who would've guessed???
maybe it will just stay this way?, kind of hovering of some sort. just on the edge of things. like this first small cloth since Magic Diaries and Boro...i am invisible basting. it has lost pieces and been turned sideways. today one of the Moon/Suns of Deb Lacative arrived but otherwise, nothing has come into view. but there is a strong sense that it Will
this
was lying in the dirt in Jamie's yard. it's a 6ft plain off white cotton quiltish thing. someone gave it to her. she did'nt like it because it wasn't WHITE white. the exact reason i DID like it. all over it, even after a super duper wash at the laundromat, there are all these little black stars...they are the handiwork of mold it seem. so they are a reverse dark night universe. i like it a lot. it's stiff. it will be perfect in all ways for winter window coverings in the ROOM when i need to keep the cold out.
and then, i am still very much reading Lierre Keith's the Vegetarian Myth .... food, justice and sustainability. i wish she had chosen a different title...it's not really about how we personally choose to eat things, but rather how we USE the planet rather than be in wise partnership with it and all living things.... but i am beyond grateful to her for writing what she has written. there are words here that could have come from my heart, from my understand of how things are. really, it's the first time EVER that what i think in my own private moments have appeared on a page, or in the mouth of another person. i have felt so alone with this thinking. now i don't. and it is incredibly energizing.
so, rising from that, i have also been thinking of the Great Grandson Julian sometimes known as SunnyDay/DarkNight by his request. i spoke to him on the phone yesterday...it was his mom's 23rd birthday. but he and i talked about him coming here for some days. i told him that i was thinking maybe we could build a little World. out where the toads are. and we could build it how we want it. make ponds and stick bridges, stick houses. and we could make flags to hang down from the sky over these. he liked this. as much as being able to come and see "his" goats who he misses a lot. So, in the middle of everything today, i cleared the tree well under the Apricot Tree and set these things, just to see how it might go
so far, there is a butterfly..turtle..Raven..horse with bird..goat..lizard..dinosaur being..and a castle. I will just look at these for some days. i think, wait now until he's here. he can decide about more. we can go down the road to Polvadera Trading. a place BRIMMING with stuff...where i got two of my copper pots. She has a store full of antiques and oddities. we can look there fore more inhabitants of our World.
and i moved over two of the chairs, the small table. i trimmed off the low low branches of the tree so that we can sit there when his Nana, my daughter, comes. we can eat there, looking down upon our World. it's cool and shady. if we keep it wet, the toads will come every night. maybe that bat, too if we're lucky.
and back to about Magic, the young girl goat. i don't know enough yet to say much. i thought i would, but it's still in the making. But what she CHOSE was partnership. in talking with daughter Jenny and in telling her my own observations about the goats, i became clearer about how they vary so in their Interest in relationship with human beings. Some not at all. Some a LOT. and then there's Magic. who is deciding, being a thoughtful goat. and what is happening is that SHE is defining how it all can go. What I do is to respond to Her. but it's not far enough along yet to say a lot about. So, As It Goes.
was planning on taking pics to act as verification of what's going on in my head. but, alas. the camera batteries ran out. and in accordance to the agreement with self, i have to WAIT until there is more reason to go into town. but here:
the "housecoat" from Jude's Boro 2. originally i'd intended to make a robe from the concept of the basic rectangle. but in keeping with what we NEED, i didn't NEED a robe with sleeves, etc. i needed something to cover the top half of my naked body when i wake before dawn and turn on the lamp and am visable in the windows of the Room. who, i wonder, might be up at that hour anyway?, and looking...but, oh well. naked. naked is , well naked. So, from a blouse that i liked. very thin cotton. sleeves, collar and breast pocket removed. a very favorite sheet tea dyed for the bottom, cut into 3 rectangles...2 fronts 1 back. 2 strips of cloth that pulled my attention and the intention to repeat on the other side of the front until i noticed how the very slight addition of cloth made it all heavier, and what i was looking for was as close to Nothing as i could get. For hot mornings. So, here we are. one side only. good enough. and actually, really good. i like it. it works. it's what i NEED. no more, no less. i love the combination of cloth in the strips..many are from you, Deb Lacativa....how they move in harmony with the dyed pieces from this place and the cheap but oh so appealing pieces from the walmart dollar table, designed by some person "over there" in China who would be a sister to me if i knew her.
i'd taken off the breast pocket, thinking that i would match this side with strips but then, when i decided not to, well....hmmm. what to do here? i'd been sloppy in the removal and there are two slits at the top sides where the pocket was????????????? something needs to happen here.
ok. and then, this is calling.
it seems like forever since i just worked on a Cloth. a collaged story. Magic Diaries, then Boro 2. and these odd plain pieces have been on the wall. i watch them.
and then, so much in this world. Alz B has gone to the Old Folks Home. it's here in town, up the highway toward the mountains. on Friday she went. her family all flying in to witness this. so my life will be very changed. in many ways, she has been the center of it for a few years in an intense way. before that, some. and now, not. I will go, maybe once a week, maybe less. I will go and visit, taking my Mary Oliver books. Reading to her. She has always liked this and i am thinking that will continue to be the case??? , but I really don't know. Everything has changed. So, That.
and the Goats. i'd intended to post a bunch of pics. but the camera batteries died. so here are the two little bucks of Lucky Star, Los Dados, Dice in English .
i am spending time every morning and every evening with the Goats. With the babies to keep them from their wildness that is innate. Why would a goat want to be touched??? Only because a human being wants that. For them, it is not important.
Daughter DID come and we created another space, a pen, for the three bitchy strong does. this land is being patchworked for the needs of the goats. Mending spaces that are outgrown. Last night, just after i had fallen asleelp, i was woken by their voices. the new pen wasn't secure and they were loose. Milling in the dark. it took a long time to convince them to return. i held the advice of my daughter in my mind as i tried. When i was trying to milk Ona and being really, a failure at that, she said " No Emotion". just keep going. Do Not have Feelings. just keep going.
and ok. so i did that in the Dark last night. Calling to the escapees, Come Come in a cheery hopefull voice. it took a long time, but they did come and did go back into their new pen space and i secured the faulty fencing, in the dark. I am learning a LOT. i am not sure what i am learning but i am sure it is of Good Use. and of Good Use for the Good of the Whole.
this is the first time i have had the urge to write the post ahead of posting and re-view my words, edit, then post. but i don't really have time in this life for that. so...it will fall out of my mind as it comes.
not knowing anything
a beetle peeks up through the slat
and she suddenly looks up.........and when i unload the pic i see one of the Lights at the fence
but then a lizard appears
so...she is Just Going. i brought her out for a ride on the Raft.
this morning i woke with the "information" given about how the potential for Everything is Ever Present. Everything. easy/hard beautiful/not toward Life/against kind/not and on and on. i received Derrick Jensen's latest book a couple days ago and have been reading a few paragraphs at a time. The Derrick Jensen Reader...Writings on Environmental Revolution. it is not easy reading. but i knew that. have all his books. but also, of anyone at all in my lifetime awareness, he is the one who Stands, Facing what he knows, and is unflinching. and then in that last post, All That. and then in so far today, how All That has turned, just enough, Just Enough, to let the light shine some where there was uncertainty about so much. So, today rises with resolve. and i was over at Michelle's NYC and her post just almost had me on my knees with Love for everything. and i have been watching the first election in Libya (and for sure, That has the potential for Anything) and whatever comes of it, they chose to have this moment of one voice, one vote which is beautiful. and then.....there is a pic of Hillary Clinton. and of all things, i felt this swell of love for her. her hair is pulled straight back all no nonsense because i assume she doesn't have time for anything and she has bags under her eyes. and i have never really liked her at all for a bunch of reasons, but here, today, i think how she has changed as Secretary of State over her term, how she has i think, maybe become a Stateswoman????? how she is telling Syria that the sands are running out of the hourglass...a poet even???? and i felt love, yes, love. even for Hillary. and, well, a lot more. but this enough. Just wanted to note the moment because it belongs somewhat to that 19 year old in that pic of a couple days ago and it belongs to Alz B and her son and to my daughter and her refugee goats . Life feels very ummmm, uhhh, swiftly turning today. i want to Mark that. i have fed the goats and it's quiet for this time and i am going to see how i can Mark this on the Housecoat. i will mark the date with a Pitt pen.
