windthread

a gentle thursday

i did extend some lines of the Kantha into Her face.   it's good.

spent a lot of time stitching the beginnings of two long leaves of grass.  the one on the right remains...and decided that isn't it.  So...rooted through all the scraps and found one that will work, and again,  i SHOULD have been more conscientious about dyeing this summer with the Mexican Elderberry, *  and these i think will be good.  The seed stems will be thread.

and i'm not sure how i realized this,  but i did realize that the dial on the camera was NOT on Auto...but rather manual.   How did that happen?  but it accounts for the trouble i have having for a while.  I'd thought maybe my retina's were detaching.  But no.  so ok.

and the mid afternoon to early eve were spent BURNING, finally.  No wind.  Perfect.

this whole little pile of wood had been completely covered...over to the fence and then about  maybe 7ft wide and then almost 6ft high with Pigweed.  This is weed that causes problems for Goats because of the thistle like seed heads..or like fish hooks...can get lodged.  so, pull and burn.

here we have it.  Done.  I  hosed it down when finished so when the ashes dry i'll shovel them into the wheelbarrow and do something with them.  But it felt really really good to get this DONE.   I am probably overly concerned about burning.  Even on a day like today, i start so CARE FULLy...only a few weeds at a time,  but as it goes,  i become confident and really enjoy seeing the smoke billowing.  Tay was very interested  All does came from the Way Back to the Middle Pen to watch.  It was well attended.  

 

 

 

no title

over the course of any few days,  i end up with a little pile of papers with things written on them and when they begin to feel like clutter,  i go through them to see if there is anything needing to be saved...if not, i throw them out.   a lot of what's on them is from very first thoughts of the days,  like i used to do Morning Pages...a left over from those days...now it's just sentences,  not even complete thoughts.  sometimes words.    This morning there was this.  I of course know i did this,  but really, don't remember why or when.   Had to be in the days before Magic and Barbara's Big Day tho.  And those days,  when i was waiting for Sunday,  thoughts were very fragmented.  So i looked and saved it here.  Threw the actual paper away.    Why did I think this?  There is some very very hazy vague memory of a dream ...?

and because of Liz's post about altering a book,  i got to thinking again about whether it matters  to me if the human images in the cloths i make seem to be one race or another,  well,  one, really, i guess,  like caucasian...which is me of course,  and also they are almost always on unbleached muslin,

and suddenly i remembered the conversation she had with the Navy Recruiter who came to her Alternative High School.  She was 17 and graduating and they i guess had a quota to fill and Recruiters hit the Alternative High Schools hard,  offering so much including the money for a college education.  It was her way of Seperating ,  of Individuating.  No one in this family,  her mother's side had any military inclination whatsoever to put it mildly,  but she took it.  And i remember her telling me as they were filling out the final papers for her to sign the next years of her life away,  he handed them to her to proof read.  There was one error.  Race was checked Hispanic.  She corrected him.  She was NOT hispanic.  She was half Black and half White.  And though brown,  was Not Hispanic.  He kind of just mumbled along and said to just go ahead and sign.  She wanted that corrected.  and he told her.....  "It's ok.  just leave it.  You can be anything you want to be in your heart".   And she said good them.  In my heart i am half black and half white.  Change it.

so i guess at that point his needed quota of 17 yo girls from single parent  Hispanic family dropped a point, but it all went forward.

So.

i thought...what color am I?  What race am i,  on the inside.  what race am i in my heart?  The answer was immediate.  I am half me and half dirt.  I am half  and half.  Like her, mixed.   She actually said that to me once when she was much younger...that i didn't look like a white person...i looked different.  so maybe she could see that?  Maybe she could see how i am the color of dirt?  If anyone would, it would be her.  

But then,  as i write the above,  that face there isn't at all about me.  It's about what i let represent the Feminine of All that Is.  We can say Gaia.  But i also don't really relate totally to that,  but really something even more Vague.

So this has brought up a whole different thread.   In the meantime....i wanted the Face of It to be at least part brown...earth colored.  

a print out.  With the grasses as shelter above the oh so small figures below.  And as i was fooling with that,  i realized maybe i want the Kantha to extend INTO that representative "face".   But not in a way that would maybe identify It as any particular race or culture....,  just part of the All.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonder

Allen, who i clean for every other Tuesday,   was home when i got there.  Against my rule,  and the house was cluttered with all manner of things.  I'd never seen it that way.  But i know it's common.  People "pick up" before i come.   Martha of the Windmill house says having me come to clean is worth it just for that.  That every two weeks she is compelled to "pick up".  Turns out he was fired from his job.  A long story.  But he is very happy.  And has already connected with something new that allows him to analyze data At Home...he's a hydrologist.   So,  after listening to that story, i will go back tomorrow instead when he is at the dentist.  It will be picked up.   So, on into town to get bread and  hot dogs for the Old Cowboy who also had come to a conclusion;  that he doesn't want to move up to his relatives home.  Wants to stay put.   and as he said it, " I want to stay with you".  Long conversation,  but he is calmer now than for months.  So, ok.  sigh, ok.  We will Just Go.  

At the feed store, i hear from Gerri the owner that Kelly was in yesterday to get chicken feed and told her that the Goats were doing Great,  needing a little "training",  but Great and she was very very happy, and also inquired about minerals for them.  Gerri doesn't carry Goat minerals...they are specific to Goats...not other livestock, not sheep.  Goat minerals.  So i called Kelly when i got home to tell her that the other feed store,  the newer one, HAS   Free Choice Goat Minerals because they ordered them for me.  Goats won't use a Lick Block and besides that the balance of minerals isn't right.  Goats need copper.  and the Free Choice is a granulated make up that they crunch on...and Like.  So that conversation.........a long one........the FIRST long Goat conversation i've had since my daughter left.   OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and oh E and YES!.....Kelly is ON IT.   Several times a day she takes Magic for a walk on a lead!....Today they wandered over to the Cottonwood Trees for a leaf search and Magic was very rewarded.  It's going GREAT.  Barbara is pretty much HoHumm  about it all,  everything being just ok for her.   But Magic is a little Wild,  being the daughter of a Herd of Goats.  Never knowing anything Smaller.  But Kelly is totally UP for it and the conversation revealed her dreams to have a small working farm that can support her and the kids.  The Man will do the feed farming and also small engine repair.  It was truly Glorious listening to her.   Deb G would love it.   So, for the first time in a long while,  i feel like there is a thread strung taught through someone's dreams and dreams that i can nod and smile about.  Stuff is Good.   Stuff is Very Good.  I will do everything i can to stitch it along.

so the Kantha is complete.  I finished in the almost dark this eve.

you can see it better with the Flash tho the color is off.  And now what?

 

 

 

 

Sad and Glad, either/or/both

Work away then home.  Time OutSide.  Tay is especially wired when i got back,  flying all perimiters in circles,  sailing high over the weed pile.  Running with many different things to carry.  Drop one, pick up another,  like a Relay Race with her Self.  

Goats unsure.  Hesitant to use the Corridor...either way,  no signs today of the rearranging of Order.  That in itself is unexpected.  Snowbunny is back with the herd.  Celia,  who had become friended with Magic in the last few months is back to her mother, Lucky Star.  

As I said to Granddaughter,  i could cry or express gratitude and really,  Both.  To not deny the sadness at saying goodbye especially to Magic who was born here.  Who has never known anything but this Herd.  She was born into it and Belonged to it,  much more than to me.  

And i realize how it is to watch a natural grouping of animals so closely,  to try to understand their Ways and their Goings and then to interrupt those Wa ys and Goings because as a human,  i can.  They were the two that had the problem Scurs.  Intervention by both Vets in town was not good.  And also expensive.  And an ongoing thing,  the stress for the Goat and the expence when i no longer have that extra income coming in.  So that in itself is reason enough.  But how do you ever reconcile that with what i Did?  And here the sad,  the tears come.   There is no way they could know.  There is no way.  And so,  it is just done.   And we all will just Go.  However it Goes.  

It's dark now and i hear them milling in the Way Back,  deciding to go through the corridor to the albatros for the night.  Still deciding.  I am curious who will make the decision and be the first to go.

Hear sounds and with the flashlight, go look.  They did it.   Their eyes glow in the dark.

 

a work at home job.  These are windows from Alz. B's home in town.  Bill her son brought them over.  I will sand them,  glaze the panes and then paint them.  Work.  He doesn't want to do it.  But wants it done.  Will pay me.  I say ok.   A months worth of Goat Feed.  Good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a series of small details, one after another

began early.  measuring the opening on the Middle Pen side to the Migration Cooridor.  Measuring various pieces of cattle panel,  coils of fencing.   Decide.  Look at how the coil of fencing could most easily be attached so it would be secure if needed,  but easily taken down, removed.  Haul it and fling it over the fence into the pen.   Bang in big nails in the outside post to hook the end of the fencing onto, 5 of them,  attach the roll of the coil to the existing fencing with bailing wire so no one could accidently get caught in it.   Undo the little door to the Bedroom in the Albatros and secure as closed.  No entry.  Shovel excess by the gate In so it moved freely.  Redo some of the wires that were loose.  Undo the hose and pull it to the side so it was not across the "driveway".  Repile the weeds that are waiting to be burned,  out of the way.    Secure the "fake gate" to the Corridor and sit with Them a long time as they came and went back and forth from it,  teaching themselves that it was closed,  that they couldn't go through.  Sit longer.  Watch them.  Watch them checking everything,  noticing how it all was different.  Watch them lie down and chew cud quietly in the midst of change.  Quiet now.  Ok.

Gather together the pellet bucket and wash the 3 xtra feed tubs out front,  tilt them to dry in SUN.  Bring two of the lightweight ones from the way back.  All 5 in place because that's what they are used to.  Goats like things to be like what they're used to.  Decide which of the soft nylon straps to use as leads.  Tie it on each end.  Test.  ok.  Not too long, not too short.  Bag the peanuts in the shell and set on the bench.  Ready.  and Sit then.  Just sit with Them...in the SUN that was soft and steady and warm.

Hearing them pull up,  get the bone for Tay and put her in her "house" with it.  Close the dog door so Chinche couldn't come out.  Go open the big gate.  They back the horse trailer in.  Slick as a whistle.  One of the things i admire most in this life.  Knowing how to back trailers.   They get out.  Kelly,  late 30's maybe 40 at most is carrying a cloth sack with a bread pan of Banana bread that is still hot from the oven, Watch out.  Ok, i set it in the wheelbarrow.  Noah, the 9 or 10 year old is out at at the fence.  Cliff,  Kelly's man,  and not so long Kelly's man comes quiet to the fence.  He's a

rancher guy.

Kelly talks to Thomas who is for the time staying in the truck with some stuff to do he likes.  He is 13 and quite very much Autistic.

I'd met Kelly once at the feed store during the summer.  And then they had come here once because they wanted Goats.  That was a couple or few months ago and then things happened in their lives and i didn't hear from them.  Last week she called.  They are ready.  Ok.  so now it gets tricky to tell.

While i was talking to Kelly,  Cliff her Rancher Man let himself into the Pen and was sitting on the picnic table just watching.  He's quiet.  Says things,  but not a lot of things.  But the Right things.  So Kelly and i are talking and notice and so she and son Noah go in and i go get the nylon rope and fill the pellet bucket so it's ready when it's time.  We are just there in the middle pen watching Them and They are quietly moving around,  trying to figure out why there are so many people.  Thomas comes from the truck and i let him in the gate and he is Happy and Excited and making all manner of interesting noises,  wanting to pat then,  feel their tails,  and they begin moving around faster.  Cliff escorts Thomas out of the pen and he continues how he continues outside the pen until Kelly escorts him back to the Truck.  A little bit quiet then,  but now there is palpable movement of Energy.  

I bring in the bucket with the pellets and begin emptying them into the 5 bowls and somehow like magic Cliff has slipped the rope around Barbara's neck and deftly tied it over her nose into a halter and is at the gate ready to go out and he DID and she went,  pretty much without fuss and jumped into the horse trailer. Gate closed.

Back.  He had tucked the nylon rope in his back pocket so it couldnt be seen and sat a while, but Magic KNEW that the attention was zeroed in on her.  Her thinking was NO WAY.  She quietly skirted the rim and the feeling of intensity was palpable.  We tried to stretch  our arms to hold her in the corner by the gate a few times to no avail...she was FAST and DEFT.   

To make a long story shorter,  about 20 minutes or a half hour,  she went into the Guinea Hen Palace and became cornered in the smallest section.  Kelly , Noah and I crawled in to bar any way out and Cliff moved in on her.  She was panting.  He crouched there,  stroking her.  Silently.  Her breathing slowed.  He put the nylon strap rope over her head and created again that halter configuration.   Waiting some,  then leading her out that way.  She reared and screamed and flung herself,  her tongue, as Goats do, was hanging out like she was dying,  he just stood quietly and then when she stopped he knelt and stroked her more.  A long time.  we just stood.  And then he quickly lifted her up and carried her,  i opened the gate,  had sent Noah to stand at the horse trailer gate,

and he softly set her in.  Noah closed the door.  

we are two less tonight.  Tomorrow it will begin.  A ReOrdering of this Herd.  it will go on for a few days,  probably three.

while everyone else was eating the evening feed,  Snowbunny,  the grandmother, the matriarch, came to the Middle Pen where it all took place.  She stood.

 

We talked.

this is the soft nylon rope.  I need him to teach me how to make that halter.

As they were leaving,  the young one, Noah,  was ecstatic.  Two Goats.  He said that he "feels like he was born for it."  Maybe he was.  Maybe he was.    Who knows, really,  what we were born for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

conflicted

so i woke up in the middle of the night and deleted yesterday's post.   stayed up quite a while thinking.  i miss staying up during the night in these cold months...it's not all that comfortable but i sometimes need the darkness and the silence of the world.

and i went back to sleep for a while,  waking to find self pretty much just as conflicted.   What is a real and useful response to this world Out There?  What is worth writing here?  Stuff is not pretty and lovely.  Is it being complicit by not mentioning things?  By staying with the NICE?  

and i googled the word complicit and the example given for use of the word was:

"Chokehold victim complicit in his own death by being overweight, in poor health and a nuisance..."

 

a couple of the pics from yesterday.

EVENING NOW, barely and it's so so dark...............

So i thought about it all and really,  this blog is like another room of my house.  I live here too.  So it's just how it is.  Sometimes there is grief.  Wendy of Grace and Mending emailed because of the disappeared post  and said she had read .....despair...before it disappeared and i thought yes.  Despair.  yes.  that is the correct word.  

The reason i deleted it in the middle of the night is really,  that i didn't say all that there was to say.  As usual,  i wanted to be lazy about it and in this particular case,  that won't do.  It is not enough.  So until i'm ready to speak about how it feels to me in a way that honors the grief,  the despair,  i will just sit with it.   Like Milarepa,  invite the deamons to tea.  

very early this morning

a wierd tweaking because it is so dark in the Room at not even 5 oclock tonight...you couldn't see...that i am filling in the kantha,  beginning at the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

more looking, can't stop

it pretty much rained since morning.  Just drizzle,  but continuing and it was very overcast,  Dim.  There was a LOT of looking.  Just standing and looking and wondering what's going on here,  the cloth, the looking that won't stop.   And small odd things coming to mind..those ants on the SunFlower,  diligently tending their flock of aphids for one.    I wanted distraction.

i studied the water situation which was much improved.   O!,  i forgot to say.  Yesterday i went down the road to William's Windmill,  the business right where you get off the freeway.  They are about all things Water.  They do sell and install windmills for water purposes but they also do all manner of work with field irrigation,  livestock water,  and well anything that has to do with pipes and moving water,  including the most small and insignificant household plumbing items and advice.  So i washed my hair and put presentable clothing on and went.  Asking for any help they might offer about someone who might help me with my leak.  Answer being that the guy that they would suggest who does that kind of thing "on the side"  would be out of town for at least 10 days,  but they suggested i call Ric of our local Polvadera Water Co-op and see if he might be willing to see what was going on.  I got all happy and did that.  I know him a little from all the years here and he agreed to come in an hour which he did.  He said i was absolutely correct in my diagnosis and  showed me how to turn off the outside water valve in that White Thing.  Said to wait some days and give things a chance to dry out then call him again.  He would find someone to Dig because he doesn't dig anymore,  but would change it all out then.  The thing is that he doesn't like the no freeze aparatus AT ALL and would strongly suggest scraping it and installing a regular faucet instead.   So i listened and thought who cares, and said ok.  Would call when it was less than a mud field.  That was yesterday.  Turning off the valve has stopped more water.  I need to put my arm into the White Pipe up over my elbow to feel around for the valve once a day in order to turn on the hose so i can give the Bucks fresh water,  then back,  feel around again and turn it off.  Ok.  Can do.  A plan.   Then this morning Bill called, Alz. B's son,  and i told him.  Told him that i had tried and tried to no avail to get hold of Paul Who Can Do Anything to come back and work on it since it was he who had done the work just some months ago.  Paul is incommunicado too.  Seems that's the thing now days.  Just don't answer the cell phone when it goes to voice mail and then notifies that the mailbox is full.    The outdoor no freeze faucets were Bill's idea and he subsidized them.  The old faucet working fine,  but these so much better according to him, so done.  I gave him the story and he said NO!,  being adamant!  NO!....that i need to keep the no freeze deal....that he would come on the weekend and look and decide.  ACK.  as always,  everyone has an opinion ...that are like , well you know what.  and so.

this afternoon, the valves are accessable.  

but this is just part of this Life.  More,  through the day, i was wondering and looking.  Because of the Overcast,  i didn't get far

maybe this.  So i'm going back, beginning again in hopes i will be able to continue.  Because very quietly underneath everything else, I believe it to be True.

Plant Intelligence  and the Imaginal Realm,  Stephen Harrod Buhner

I am here.  an old female homo sapien living with a herd of Goats, dogs, a cat  in the "domesticated" sense and also among a multitude of known and unknown beings on a single acre of this planet Earth.  I want to understand all i am able to, but really, also want to comfort myself with very human things,  like stitching cloth together around a drawn face, creating a familiar image to HOLD on to while I learn to let things go.

This is the last place in the book,  page 145 that i'd gotten to when i quit.

"Our view of the world as a static backdrop to human activity has obscured the fact that we are only minor players in the scheme of things.  The vast majority of interactions that occur here have nothing to do with human beings, as Hird notes,  "Humans do not even know about the vast majority of inter-actions that take place on Earth".  Plant intelligence,  microbial memory and culture, viral swarm behavior and horizontal gene transfer, the capacity of animals (and slime mold) for mathematical computation are only tiny bits in the "vast majority" that remains unknown to most people, including nearly all scientists.  There are so many others that exist, in numbers beyond counting.  We will never know them all...."

so that's the last of it.  i need to begin again and keep going.  Not stop.  But in the meantime,  this

will help me.

 

 

 

 

 

more of the Beauty Full Just Going

i tried off and on today to sit down and actually write some things ahead of this post so i could be at least a little clear.  But for whatever reason, it seems that i can't do that anymore.  I just need to sit down at the end of a day,  or close to the end and write whatever comes out of my fingers.

But i did think of many things,  how it's all merging.  Things are merging.   I got the Trungpa book off the shelf and  here it is again...how many times have i written about this here...???  But again.............

"The natural law and order of this world is not "for" or "against".  Fundamentally, there is nothing that either threatens us or promotes our point of view.  The four seasons occur free from anyone's demand or vote.  Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons.  There is day, there is night.  There is darkness at night and light during the day, and so no one has to turn a switch on and off.  There is a natural law and order that allows us to survive and that is basically good,  good in that it is there and it works and it is efficient."

Shambhala,  The Sacred Path of the Warrior,  Chogyam Trungpa, Cpt .  3  The Genuine Heart of Sadness   about Basic Goodness.

and that i first read in the 1970's sometime.  Here we are so many years later and it All continues to merge and I see and feel.

and this is a cloth about that.  About how it is all merging,  how it feels like Sky/Earth/all upon, under, inbetween is only one continuous thing.  this would include me.  I can no longer seperate the thing that i am from all the rest...the edges are sticky and enter one into the other.  Yet still,  in the moment i began this cloth, as above,  in September,  i still identify Sky/Earth, rocks, minerals, Air, and Water as somekind of She.   And that's ok for now i think.  I remember that day, when this cloth first began and i stood Out Side There and raised my arms up to All that is above the Earth and said

"Breathe Me!!"   

so she was the Breather.  

and to go on about the cloth itself,  i have a tendancy to be ok with Edgy.  Even like things that are edgy.  I look for faces and eyes that are not,  uhhhh,   ordinarily human, but rather less than,  vague and well, Free of humanness.  Free of all it is that i am.  That are Beyond that.  So i was looking for that here.  

And now a while later,  i am looking again.  Though i find this face to be the face that i was needing in that moment in September,  it wasn't a face that was ....well, i guess...kind of Universal.  It may have been a face that really said the opposite of what i felt it to be....

and so.  I think of making Cloth.  Story Cloth.  Stories of moments that i experience.  and i ask self if it is enough that they tell ME the story?  or do i want them to tell a story for Others too.  And i do.  I want them to tell a story for Others too.   

So i am looking.  How Else can i say it?....tell the story of that moment without Compromising the story?

 

 

 

Looking.

 

 

 

a different kind of Good

a Good day with the Old Cowboy.   He had the Colorado company that rattle his brain for 3 days and was full of very organized questions that he really wanted answers to.  So we had an actual CONVERSATION about things he is very worried about and it was great.   Because he said things, then i said things, then him then me and when it was over,  i commented to him how really good that was that we both listened and talked and tho it might not last,  today he got it and it was a Good day.  And i retrieved all his collection of Cowboy and Indians magazines from where she pitched them in the dumpster just in time.  

Then when i got home i went out with determination.

the dark is mud.  probably at least 25ft.  something is leaking.

 

down at the bottom of the white pvc type thingy are two handles.  One turns off the outside water to the above faucet and the other the house water.  I don't remember which is which.  I've never turned them.   So rather than sticking my hand down there and not knowing what i'm doing, (and i did notice that the mint i planted there doesn't mind at all that it is submerged)

i bailed and bailed out the water with the kitchen pan into the bucket.   Bailed and bailed.  never got to the faucets.  You can see the screw driver sticking out of the lid to the white thingy.  The white thingy is supposed to have enough gravel in it,  it's sunk quite a ways into the ground, to leave the turnoff knobs available.  Not.   But i got close to the bottom before quitting for the day.  As i walked by a short time later,  the white thing was once again  FULL of water.  Hmmmm.  

so i went around collecting bones.  There are at least three times this many scattered all over.  Worked a little while on the hugelkultur.  All Good.

 

and finally.....went to look at my Belov~ed.   I spent a long time there.  just sitting on the log border of the raised bed.  Feeling.  Thinking.  Taking the time to fully realize all that it had been,  all that it is now.  I don't want to forget.

I need to go back to those two cloths of yesterday,  tomorrow.   I want to understand some things about them too.   but that's tomorrow.  Today was Good enough.

 

 

intention

 

what is my Intention with this cloth making?  I am thinking about it.  It's been long enough , some years,  that this question is appropriate in its Rising.   

This second one,  i love this face.  I love the story that i feel when i look.   I took away the Breath.  That was,  i guess, confusing to anyone else that might have looked.   So...here we have just this much.  I don't want to just let this cloth sit in a drawer.  Really,  i don't want any cloths to just sit in a drawer.  So,  what does that mean then?

Sun almost took her face away

20 more days till Solstice.  Twenty more days.   I am  breathing the count.