windthread

wet

it began raining before light.   This is early,  and one of the single brief spaces of Sun in the day.  Those spaces lasted less than 5 minutes and the rain resumed.  It's wet.  

 

 

in that short span of time i looked and yes,  They're gone.  OR,  gone from where they were on the branches.  Tracy and her husband found them.

Datana ministra.   I googled and yup...the most telling clue was   "When disturbed, the larva lift their head and tail in a distinctive U shape".   Yup.  Them.  it goes on to say "once mature, they drop to the soil and pupate at depths of 2-4 inches for the winter.

 

 

so this is where they dropped TO....after all that  concentrated consumption.   This Oasis in the Back is a Universe unto itself.   I have NO clue what all goes on in there,  but know it to be a Lot.  And so they fell,  from the branches,  fat caterpillars,  into these grasses....they would need to somehow need to fall even further,  Into the grasses and weeds,  down down down to the earth.  So much could happen in this last part of their journey.  So many hungry beings on the way.  I thought/think about that all day.  How many will complete the pupating stage?  Probably not a lot.  So i learned to kindly watch their necessity of leaf eating.   It's ok.   really,  8 branches.  A fair share.  In this last pic you can see how the Side Oat Gramma is going to seed.   If i could,  i would go in there and pull out the huge Kochia to feed the Goats but i can't.  There is a nest of the Paper Wasps somewhere.  And i have been well taught to keep my distance.  Interestingly enough,  Paper Wasps feed on caterpillars.   And so it goes.

 

The day tho was this.  Emptying and hosing out feed bowls in the brief moments of no rain.   A lot of feed wasted.

 

 

and then...at the very end of the day,  the Dark broke and for the last hour or two,  there is Sun.

 

the Grasses came today.  

 

 

 

 

 

unexpected reassurance Then, Addendum next morning

i have a .....  a......hmmmm.   I have a human being.  I could say i have a friend.  but that's not enough.  I could say i have a "sister".   That would be closer,  but would give a certain tilt to it that might not be what it is.   So...i'll say,  i have a human being to whom i am Close.   She lives in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.   She is a poet,  a Writer of all Manner of Things,  an Artist,  a Maker of Cloth Beings that she calls the Grandmothers,  and then cloth figures about Jubilation.  She is a Performance Artist.  But most of all,  she is a Lover of humanity,  a Master of the Unconditional.  

and it turns out,  she is a Lurker.

 

This is her.  All around dangling, are the Grandmothers.  Sparrow.  I got a phone call from her today out of the blue,  which is how we do it,  Out of the Blue.   I know her and she knows me because some almost 20 years ago now,  someone we both know said we should know each other.  So i think it went that i wrote a letter and she answered.   Twenty years almost now.   We have as yet to stand face to face.   We have become what we have become to one another by the United States Postal Service.  We write letters.  and then,  sometimes there is telephone.  She does not have a computer.   But today she called and knew things and told me that she is a 

Lurker.

she reads this Thing here.  This blog.  On her phone.  She reads Windthread on her phone.   !!!!

She told me this and she also told me to remember that Nothing.   Nothing is only what it appears to be in any single moment.   

and this has HUGE meaning to me.  Because she and Maureen and maybe Sandy  are the only  human beings who i know of that come here from my other life.   Not because i have kept it seperate,  secret somehow,  but because they just don't.  For whatever reason.   But it has made a huge difference to this day,  that i know she is There,  reading,  looking.  HUGE.   very HUGE.

 

i think they are finished.   I see none of them today.   I will look again tomorrow to be sure.

 

 

Garlic Chives are blooming

 

rummaging through the scraps i found this.   Took off the lizard.    This....is somehow IT.  But i don't know how to "pull it in".

 

so i took it off.   Did This,  which is also "true".

 

but,  This.   somehow,  This is just what it Is....August.   so i look.   and as i look here,  it occurs to me that maybe somehow there could be both?????  

ADDENDUM.   next morning, 8/22....because of Yvette's very good and important comment...  i realized i'd done it Again....just  set down a thought without really thinking....and i need to say that those words were not her words, Sparrow's words,  but what i came away with from our exchange of words.   It's hard  sometimes to want to hold a thought/an image on the day it Came because this IS a journal,  but also remember that without context,   it might not make any sense at all,  or/and make sense in the way i am experiencing it.   

 

 

 

 

August 20, 2014 Variations

 

Progress for them,  along the line of their mandate for life.   This was this morning.  Early.   I just went out this eve to see any difference.   What i am hoping is to see the evidence of their transition from consuming to transformation.   Not yet.  the Consuming continues.

 

I will tell you that i am completely absorbed with the Events in Ferguson Missouri.  I read everything i can,  i watch video,  i sit and stare at image slide shows.  All of it.  Everything.  

"The Pew Research Center released a national survey of attitudes about Ferguson and it's meaning.  Asked whether the shooting in Ferguson "raised important issues about race",  80% of black respondents agreed.  And while two-thirds of black people said the police response in the aftermath of the Ferguson shooting went too far,  only a third of white people thought so.  Only a quarter of white respondents said they had followed the story closely,  compared to half of black respondents."    White America's racial blinders   Derrick Z. Jackson  Globe Columinst

I lived in Detroit, Michigan during the "riot" of 1967.   Lived in an apartment just off the campus of Wayne State University,  downtown.    I was young.   and what i remember most was having gone late at night to the White Castle oh so cheap hamburger joint a few blocks away,  walked there,  and sat eating hamburgers (that i would NOT eat today) and just talking to whoever was there.  Somehow,  and looking back,  i am in total awe of it, really,  somehow having a sense of safety.   That nothing could happen to me.   I wish i could go back and talk to that me,  find out what she knew,  what she was thinking.  How she felt that she was safe.   What she thought about it,  that she did never feel threatened.   What the ignorant innocence was that made her feel immune to harm.  ANY harm.  Any harm at all.  Same as walking in protests in Detroit over Civil Rights,  same as  participating in protests of the war in Viet Nam.   That same odd sense of immunity.  

There are many many photographs that are stunning and heartwrenching coming out of that small town in Missouri this August, 2014 .

 

this one to me was the Strongest.   I was born in Detroit,  my father worked for the DSR the bus service.   I remember,  when i wa s young,  and then later when i was no longer young,  my father talking about the Negros.    About how their hands are different,  have scales.  My father was a racist.   I grew up for the most part in the suburbs of Detroit where there were only White people.  But somehow,  something inside me was repulsed by my father.   So i think,   what is That?

And i am looking at this photograph.   Looking at something really, plain,  a man stung by Pepper Spray,  Capsicum,  capsaicin, the chemical,  and someone pouring MILK on his face.   MILK.  Same as when i eat too much chili here, now,  that is too hot and i drink a glass of milk.   Milk.  Milk on his face and look.  Look at the detail in this photograph....i am STUNG,  stung hard that this is happening still.   And it's happening still because no one wants to look.  No one really wants to Stand and Face.  We are not much farther along, really.  Years go by and we don't look at Things.

 

Me, here,  thinking all the above and yet 

just Making a Cloth.  Feeding Goats.  Writing words here.

There is a woman, Hedy Epstein,  who just turned 90 just now and is a Halocaust Surviver who is in Ferguson, Missouri.  walking with the people.

 

 

 

 

unexpected

Alz B's son Bill came.  Bringing the load of grass hay and then fiddling with the new stove because it is evidently not converted from natural gas settings to propane.  So the evening was this.  And was Tay,  who is very wary.   She barked and growled and stayed back.   And partly, i want her that way.   But want her to also know certain people.   So....a lot was that....working with her about that.  Understanding in myself what i want from her.  She was Good Dog Tay.  And Goats demonstrated their migratory corridor for him...which was very grand.    They are so very very BeautyFull.

trapped

I switched work days today because i had to take the Old Cowboy to the District Attnys Office to give a deposition.   I won't do the Long Story,  it's too LOOOONG,  and it happened a year ago.  But they are finally getting around to it.   The short story is that a young man chumped him into using his truck last year and also took his ATM card and took money out of his account.  Today had to do only with the truck.   ok,  i said, short,  so  what the residue is in me is how little of what happened really matters in a legal sense.   It didn't matter that he got suckered in by this kid,  living in a John Wayne world as he does,  the kid living in a heroine world as he does....stuff didn't mesh.   An no one wanted to hear the Old Cowboy's important facts.   So it was uncomfortable to say the least.  Watching him all scraggly,  trying to explain how it all went and them sitting stone faced,  only interested in a couple facts.  And it didn't matter that he will be a wreck for weeks now.  And if it does go to court,  be a wreck for weeks again.  The law is the law. 

and i can't not watch what's going on in Missouri.  I wish, sort of, that i could just think it doesn't have anything to do with ME and go about my business,  but i can't.   It DOES have to do with me.  I live in this country.  

So all that.  And i decided to make red chile for  Tomas.   Funny,  how when i am all tangled up i cook.  And while cooking,  i asked self....Grace,...what IS it that you want right now?  What IS IT  that would give you some Space??????   and Funny......,   i walked over and looked....well.....  That Self that always knows what's going on had been one jump ahead.....   Because the answer to that question was:   just to get OUT of my head for a while....

 

 

and i put another leg for Michelle

 

 

August is such a Dense month.   FECUND.    It's BeautyFULL and it is also something else.  What?  What word do i want?   Well....it's BeautyFull and it is also i guess REAL.  

 

more and more of August

attracted initially to the Coral Berry,  those Wasps patrol the tomato plants

 

the young Mimosa is involved it ALL of it's necessity....Living, Blooming, Seed Poding...all at the same time.   All at the same time...i think of this...it's SO MUCH.

 

in the truck bed....the debris from hauling the Grass Hay has provided enough to grow Seed.!  In August,  everything seems possible to a seed....

 

 

Finished and in the shop

 

and...next................................

 

and i am out ,  giving water and thinking...how there is so much.   A small boy,  dropped and abandoned in Northern Iraq  by a mother who could no longer carry him,   about a mother grieving her college bound son who has been shot dead in Missouri,  the Show Me state of America,  it's August.  August.  And i am here feeding these Goats......when maybe i could feed Many children.   August.  it's hot and humid tonight and EVERYTHING comes into question.

Saturated

In more ways than one.   We have reached the point where any rainfall simply lies upon the surface of the earth until it is evaporated by the SUN the next day.    The surface is sand and it becomes mud and just under that in most places here is a layer of clay and then caliche....with the qualities of cement.

So it's HUMID.   I am trying to take my cues from the Doe Goats.  Just be still and stare off.  Tay and the buck Goats are more inclined to express themselves with pacing and bugging.  Chinche plays dead.  Tazmeena,  i have no idea.  Haven't seen her since breakfast.   I assume she's somewhere on a shelf. 

So what do you do when you are restless and uncomfortable?

weave a pie.

 

and finish a Cloth.   I think this is it.   All the words i thought i might say about it i won't.   It's  just about gathering things in....when things are Unsure....just gathering what you love around you.  That's enough.   The scrap under the Rain came as a surprise at the end of the day.  But it's right.  Tomorrow i'll sew the sleeve.   

 

 

off and on in rapid succession

Electrical storms.   Electricity off/on     off........back on.......and on the rim it's DARK.  so.....

not the day i'd envisioned,

but the day that happened,  nonethe less.   I'd forgotten that it was Alz. B's care conference day.  And i had thought that her son Bill would be back home from the Northwest.   So i went to Music Thursday this morning and one of the members of that band's granddaughter was in town.  A beautifully healthy and robust young woman with her fiddle and her voice.   I got there a little late so i don't know if she will continue to come for a while or if this was a GIFT of today.   One way i can tell that i am moving along the line is how so much i just LOVE young women.   To me they are the finest of the fine,  their clear eyes,  their strong bodies, their Spirit just SHINING THROUGH....i love them and would celebrate each of them with everything i've got.

took the camera.    This is the old folks home from the highway.   On the right,  you can see what might look like a two story part of the whole.   It's not.  It's the Alzheimers Wing  (from which Alz.B was voted off...that island....because of bad behavior...sent to general population) which was built with very high ceilings to give a sense of space.

this is where i park.   Just to the low left you see my bumper.

So the care conference.   All disciplines represented and me as family member.   Weight same: 98lbs.   Cognitive Function: same    This is now three years into it.   What has changed is that she is no longer  "toileted".  She has no self sense of all that.   So,  in the last couple of months,  she is just "cleaned up"  after the fact.   Every day, she is fed,  encouraged to drink fluids.  I have quit participating in that.  I no longer go at lunch like i did for 2 years.   But she continues to open her mouth for the spoon.   Continues to sip from the straw.   Her weight remains stable.   OK.

 

And because Mimmin has been walking hand and hand with me through the last year,  i saw that this time last year the Apple Tree there was laden.  So today i looked,  and YES!,  again.  Tart excellent pie apples at the edge of one of the outside court yards.  No one cares.   PIES!  The one in the front,  visited by some bird,  was the only one with a single mark.  Beautiful apples,  natural,  just because a tree wants to make them.  Tomorrow...Apple Pie.

 

on the way back,  a better pic of the Thrift Shop.

 

and those beings from the other day......well,   i was wrong.  They are high in the Big Bush and i thought they were the same,  but NOT.   Today they are caterpillars....and i still have no clue what they might also Be.

 

someone lost a small single very perfect under feather.

 

And today is the 45th Anniversary of Woodstock.   "we are stardust,  we are golden.  we are a billion year old carbon"  they sang.   I watched on Utube,  Jimi Hendricks...who,  to this day,  i would go with...anywhere......   I didn't get to go to Woodstock.   Tom,  the father of my children,  wanted to get out of the Draft.   He didn't want to go to Canada  so he looked into Peace Corps.  The only program available at that time was for married couples.  So we got married and instead of going to Woodstock,  we went into Peace Corps training in San Luis Obispo California.  

But i am PROUD.  so PROUD of Woodstock,  for all it's craziness.  It Was Stardust and Golden.

We Believed in something very BEAUTY FULL and GRAND.   And i realize that i try to give that Beauty and Grandness to my granddaughter today,  even tho it seems too hard.  I want her to know what it was.

 

Understanding

 

and now she's smiling.

This cloth has helped me focus on things that have been elusive.   Things that are becoming clear, but i won't   "word"  them yet.   Will wait until it all seems in place.  I tend to repeat a lot,  both  with the pics and thoughts.  Trying to break that habit as much as i can and still keep the journaling  quality of this for myself.  

 

Insects.  On the Three Leaf Sumac in the Way Back this morning.  I've seen these before i think 3 years ago.  They are squashy bodied with bristly hairs.  They stay in this mass.  I don't know what they turn into.

 

 

The Feather Grass was exceptionally beautiful in the early SUNlight.   And as i was emptying the compost from the kitchen i turned and there she was.   That  BIG  Whiptail lizard i talked about a while ago.   I had disturbed her  from  the squash vines that are growing in the compost and she streaked toward the pile of branches that still haven't become the  hugelculture, or however we spell it,  i can't remember,  but she was almost there when she totally ...... stopped and looked up at me.   They do that,  the Whiptails,  so the establishing eye contact was not unusual.  Still what IS unusual is her size.  She is VERY BIG.  The way most big Whiptail i could imagine.  and again,  because she remained still for so long,  i got to look well at her.  She is almost velvety looking,  striped,   but softly so and those beautiful ivory colored dots.   Her underside is a very pale aqua, her feet, chin.   If i'd had the camera with me,  i could have taken as many pics as i wanted.    She was wanting to be Known.  So tomorrow morning i'll go back again and see if she appears again.  She is a Strong Sign.  What made the woman in the Cloth smile.