maybe it had to do with having needed to be so "in the world/of the world" all week? But being back with this Cloth was an experience today.
All day i stitched. My mind wandered at first from thing to thing i "knew", like thinking about how i have arranged for a very Fine buckling from Deanna to Kelly. How yesterday Kelly talked long on the phone about how they have defined their goals for the Micro Ag Loan they are asking for. How they will move soon to the 20 acres she owns in San Marcial. How she told her Dream for that land. That Barbara and Magic, the Goats from here would free range under the watchful eyes of Gardian Livestock Dogs. How she has a very wide and deep arroyo whose rim would be planted with fruit trees, the rest of the land near the homestead planted with Lavender....she will learn to Keep Bees. I thought of this. I thought of Jude's Small Journey's post about Illustrative...Conceptual....what is Conceptual? Is Judy Martin's work Conceptual? I really don't know what Conceptual is. Mind wandered in this back and forth. Then mind went to how the Old Cowboy is waiting to die, really. I have told him over and over that maybe he should not just wait because it might well be a long long time. There's no way to know, but i thought about all the things i think about dying because he is interested in it. And it would be good if i try to know some about what i think. All the while i am stitching these hills and depressions in this piece of cloth, looking so long and so closely at the subtle variations of it, thinking where i might put those invisible baste clusters and what DO they mean to me and really...
I got lost. But didn't know it. But suddenly something Called me into the moment and i had an extremely uhhhh, disorienting few moments. It was an altered state, even a dissociative state. When i stopped the needle and set it to rest, well....hmmmm, this is hard to tell, but i really didn't know uhhh, Anything. I didn't know any thing to THINK. I was just floating free. Mind just
Floating, unattached to anything....and i realized that i had no idea what i'd been thinking for the last while...how long i don't know...but there was no sense of it. And i began looking around, groping for some sense of grounding and everything looked equally as well, equal...nothing really of any more importance than anything else. And it was disconcerting and i wondered what had happened, and i began to do small things to "see if i could do them", i wasn't sure. Wasn't sure i could. I checked the email. Put the roast vegetables into a bowl and into the fridge. I fed the dogs. Looked out all the windows, looked at where i'll put the seedling tray tomorrow on the shelf...made self think of the process of that. Everything seemed Functional. But i still wasn't sure. So i went Out Side
yes. the Sky was there. The Rim. and yes. i knew how to download the pics in Picasa. OK. yes.
Things hadn't changed. I pet Tay and Chinche and went out to feed the Goats. Stuff was the same. I hooked up the yard hose and watered the raised beds, dug in a little, and it was good. OK.
But that sense of disorientation remains. This Cloth is about that. It's called Transmigration. It's to help me understand that period of "time", that "space" between the last exhale of this form before an Inhale of another. This is what i am looking for. And i found it. In buddhist terms, Tibetan buddhist, it's called Bardo. And the important thing is to be ready to let go. To Fly Free as we so glibbly say. Fly Free, we say. But it's a liminal state, with a quality of ambiguity or dis orientation. We have to let go. We have to Fly Free.
Whether someone believes in successive "lives" or if they believe in going to Heaven or if they don't believe in anything at all, no matter. There is the moment of Letting Go. Of setting yourself asail. Of all that is familiar. All you know that you know to the complete unknown.
So...
It has been a really really GREAT DAY.
