windthread

114

a very quiet day.  somehow, felt like a "free" day.  i'm not sure what i mean.  but like an Extra day.

 

taken late, with available light.  many stitches.  kantha begun.

 

this loose coil of fencing with dried bindweed.  i like it a lot for some reason.

 

this is odd.   i don't often take pics from this direction.  maybe that's part of it,  and maybe it's just the Moon?  but when i downloaded it from the camera i had a strong deja vu.  Where?  i  don't know.  Maybe Oregon?  not at all like that, but...            Maybe a dream place.  but the feeling stays.  Strong.  and makes me want to look till i know.

Tomorrow, Early, i will begin what needs to be done to make the Big Move.  All doe Goats except for the 2 mothers will move to the Way Back where the new Shelter is.  They will stay there.  Tomorrow will be their first sleep over.   The two mothers and their six kids will have that whole front pen to themselves.   

How will this 

Work

????

What will Everyone 

Think?

Will it be OK to them?  

My daughter had a really Great Place for the Goats.   Before she took them to California and everything Didn't Work:  a TON of Unforseens.  but before that, it was really really great and she would move everyone around all the time.   So, i am reminding myself of that.  and Caroline , especially is getting stir crazy in the Albatros.  The babies are playing hard and need space, need Things to challenge them...jumping things.   i have some concerns about the two smallest of Lucky Star.  so many ways they can get themselves in trouble Out in the Big Pen, but also, so many ways to Learn.   And i'm not sure there is enough Shade to go around in the Way Back from the hours of around Noon till 2.  but there's no way to know until they are there.  

so...tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Solstice

 

Finally.  some stitches.

 

and these came today.  What perfect timing.  the one on dying is from me to my Self.  the other,  the Alice Walker,  is from,  i'm guessing,  my second longest friend who continues to Just Go in Detroit.  she had written the other day about so much loving reading it...how it helps her Just Go.  she is my friend from 7th grade...we Continue only by pen on paper.  

and Solstice.   there are many images, many words for Summer Solstice.  that live in the land of Numinosity.  the land of Spirit.  but the bottom line for me is just that it's

warm.

and there is LIGHT.  long long hours of Light.  enough Light.   but then, at the end, even today, i have to let it go.

 

but then, i can still spook around.

can you see the chair?....inside the shelter of the Giant Sacaton grasses?...barely.

the garden of the Child Buddha

 

and in the very first paragraph of the book about dying,  i read words that tell me again why i so love Tibetan Buddhism.  

"Death is one of the most precious  experiences in life.  It is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  The karma that brought us into this life is exhausted, leaving a temporarily clean slate, and the karma that will propel us into our next life has not yet crystallized.

so.  here i am.  looking around.  it's warm.  it was a long long long day.  that day is over.  now, time to Just Go.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

112 ~ Solstice Eve

so...the floor got fixed.  that was all day.  and the weak fencing strengthened.  Finis.

and Cindy came...had only a short time, but i showed her Everything and posed a Billion What Ifs.  it was really GRAND.  she reassured me.  she was one huge SMILE about it All.   She misses her Goats and was GLAD to be here, GLAD to be of use, GLAD to share all she learned in her Goat years.  She even LOOKS FORWARD to COMING BACK...this i could tell....so....it can't get any better than that.  She will come by again in a few days or so and is confident that the disbudding can wait.  the little martians are little.  the others are OK.  i am going to  go with her judgement.  so for now, through Solstice and through the weekend,  there will be Peace.  

 

and Jamie and Talulah and her friend Jora and Jora's Mother came to visit the baby Goats.  after that, a short visit, because it was still Hot and the Goat babies were panting,  Talulah and Jora took up where they had left off when they were last here together.  They are a famous restruant, like the French Laundry.  they made some kind of braised fish and well...i can't think of it all in the moment, but they made it on the grill and over on the table in the Feather Grass and presented it to their mothers.

and ...WORLD....HEY!....look at this.  One mother of a lesbian couple and this "turkey baster" daughter, Talulah.   a Second Mother, Jora's mother with some kind of rare M.S.  Multiple Sclerosis, age 44.   Look.  Look Hard.  Women.  their daughters.  here...words elude.  

and then...coming in from watering, here on the cutting board, this Cricket....enjoying  Life.  this cricket.  taking it's Place.  this Cricket.  my housemate, i guess.  so...O.K.  Tomorrow, Solstice, 2013 i am going to guard with my life.  NO ONE comes through that Gate.  NO ONE, no matter what.  i will stitch on the altar cloth.  i will just Go with the scrap feed mulching of the vegetables.  i will look.  Look Closely.

 

 

 

 

 

111

Paul, the workman, the craftsman, who works for Bill, Alz.B's son, who seems to more and more maybe be some kind of brother to me???,  i think about this a lot,......and you might have read some of this thinking before.  anyway, Paul came Early this morning.  i don't know exactly what he had planned to do here, the fence reinforcment?  the plumbing thing to create grey water?  the cross over flooring over the crack where the former porch and now ROOM connects to the trailer...there is a good inch plus gap??????  anyway, i don't know what he and Bill had in mind.  but i met him at the gate saying there was a change in plan.  i wanted to "trade" the floor project for making a rain/hail shelter for the Goats in the Way Back....use the particle board for the roof instead of the house floor.  Goats First, i said.  so, Paul, being the good humored being that he is, said OK.  but YOU explain it to Bill.  so, OK.   after all,   I am the one who Lives here.  so....OK.

and this is what we did

with what we could find around here, we built this.  it is attached to the road end of the trailer.  which is  my bedroom.  it is 8ftx8ft.    big enough?  i don't know.  but it's what we had to work with.  we got the "vigas" from out in Buckwheat's yard.  that took a while.  he was very nervous to have a stranger in his space,  a male stranger.  and  Goats do assign things to human gender.  we would move things around and then need to wait until he found his "querencia",  his place to take his stand if need be, like the bull in the ring.  a couple times he just smashed his horns into things...the side of the Albatros,  once his rickety gate..which held.  his response to anxiety was interesting to watch.  not so unlike some human males.  that took a long time.  then, well, no need for all the details.  but it was not at all unlike Cloth Making.  Mending.  Mosaic applique that Jude taught me.  it was 100 degrees again with hot dry Wind gusting.  intense.  but we did it.  

Tomorrow the nurse from the Old Folks Home, Cindy comes.  She is the one who appeared out of the Blue offering, ...well, no, not offering, but saying yes to me saying...HELP...with the disbudding.  so...i'll wait till after that to say much.  right now, it's only Hope.  but i wanted that shelter in the Way Back so she can Look.  so she can help me understand the logistics of what is already here and what it will become soon with the  6 additional baby Goats and what will be the On Going thing with the Milking.   SO MUCH factors in.   so many times,  one good idea is canceled out by another reality.  hard to see how it all goes together to Work.  so Tomorrow will be a Big Day.

in between all this...i gave water to Lucky Star and Caroline with the bucket.  i can't leave water in there with them....the babies are too awkward and could drown...even in a small amount.  just like our babies.  so when i took water, i would sit in the straw and touch them., the babies.  they are panting,  so i don't pick them up in the day.  just touch.  i took this one pic, but they look like little martians at the angle i am at, so i gave it up for the day.

but they are all well.  all their little bellys full and round.  all Just Going in this new world of theirs.

i am having feelings that i can't put words with right now.  after what needs to be done is done,  maybe then.  but i look at this pic above and  well...  a lot of feelings.

and the pics and the words are Off...but ....ok.  You can figure it out...what i'm trying to say.  This above is the Tomatillo.  i am watering in the dark again.  taken with the Flash.   when i was watering and looking with my eyes,  they almost looked like Poinsettas.  but without the flash there was just black.  with the flash, well.........this.  They are blooming.  i LOVE growing tomatillos. just because of how they Are.

 

 

 

 

 

110 and now begins my litmus test

O K

we are all PRESENT.  Caroline:  1 doeling l buckling.  born in the Guinea hen Palace around 6 pm.  easy birthing, strong and precocious kids....like their elder sister, Jude's Magic from last go round.  moved to the other side of the Albatros.

bad pic, but REALLY BEAUTY FULL little buck.  REALLY REALLY FINE.

the doeling.

Caroline cleans.  she cleans and cleans and cleans her babies.  they are spotless.  it's almost exhausting to watch.  she cleans them.  she consumes every speck of birth substance.  All the placenta, all the umbilicals, all the All.  CONSUMED.

this is Caroline's Cleaning.  hours.  she cleaned without resting a second.

 

this is at the Gate to the House Yard.  where Ramon is now.  we gave him the new copper livestock tank float that looks like a world.  it's copper.  and we hung it on Stars and Birds.  We were going to find and put certain rocks.  tomorrow.  it's his favorite place.  in the middle of everything, so he wouldn't miss anything.  nothing at all.  ok.  and my litmus test.  a little while, the kids will drink the milk.  then, at a point, i will need to seperate them and milk their mothers.  make that cheese and maybe soap.  some will need to be sold.  this is where it all becomes very Real.  we will see if i am up to it and how much i might be up to it.  do i have the temperment?  we'll find out.

 

 

 

 

109

it seems impossible that only a day has passed.  that it was yesterday that they were born.   last night went on forever.  i slept a very different kind of sleep.  not sleeping, not awake....an inbetween.  hour after hour with waking many times.  listening.  i listened all night.  i listened for Lucky Star, for the little ones, i listened for Caroline, in case she began to kid.  and i listened to the dogs.  i slept on the couch because one of them, Ramon,  was dying on the floor in the bedroom.  on the dogs quilt, under a towel.  the one with cancer.  the other three went back and forth all day and all night, checking.  sitting.  lying in the doorway.  in the dark i could hear their toenails clicking along the floor.  back and forth. and i listened to that too.  Please, no need to express sadness for his death.  he was who he was and he had a long story and it was time for him.  but still.  it took forever for him to let go.  and today, his absence is huge.  and it was a work away day and  that was hard...feeling like i really needed to be Here.  but i went.  and it was all ok.

But so many Thoughts.  so many Feelings.  So Much.

and this is as far as i got with more pics...not far

 

and then,  this

 

 

 

 

 

108

 

 

 

107

being hypervigilent, i woke to what i thought maybe had been THAT Goat sound.  but not.  so lay back down on the futon and just watched morning come at a different angle

and looked at so many lines and angles

 

and began another altar cloth.

the wasp sting bothered me more today than the eve it happened.  that whole side of my lower lip and chin is itchy and when i rub it, swells.

 

106 a very very Very Fine day

i spent the DAY with 2 leggeds today.  Not Goats, Not Dogs, nor any other 4 legged, except for the toad that joined us for a short time when we were sitting under the Apricot Tree.  Marti's husband brought his bread.  Marti, gifts of her alchemy.

Don't Ever let anyone tell you that a sister you find on-line is any less Blood than any from your own mother's womb.  

 

 

105 and then, Evening added on...a post script...rethinking the word Stamina

 

for some blessed moments, the above.

but then, the day went on.  into Town, laundromat, grocery, stopping to do a quick clean up of a house so when She got back home to day, She would be happy, or at least ok.  it was just a tune up.

then home and spend time with Goat things.  a little bit of longingly stitching on the above cloth, but needing to leave it.  because of what i'd set into motion yesterday when on the way home from the dump,  i stopped at a house along the way.  the woman who lives there is a cashier at one of the grocery stores...i know her from that and i know she has a son.  a grown man.  and so, i've been looking at these BIG Cottonwood stumps piled in their yard for some months....and i see that it's just the screen door so i stop and the son is there and he turns out to be the Ditch Rider, Jones who has recently been replaced by another young man.  i don't recognize Jones because he is not in his ditch rider truck or his hat but he recognizes me.  LONG STORY SHORT...arrangements made for him to bring me a Giant Stump.

oh.....comotion outside...be back in a minute.....

so.  a giant stump.  for the Goats in the Back.

the gallon water jug gives perspective.

and his tractor got stuck.

so we put some boards in and hosed it with water.   at some point earlier, when i was breaking off and stacking these bamboo stalks, a wasp...which i am assuming has a nest there, same as last year, STRUCK and stung my bottom lip.  so...and since i have benedryl for in case of the Fire Ant bite, i take.  and going back  out, i see...WHAT? no less than the fire ants going along too, near this bamboo.  so i wander about, out there to see where the mother nest is.  find it.  dump the DEATH granules on it.  and...then, going out Front, since i am in the See~ing mode, i notice a brand new

Fire Ant nest RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALKWAY!

How one seeing leads to better Vision.    so.  where are we now.  ok.  the stump is delivered, the fire ants SEEN and dealt with.  and, really, i am pretty much done in.  remember, it's around 100 degrees.   and really, i'd like to just quit for the day.  but..............there are the young vegetable plants.  in the past, i'd say to Self...well, i'll do it in the Morning.  but tonight, with that word,

Stamina

i just go.  i go and water everything.  i come in, here, and write the words.  Stamina.  maybe it's not quite the right word.  so...i am thinking.