windthread

!60! days!!!!

and a funny little day it was.  cleaned that house with the Windmill.  grocery.  i bought an odd packet of Panda Brand sauce for lettuce wrap.  Why????  i don't know.  but i've opened it and it tastes really good.  ok.  and dog food.  which was really why i stopped at the store.  and then, i called the Old Cowboy to see if he needed anything from the store tomorrow.  no, but did i get an ear full.  Two hours of it.  but maybe at least half was HIS earfull.   he awoke yester day and couldn't breathe.  like...couldn't get a breath that gave him oxygen.  it really scared him.  so we talked about that and it went on and on to his toe nail and more.  he'll be85 in June.  i ragged on him about Trying.  about not giving up on Trying.  he doesn't really listen.  everything is Black and White.  This whole thing or That whole thing.  he won't listen to all the grey inbetween.  it went on.  Me talking about the grey.  him not listening, till i told him about how a body dies.  about how, if in fact, he couldn't get a "good breath", he would have kind of fainted.  i told him about how i had watched 3 people die, from start to finish, and felt like i had something of substance to say.  this he listened to.  how there are those moments when y0u cant get a good breath but then, stuff begins to gracefully shut down.  you "faint".  and the body quietly closes down business.  you don't even know.  it's organic.  so i told him that he has already experienced the FEAR and there's nothing more beyond that.  that after what he has already experienced, it's just an organic thing.  and will really be none of his business.  unless he has done his "homework", which he hasn't.  so..he would just drift off.  i say this here, but the conversation was not easy.  it was fraught with stuff, like "I thought you would keep me in my own  home!!!!!!"  which i oh eeeee, really dislike.  of course.  of course we want it to go how we want it.  .....but.....

all the while, the Goats were Calling.  Food!  Food!  Food!

and here is Buckwheat.  he has rubbed off all his winter hairs and is very Handsome

and 

here is the Sky

woops

 

59th day

left here at about 6:30 a.m.  to be there by 7 for sure....

all day i pretty much sat in a haz mat outfit...mask, gown, booties, gloves.  protocol for shingles.  ok.  before i left, i'd packed up some stitching.  but then in the last moment thought...no..., no.  things go into cloth.  i wasn't sure at all about my energy.  and remembered how Michio Kushi, the guru of Macrobiotics advised never to cook for others unless your heart was generous and loving.  i think the same about stitching.  so..i left it all behind and i'm glad i did.  it left me nothing to do but watch her.  watch her physical entity drift vaguely in and out of some kind of presence.  and all the while i listened to the Doings of the place as a whole.  conversations go on in Spanish, English, Navajo and mixtures of all three.  one soul far down the end of the wing repeated the same sound, i could not hear what it was...but one sylable sound/word over and over and over.  it was kind of mournful, like a calling out.  but otherwise, all the human sounds/language were uhhhh,  well, Good.  they were Comfortable exchanges.  between the staff, between residents and staff.  i really am impressed with this place.  there is great goodness there.  Caring.  Care Taking.  i am Proud that it exists here in this small community in the middle of New Mexico.  

and the Great Thing is that i had 2 really really excellent conversations about GOATS with two of the nurses.  more about that later.  right now i just want to go watch Sun set.  but first,

after feeding everything, i watered.  watered everything in the "front" half.  it took two hours.  people say that's crazy.  should put drip irrigation.  but watering this way, you look.  here's Julian's world, under the Apricot tree.

here's some Lambsquarters.  it has gotten ZERO water, but grows of its own accord.

as do the Iris

and hollyhock

but a lot would change if i wasn't here.  They need me because i need them.

and this.  This is going to be interesting.  it is the center, cut out from the "mask" of the Altar Cloth yesterday.  as Jude taught.  placed here.  on this cloth, that was one that "didn't work" from the clamp and dye.  but there is a lot going on here and i am very interested in it.  as always, i have no idea, but the Sense of it.  i like it a LOT.

58 ~morning~ and then, Evening

so...here we Go.  Altar Cloth 3   The Singular Day

the Circle of the Singular Day is stitched under.  the stitching around has begun.  and looking, i'm thinking it can go any of these ways.  Night at the top, Night at the bottom, Night at the side.  This is good.  and  you see all the needles.  This is because Alz B has Shingles and is isolated in her room.  Needing 1:1  that the Old Folks Home does not provide.  There is an empty "shift" tomorrow morning.  Bill's wife Nelia has been gone teaching for 10 days, just returned this afternoon.  Angela, the caregiver is Jehovah's Witness...has Jehovah's business to do tomorrow.  and so....all these threaded needles for arrival there at 7am.

the 3rd year Locust was filled with bees today.  the fragrance is intoxicating, as is the sound.  their leg pouches bulging yellow with pollen.  they like it best when i crouch under the tree, looking up, rather than stand, face to face.  but either way, really, their focus is Not on me.

the feeling of having planted this tree, having cared for it, having it create these odd blooms for them is, well...is Something.  the Locust requires so little.  it's possible that if i were no longer here, it could continue on it's own.

the Mimosa.  it's bandages remain.  from 2 years ago spring, after that startling Winter of 17 degrees BELOW zero...i still have not had the heart to cut the central trunk.  there is still some grief that it will not be a Tree, but Will be a bush with all the will to live.

 

57 ...a partially aborted post

i had started out intending to document a dream here and it was lengthy and half way through i got a phone call about what's wrong with the car and by the time that was over,  i had no energy left to finish documenting the dream, LONG, but...will just write the one moment at the end and it will help me remember it all....

the house (recurrent) (which is many stories tall) was just falling apart, like whole parts of it, just collapsing and i'm thinking....i can NEVER fix this....and there are all kinds of dried leaves and twigs in the kitchen, like piled and wind swept on the counters ...just everywhere...and i don't know what to do next and Suddenly, i look out the window and there is this long line, standing shoulder to shoulder, of African women...strong, healthy, robust women in beautiful cloth clothing and they are standing shoulder to shoulder and wearing  woven kind of conical hats, all the same kind and the STATEMENT was...:

Each person [could] [should]...i don't know which word it was and that's the important part....

Each person could/should be responsible for the roof over their own head.

so...ok.  and i had to be gone again today but when i got home i thought i'd take a 15 min nap and did and woke to look at the shelves at the end of the bed

mostly i was looking at that one RED piece which is the cloth i will make something with for my Son's first and only child that is coming in September.    It, as is everything else on this shelf, is from the Thrift Shop.  it's a mens shirt.  almost all the cloth here is clothing.  ALL is from the thrift shop.  and it became a larger thought of how to overdye or otherwise change these fabrics so i actually USE them?????  otherwise,  What Is The Purpose Of Keeping Them???????

and i came out to wander around aimlessly and in that wandering saw a piece of fabric from Deb Lacativa that really, it was like seeing for the First Time and i pinned it to the Onion Skin Curtain and it is 

Stunning

this window is the hardest to photograph.  standing here, looking at it it is amazing.  but trying to get the camera to show that is impossible....but...here, a little

and just looking at these helps me.  i am in some kind of limbo and i know that if i begin a cloth, it will break.  that thing about like being in a Fever and when it breaks, things happen.  so...like that.  Waiting for the Fever to break but i have to start a different cloth and i am thinking about how when i wake up in the morning lately,  i lay there.  Still.  and THINK

THIS IS A VERY SINGULAR DAY.  What will this day

HOLD??????

 

56 days

and today would be one when i wouldn't post.  would just wait till ..... well....till a different day.  but here we are.  day 56.  ready or not, here we come.

looking for what could be Grass,  these surfaced and got pinned this way.  i have been looking a lot at the Unforseen in the last few days.  i can feel it.  a new cloth is gestating.  that's all i know.

how i am is....for Ever, i might think to do something.  but then all of a Sudden, i DO it.   as in,  i have been staring more and more at the wall to the right of the stove.  behind the stove is the collage.  but i didn't continue around.  What has it been, ???? two years ago????i think,  i pulled out the old stove that only sort of worked...and not the oven at all...and the pilots burned excessively.  i dragged in the little stove from the "airstream", which is an apartment sized Dixie...vintage...

which is much smaller.  the oven works.  Anyway, so, there is this SPACE and the icky right side wall is glaring if you choose to notice, which i really haven't, except lately.  it's glaring.   so i started finding National Geographics here and there.  Not too many.  I've been taking them up to the Old Folks Home as they come.  but here and there, are some and i leafed through, looking for pics i would use.   Lo and Behold, what i find self looking at in almost Every Single Article is the

cloth

and this is an example:  an article about children making soccer balls from all manner of materials.  i hope we can read the caption when it's posted...........

and WIND won't go away.  yet another day.  we are going crazy.  so i just went out and kind of crawled around, squatting long long times, just looking.    at the transplanted Native Plum

at stuff coming through the earth into this WINDSWEPT world here...noticing how the Hopi Black Sunflowers have purple stalks.  and how the generic sunflowers insist on wearing their shell hats like jude's onions, but in this case, maybe protection from WIND?...and i guess in her case, Rain .  You deal with what you have....

and so...the grass is invisibly basted.  which means now...now is time to look at the Goat.  ok.  that's Next.

 

55

i made a list while it was still dark this morning.  checked things off as i went along.  things like

new latches both sides of gate to the Way Back.  Hang laundry AND take down when dry.    Shovel out the Goats "bedroom" in the Albatros....put on new compost heap and turn in.  Water that.   Turn  other compost and water.  Clean out the Honda car:  it's like a mobile closet.  Hook up battery charger (the rear lights have suddenly decided to remain on all the time, making battery dead????)  Take charged vehicle over to Bill's.  (who will fix it).  While there, tour the fields.  One whole field of Sideoat Grama.  another experiment of alfalfa/some kind of European grass mix.  While there, 

sticking up from the dirt by a fence post.  an Exquisitely rusted thing....

drive the ancient Datsun truck back home.  watching the temperature gauge...running HOT,  but we get here.  I'd forgotten how totally Wonderful it is to drive a Datsun truck.  My old truck, a 1972 Datsun, BlueBird, lives at Bill's for the past several years.  She is a farm truck.  has a solar panel for her battery.  

and in the midst of it all,  the Salt Cedar came into full bloom.  the Scarlet Tanagers will be here any minute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

54

She will preside.  here.  West Window.   now, only needing the Grass People.  and there is a sense that ....uhhhh, personal cloths are done.  What does that Mean?.....i'm not sure.  but it seems that i have Seen enough.  the words....personal cloths are done....

ok.

and today

i think you cannot see this.  but i think, knock on wood, the Big Blue Stem seems to have

Taken.

seems to be sending up blades of Grass.  if so,  this is a Big Deal.  they don't transplant easily.  They have a mind of their own.  But if so,  then  well,  there is nothing more that i would ask.  THIS would be very much enough.  i'm watching.

Lots of phone this evening.  family is moving like pieces of kaliedoscope.  things are rearranging.

53 Earth Day 2013

on this day last year,  we, the Goats, Jenny and i had pretty much just arrived from California.  Bill and all his family visiting from the Northwest were here and we were digging fence posts for the buck pen.  Alz. B was here.

while digging, what appeared????near the 2 year cottonwood?....a juvenile skink.  i remember seeing it skitter from the shovel full of earth...how Relieved i was not to have inadvertantly hurt it.  how so AMAZED i was that there was such a being living out there.  what a gift it was.  i most likely will never see it again.  but it's there.  and chances are, if there is one, there are more.  what a really WONDER  full thought.

almost everything is planted:  cleome, zinnias, hopi black sunflower, marigolds, some old regular sunflower seeds and old black hollyhocks that finally rose up out of all the stuff here.  who knows. and woad.  the cucumbers are up, greenbeans, chard, spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, Yellow Hots, purple tomatillas, dill, cilantro.  i still need to get some bell pepper starts.  why didn't i start seeds???, i don't know.  oh and onions.  so...   Growing, 2013.  the 3year cottonwoods are leafing like crazy.  the Native Plum i transplanted is FINE.  for the first time, who knows why, there are tiny Native Olive here and there.  all the desert willow are beginning to leaf.  the Mimosa, both.  the locusts.  3 leaf sumac, both.  lilac.  golden currant.  corral berry.  Mexican Elderberry setting blooms.  young Russian Olive is strong.  

Grasses.  the Grasses.

Native Rice Grass.  the First People would collect the seeds.  grind them to make flour.

and i worked on the Place Spirit....

 i got impatient and used two strands of floss on the hind legs of the Lizard.  i don't like it.  it's clumpy.  will take out and do over with one strand.  and the Goat has been given some kind of otherworldly something at it's feet.  What is this?  i don't know.  but it's there.  and noticed, or Took Note today that i have been leaving scrim/harem cloth at the edges.  Why?  a fleeting urge to trim, but then i don't.  it is Something.

 

 

 

52

a day of it's own accord.  right now, the Goats are practicing an entirely new routine.  they go...

one after another across the new rocks then fan out.  some to the shed, some left, some right.  Ginger stays on the bench and pushes off all who come there and they go around and begin again.

the dove, repeats and repeats it's message.  same.  same and same.

Sun is on the Rim.

a lot..LOT .... of invisible baste

the Lizard is taking form

some Magic at the feet of the Goat

green beans

the diamond garden of the child buddha....all flower seeds planted.

at 10 or 11 oclock...a leaf.  the grape vine.  lives again.

the day was a blink of an eye.  that fast.  

51

so, though there was some Unforseen today, i was able to keep the pulse of the thread.  

the greyblue is invisible basted to the tea dye noile.  this feels very good.  the megamendung is invisible basted.  AND....in place, for looking, the Lizard.  i am not at all sure about the scrap for body, but what i DO love is that it is over a scrap of very light blue...under the chin, along the belly, and fully, the tail.  this was good.  this was better than any lizard before, when i tried to stitch the blue throat, underbelly and tail.  these are Little Stripped Whiptails.  you can google them.  

and because of the Unforseen (911 from the Old Folks home...Alz B had  !bitten! and drawn blood...) i didn't get to look at this enough.  is it really what it Wants to be?...it is very color true....not any added drama...?  and that little "hill", for the Goat....still questioning that.  it will probably change.  and i wanted to see more of how the Lizard would be and realized that the Scanner is not recognized by this new system and am too wary to experiment, so...i just printed a pic  and drew on the legs.  so...Looking.

and then...

this.

you can see the whole of it again in the previous Wall pic.  This is going to be important.  i put this here hoping Jude can identify the dark cloth.  it is very rough, course.  almost burlap.  i actually think it is a piece from her.  i love it here, on the tea dye noil.  i have no idea what...will come of these two pieces together, but they feel very important, very Good.  something about Shadow Things, and how those Shadow Things may feel hard.  overwhelming.  but in Reality are not at all.  are simply part of How It Is.  something like that.  hopefully tomorrow, that cloth can begin.