windthread

just Looking

Earth Dreaming 1

 

Finished...First Dream.    And I like that it can be a story of the Earth herself dreaming  Us all into continued Being,  or it can be us dreaming Earth dreams.  How, really, it is both no matter how we are able to perceive it.   so, Finished and the first of a series i am hoping.  I'll put it in the Shop if i can remember how.  It's been a while.

But earlier today i wanted to see something

 

 

What If i did something like this??????  Earth Dreaming is  9x13.   The other is a little larger, well, i guess you can see that.  What if they were in the center of a Larger Dream?  What if they were like one moment,  the story of that one moment within a larger dream?  What might that Ground,  that force field of Dream than look like?   What might be there?????   

I like this thought.

LATER AN ADDENDUM

because of the mail from Cynthia that told of snow falling on her internet connection and how much that meant to me,  to receive this image from her of her Place on this Planet,  

i'll add what is Here...i just fed the Goats their last food for today which is side oat gramma and they don't love it.  They want the Other grass hay with some weeds mingled in,  but this is what Bill loaded into the truck and so what there is to Eat and they are not enthusiastic but still,  it's FOOD and i say i am sorry, but it is nutrition and they mill a bit but then begin eating and my neighbor Margies son has left his radio in his pickup playing LOUD, driver door open and he is in the house, but the MUSIC is outside and it's that kind of Soft Rap,  i really don't know what it's called but it's the Romantic kind, like the rhythm of making love and as i am feeding the Goats,  there is a single small mustard yellow moth flitting along from Somewhere to Somwhere and the door of the house is open because it was Warm today but now is becoming a little cold as Sun reaches the Rim and Tay whizzes in and out in her Grand Finale of the day,  she likes it when there is no door, screen or regular so she doesn't have to slow her bullet like entry to the house,  can come full force, not skip a beat and i will close the door soon and tack down the blanket on the Way Back door,  push in the blanket at the bottom,   but not yet.  And color is draining as light leaves,  things becoming brown and grey with lines of dark, black maybe,  but it doesn't have to BE black to READ black and it's

done again.

one more day.  done.  finished.  added to the string of days....that bead like string of days that are a Life

 

 

 

Floating Back from limbo...the Tether of YouMeUs held firm

i feel a little sick.  So what to do on this Beauty Full day then?  Rake in the Buck Pens.  Ok.  Ready.  and i feel in a certain way Very Good.   There is WORK to do.  Work of all kinds.  Ok.  I am Just Going.

 

How Everything is many stories and how you have to Just Go to let them find you

You may or may not be able to see it.  There has been a slate grey medium sized bird who seems to want to become friends with Nogal and Tenzen.  There is only One of this kind of bird which in itself is unusual.  But for some days now,  he is either in the close trees,  or actually walking around in their pen with them.   Here, in early morning he was high in the Dead Russian Olive...right at 12 oclock on the second highest branch.

 

last eve,  the aftermath of the meal i originally did not want to prepare.

finally,  all cleaned up, put away.  

time to sleep.  and yes.  i DO have a cold.  The virus kindly waiting until the meal was enjoyed before fully settling in.   Today a runny nose and itchy eyes,  foggy brain.  But not so much yesterday.  I am Thank Full.

So...now to the point of the title here.  My friend is above all else a Reader.  A Reader in the highest sense in that she reads to Know Things,  To Educate herself.  She reads constantly.  She reads slowly and Care~fully,  digesting and absorbing.   She SAVORS literature of all kinds.  She spends part of every day sipping good wine,  crunching on almonds and Reading.  Over the years every time she has come here,  she brings books and newspaper clippings,  all with notes in the margins in her precise miniscule handwriting.   Yesterday was no different.   She brought   A Different Kind of Luxury...Japanese lessons   in simple living and inner abundance  by Andy Couturier.   I had gotten this book a couple years ago and read some of it before sending it to my son for his birthday.  and beside the actual book she just wanted to show me,  the Friend brought 3 xeroxed pages as a gift, saying,  "I brought this for you because she's like you.  I thought you might like this".  and well...I do.  Yes.  I very much Do.

"....Jinko stopped painting  after college and moved to mostly working in fabrics.  Partially, she says, this had to do with having kids:  "it's hard to hold a brush to your canvas in the middle of a pile of toys."  But there were other forces pushing her away from pursuing a career in painting in Kyoto where she studied.

"The art world there is extremely old fashioned.  Even if you have a lot of talent, you must maintain a delicate balance of relationships with your teachers.  If they suddenly decide they don't like you, it's almost impossible to get into a show.  

One of my compatriots at school was studying with a master and his work was very beautiful.  There was an important exhibition coming up in which everyone naturally expected that he would show his work.  But the teacher said to him,  'Boy, you go get me one million yen ($10,000), and then you can be in this show.'  My friend was so naive, he was shocked, destroyed.  He was so damaged that in the end, he committed suicide.  So i knew what that painting world was all about.  I also knew that as a woman it would be especially difficult.  I just didn't see a place for me there".

Soon afterward, she set out to travel in India and Nepal with her college roommate, Atsuko.  She ended up staying abroad for several years.

"What made you decide to leave Japan?" I ask.

"Well, as for going to India, she says simply, there really was no incongruity in doing so, I was brought up in a temple ,  my father was a priest in an esoteric sect of Buddhism, so we had a lot of Indian people coming to the temple and staying.  I was quite used to it."

"But, i ask,  Why did you stay there for so long?  Most people travel for only a few weeks after they graduate"

"There was nothing to prevent me from leaving Japan in the first place, and i really didn't have anything to come back to.  When i left, I had basically discarded Japan, and I didn't want to return,  I had no idea what I would do if I came back.  I had thrown away everything when I left.  I had no job, and no place to live here, so I just stayed in India.  I had become discouraged painting pictures, and as I said the art world didn't seem like a place that I could survive in, especially as a woman.

Jinko answers in a similar vein when I ask why she chose to live in the mountains when she did eventually come back to Japan.  "My father worshipped a mountain diety, so again there was nothing unusual in my choosing mountain life".

I am surprised by her offhand and almost indifferent tone, as if she has simply been subject to the inexplicable movements of fate.  Then, when i ask her about her art, the way she speaks is also as though she herself were surprised by its presence in her life, as if it were only coming through her and not as a result of a concerted intentional act.  Everything simply seemed to happen that way, or "there wasn't any contradiction to it turning out the way it has".  To me, "no reason not to" is an unusual way to go through life; but when i see what she has created, either in this restaurant, in her work with fabrics, or in her paintings, I have the feeling that she understands something that I, as yet, do not.

Of the stories Jinko tells about her years in India and Nepal, certain scenes seem emblematic of her finding the inexplicable beyond what is visible on the surface of the real.  "One evening in Nepal, she says, I came upon a festival of lights, with hundreds of people holding candles in the night.  Amongst these candles I could feel a gathering of thousands of fairies.  It was one of those moments when I knew that this world is not only made from things that you can see."    She also tells me of climbing a mountain inhabited by wild green monkeys and owls hiding up in high branches, and about walking across rivers barefoot to get to a cave where the Buddha trained.  Then in response to my question asking what she felt she was looking for in Nepal, she uses a term that I have to look up, and I find that, in Japanese, the way sunlight appears when it shines through the leaves of trees is expressed with a single discrete word.  "There's a sparkling river", she says, that flows inside of that light and that was what I was trying to find in Nepal...and at the same time I was trying to see into the scenery that was inside of myself".

In Nepal she studied weaving and dyeing methods for fabric, and ways of preparing different kinds of curries.  "The way of using spices was different from tribe to tribe and place to place, and it was wonderful to be surrounded by mountains such as the Himalayas" she says.

Jinko tells me that her restaurant, Bontenya, is named after an incarnation of the Indian deity Brahma who appeared to Buddha to tell him to spread his learning and enlightenment to others, I thus imagine that she may do some spiritual practices.  But when i ask her, she surprises me again.

"I don't do anything in particular"

But, i ask sensing something about her that I cannot quite pinpoint,  how do you find ways to keep the sacred as part of your life when most of the world around you, and most people in it, seem to be completely occupied with mundane reality?

She corrects me right there, "I think it's a mistake to think that so called ordinary people are not on a spiritual path.  You have no idea what is happening inside them.  And then after a moment, she adds,  "The life that we live in this world is I think, about polishing, cleansing our beings, our inner spirit.  It's a world of meeting other humans, of coming into contact with the chaos of the world.  We meet so many completely different kinds of people in life.  There are those that we feel are wonderful, and others not so;  there are people you admire, and people you despise.  I don't want to use the word "level" for people, because that implies that the self is grandiose.  And how can we know what is higher and what is lower?  It implies some sort of ranking.   But maybe there's no other word.  The important thing for me is to intently observe how I react inside when meeting someone new.  When I direct my consciousness to the other person and examine how I feel and respond inside.  I...well, I can only say that I enjoy doing this, it's what I like to do.  Perhaps that's how I keep the sacred as a part of my life."

excerpt  from:  A Different Kind of Living....the portion about Jinko Kaneko  one of 11 interviewed for the book.

~~~

and the Gift to me is ....."her offhand and almost indifferent tone, as if she has simply been subject to the inexplicable movements of fate" ..........Everything simply  seemed to happen that way or "there wasn't any contradiction to it turning out the way it has. ...... "no reason not to".

No reason not to.   I am looking very closely to those words.  And they tell me a great deal of how I experience myself and also my recent sense of ReView and  "lostness".

Jinko Kaneko

and worthy of a photograph,  this table which is in a rare state of Sans cloth.  Won't last through the day.

 

 

Quiet ing

worked an extra day at the Old Cowboy's.  He has people coming from Colorado tomorrow.   I recleaned the kitchen, vacuumed and spiffed up the bathroom.  Grocery shopped.  ok.

on the way home i stopped at the Vet to pick up Tay's papers and her Tag.  It's formal now.  She is in my name.  They changed her breed from her puppy papers of Australian Shepard X to Catahoula X.  Felt like a marriage license.  Partners.  Me, Tay.  

she is always so glad when i get back home.  I use this denim string thing as a belt on this particular pair of levis and for whatever reason,  she likes it a lot.  Likes to mouth it.  The little white speck under her left eye is a bread crumb.  She was standing directly under me while i cut bread into the cubes for the Turkey stuffing.    I am going to make an entire Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.  My friend who i never see when she is involved with her current Love Interest emailed a couple days ago.  This current Love Interest wants to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Magdalena Volunteer Fire Department dinner.  For whatever reason,  she does not.  and so she emailed me.  What was i doing for Thanksgiving?   I responded that i was planning to have a very plain day of getting things done.  I said i was looking very much forward to that.   Another email.  Could i have her for a mid day meal? I thought.  Wha.  NO!,  but then i felt selfish and said well, ok.    I thought of making lasagna and then thought of making Ruben Sandwiches.  and somewhere along the line she emailed again and apologized for inviting herself and said it was ok if we didn't.  And i emailed back...yes.  good then.  good.  thank you.  But then in the morning, i guess that was yesterday,  i thought why Not?  What's the big deal?  So i emailed back,  OK.  if i can find a 10 lb turkey then Ok.  I did.   and so...this is how Tay has a bread crumb under her eye.   Turkey is defrosting in a pan in the bathtub.  Yet one more Thanksgiving.   Which i Love because of the stuffing and the gravey.

inbetween,  i riffled through baskets and this cloth jumped.  It's a Deb Lacativa cotton.  I washed it in my hands in the bathroom sink and took

it out to dry

 

Goats were quiet,  and suddenly listening to something across the road

this is Mercy.  She often goes around with a single piece of something dangling....?

Onday.  Who i come to love more and more as time goes.   she is kind of representative of All of Them.   Onday.  I look at her as she looks back at me and i am Flooded with feeling.

so we are back to this.   Will post it next time i go into town at the grocery store.  Monday i guess.

the this was last.   For Days now,  there has been a great LEAK of some kind here.  I have gone in and out with the flashlight to look under the house while i have left water running inside.  Could see NO leaking.  So i decided it must be from that great no freeze set up for the Goat hose,  and well, so what,  something is not working right because there is a small pond there and the dirt maybe 10ft to the right left and ahead is muddy wet.  OK.  hmmm.  The doves love it.  They come and sit for a while on the old chairs then jump down and drink long and well.   But...still,  it's not right.  You can see where that white mark is at 6 inches.    That's where it had gotten to.  But today, suddenly,  it's seeped in.   The puddle is gone.  Absorbed into the ground.  I have NO IDEA what to think about this.  And it is Amazing to me.  Just DONE WITH in this moment.   eeeeeee.

 

no need to Romantisize

a journal entry from Their First Winter here,  2012   I notice the little Goat has 5 legs,  the old lizard woman has two tails.  

from last night,   Their 3rd Winter here.  11/25/2014

More words later,  maybe.   Want to say something about my Conflicted Selves.

OK...HERE IT IS ,  "LATER",   and i have been thinking about all this all day while Just Going,   and

I  want to say that i really don't like bringing any inner turmoil here.  I try not to.  There is no good to it because it almost always passes in a day, even.  But soon.   Here tho i have a kind of chronic conflict.....the Urge to participate in my immediate community and the Urge to remain very solitary.    I think all this rose up because of Betty's Memorial.   There were maybe a hundred people there,  most of whom i knew.   And when i thought about all of them,  this Community,  where i live,  i could see so many ways that i was NOT participating.  There's no good to mulling through all that in any detail,  but just to say I DON'T.   And then the little things rose up about Community and gave me Pause.  Why don't I?   Things might be Easier,  there might be More if i did.   And i had to take some time to think about that.   That the reason why things are how they  are is because of my Choice.   That Choice to remain solitary and really,  hidden in a certain way.  

Well,  this is not working out very well,  this writing about things.  So i am just going to make a cross reference on the rolodex under K for known and H for hidden.  That will do for now.

And i haven't responded to comments very well in a little while,  so tomorrow i really want to go back and do that.  Tomorrow.

 

back in Limbo again

Michelle sent me a link to the 40th Annual Juried Fiber Artists of San Antonio Exhibit that i think was on Deanna's facebook page.   I looked at the many still shots of the Exhibit,  the people attending,  the fiber art displayed.  I tried to imagine my most recent Cloth,  Earth Dreaming,  hanging somewhere there among them.  There was a total disconnect.  The cloth was like a dot on the wall.

Then today,  there was this,  hanging on the gate

 

4 publications...Gallery Guide books for Santa Fe.  LOTS of ART inside.

so i knew it was from my down and across the road neighbor who was married to a Native woman, had kids with her,  she and their daughters now have WORK in permanent collections of the Smithsonian...traditional dress and beading.   The Gallery Guides are a year or so old,  but it doesn't matter.  It's ART.  Santa Fe Art.   

and then at Deb G's blog,  beecreative.typepad.com,  her post of  yesterday entitled    local   with things about a book of Vicki Robin's  and a great Ted Talk,  and then  Deb said  "I read it and think, This is a community i belong to".

There was  constant Wind today.  Not GREAT Wind,  just incessant Wind and it was somewhat overcast and well,  for me, cold.  But i spent time with the Goats,  looking at their individual faces,  how their faces are all different,  one to another.   Saskia had sent me a link to some beautiful photographs of Goats.  Goats.   Goats are my community, i am thinking.  Goats.

 

WIND

in the beginning of the day there was this.  I caught the Maria cloths at the perfect moment of the SUN Rise and they GLOWED and VIBRATED with such innocent and singular intensity.  I stared and stared at this until SUN moved and freed me from it.   It was the day of Alz's B's memorial and though that wasn't till 1 oclock,  i was caught in it's coming all morning.  I thought about what it is to be Alive.  I thought about what it is to be Dead.   I remembered her as being alive for so many years in all the manifestations of that Aliveness and i thought about sitting there in the dark night when she had first become Dead and i thought.

I did Goat things.  Dog things.  Me things and i waited till it was time to go to the Memorial.  Memorial.  Well.....Memorial.   And me being me,  what will i say about this memorial?  Do we say stuff that is comforting?  Pretty?. even?  OR  do we talk about how we live?  Some, Pretty and comforting,  but also some NOT?

So i went and sat quietly through it.  So many wanted to say what they had to say that i didn't need to say anything at all.  The time was filled up very well with people saying what they wanted to say.  And i sat there and looked up at the ceiling where the Light shines through and i had Nothing at all to say.

So i am thinking about this.

Loving. it was a Loving day

the Day loved me and i loved it back.

Crow is on the Altar for a while.  Never been there before.   An interesting Energy there.

 

 

the Maria Cloths have been Active

Greatest Nurse Cindy didn't want this chair.   I thought i didn't either.  I don't really NEED another chair,  but ....hmmm,  chairs...i love chairs for whatever reason,  and here it is

i think Done.  A sleeve on the back.  but otherwise Done.   Earth Dreaming.  I think so.

I stitched until i realized that my Eyes were weary and so i went Out and raked and loaded and hauled scrap feed to mulch on the garden growing beds.  The warmth of the day,  the lovingness of the day was excellent.  Mulch.  Thick and very Fine Mulch.  All through these cold months.  On.  Into Spring.  Ok

 

intense focus on such small stitches

the beginning.  Close to a month ago.  Having NO idea what would come.  This is the point when it would have been easy to Kantha the light blue.   But i didn't know i might want to.  Because i had no idea what was next.

such small stitches in so small a space...especially the left,  or, the right side of the Cloth,  but it got stitched and i'm glad.  The FEEL of it is very Right,  both sensed and in the hand.  The Weight now is Right.

Als B's son Bill came to clean the chimney pipes of the wood stove.  He brought one of their dogs,  the little one,  a miniture doberman cross,  Nanno.  He tries to socialize her when he can.  So here is Tay,  who also needs practice with socialization and Nanno who is as big as her head,  socializing.  They were pretty much a success.  But for some unknown reason Nanno noticed the Crow way up on the dresser and decided it was a threat.  Would not stop barking until i brought it down and set it on a chair.   Noticing the dust,  i washed it and so,   the photo shoot............

 

 

 

 

 

 

iF you can find it in your Heart,  Please support Obama's Immigration Reform.  We are ALL immigrants from the Stars.