windthread

an odd day

but...the day that it Was.  SUN is now heading for the Rim and we can begin again tomorrow.  Like Salzberg says.  Just go back and Begin Again.  It's ok.  so ok.

this is how it can get when there's a lot of Cloth stuff going on.

i have had this book of paper for so long.  SO long.   It's from Nepal.  Made from the bark of the Daphne bush.   The colors are exquisite.  Tearing small pieces.  to stitch with a single thread.

the tomato seedlings,  very much Nearing time to set Out

Tazmeena is having Feelings

And this morning,  i thought,  This is What I Hope For:    (about the weekend)

Seeing Many different kinds of creative endeavor

Energetic exchange with people i never have met about anything they want to talk about

A connection with SomeOne interested in Slow Cloth/Raw Cloth

Conversations about Goats

 

 

a WONDERFULL mistake!!!!!

mid morning, i realized that today is WEDNESDAY!....not Thursday.....oh,  YAY and HooRay!

since i always work away on Monday and Tuesday,  Wednesday has a certain feel.  And since i didn't work at the usual Tuesday because Allan had been gone for over a month and everything was fine, i was home instead.  But it still Felt like Wednesday because i got to stay HOME.    So i was given a FREE day!

i spent some time,  a chunk of time,  stitching very pale blue thread beads in the eyelet part of this.  Which gave me a lot of opportunity to think about it,  think about how i think.  Is very interesting to me because it never was a question about maybe putting it into the little shop on this blog.  I couldn't imagine anyone else but me thinking much of it.  It is not an "easy" cloth.   If we might remember,  it's about those grubs of the Green Fruit Beetles in the compost,  how i was learning and understanding how So Many Things can participate in an ecosystem,  even those that at first might feel challenging.  It is very tied to the Harrod Buhner book  Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm that i am STILL reading....

it's not a Pretty cloth.  

But there was no question that i want to include it in  the ones i take with me.  No question.  So, That says something, doesn't it.

 

And this is typical of the Other Sides.  The sides that i choose not to Hide.   Having given thought to how this may feel Unfinished.  What would THAt mean to me?   and i thought no...would feel, to me, Hidden.    How stories are what they  are in the Telling,  but how often so much back and forth, so much not knowing anything is involved in the finally getting to the Story....with all it's important details.....

So, ok.

Tomorrow that is Really Thursday,  i can make the Word Paper and i can make the Names of them and put their dollar numbers.  That will probably take all day,  or much of it.  That leaves Friday for sweeping out the truck,  going to the Laundromat to wash a pair of levis,  receive the month's half ton bale of alfalfa.  Breathe.  

This is exciting.

 

one of Those times

i planted the Cuban Oregano in the Diamond bed,  in a small rock room.   Next to the Chocolate Flowers and watered.  Then,  i planted the Japanese Honeysuckle outside the fence from the Maybe Native Plum stump.  all the while sending vibes to Tay to leave them alone.  Which she did.  (so far)

but went out a short time later and she was tearing through the Place with an asparagus start flailing from her mouth....you remember them in the sink?....and i yelled DROP IT! and she did and i picked it up and walked,  she ran,  walking, her running and telling her to STOP which she finally did and i pressed the asparagus against her lips and nose and yelled NO!  Turned and walked away and replanted its  dear self...who knows what it feels,  and she slunk under the porch.   I left it this way for maybe 15 minutes then felt bad for her.  Digging to her is just digging.  Which is a joy.  So i said No Dig and let it go.  We'll see.

All day i did small things and looked

it's not great,  but is what it is.  I understood how it is really,  low,  to many people.  I am short so it's ok for me,  but for not short people,  well...it's low.  But it's what i have for now.

tweaked so you can see better,  on the right panel,  a piece of paper that will have Words

i haven't written them yet.  Thought of them, really yet,  but will.

and all day i thought about Why? i am hoping people will want to 

buy

Cloth Pictures i make so i can keep feeding 17 Goats that I never intentionally imagined having till death do us part?

Why, if I am impelled to MAKE things, Why don't i make Useful things?  Why don't I learn to weave and weave dish towels,  belts, rugs?

Why don't I aspire even to making something like Judy Martin makes?  Great Works of Textile Art?...not that i Could,  but why don't i even have an urge to TRY?

You could have NO IDEA all the rush of thoughts swirling over themselves today.  What on Earth am i Doing????  

I need to ask these questions of self before I am there and someone, who is truly interested asks me.

I need to walk backward in my mind to when I first saw Spirit Cloth blog,  it was late one night and I was transfixed.  By seeing things that I Understood...Seeing a Way that was the "closest ever" to how I perceive the World,  experience the World

I remember the first time I watched Jude's Flicker slide show of COMA.  How the feeling of COMA has never lessened no matter how many times I've watched.

So today and in the next 3 days i will entertain these thoughts,  whether i want to or not,  they'll come.   And maybe I'll know something more  "for sure" than I do now.  It's easier NOT to think about it much.  But right now,  I seem to need to.

the refrigerator holds a reflection of the Old Apricot Tree from the kitchen window.  From the Morning Chair,  i see this.  How Beauty Full it is...watching it there through out the day.  If i could,  i would make a Cloth of this.  But it would make even less sense than the others do.

 

 

 

 

so here we go

Home from Working Away and stopping at the Old Cowboy's,  running a couple errands for him.  Ok. Home.

though there were ominous clouds just to the SouthWest,  over Magdalena,  here,  just This.... and i went out,  thinking to dig up the Native Plum that didn't make it and dig the hole for the Honeysuckle.

 

i squatted to Say my sadness to the small start of a tree/bush that didn't make it,  before i dug it up.

and there,  at the very base of the sapling is

Something.

Hoping against Hope,  it appears to be a shoot of the Native Plum.   Too soon to tell, really,  could be something else growing so Up Close as things do here,  and in this case, something Less Desired but it Might Be.  Maybe.  I have kept giving water even though it appeared for no reason,  but maybe it WAS?   So i will wait.  Watch.  Find Out.  The Honeysuckle is ok still in it's pot for a while.  We wait.

Walking back to the house across the wind swept Way Back after giving water,  there This was.  How things just appear here.  Wind revealing them,  sweeping away just that much dust to reveal them.  I have never seen it before.  But it reminds me of forms of Nepal and Tibet,  so a treasure.

I'll sit outside now a while.  Just sit.  I don't work tomorrow because he has been gone so long, over a month,  Allan of the cats,   so the house is Clean.  Everything Fed.  Done.  so i am home.   this means Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to finish the Cloths completely for the Art Thing.  Friday i'll need to go to the laundromat so i have clean levis....be respectible.

All this i've written here,   i think in this moment....What a Funny Life i have.  Who'd of  ever guessed.

 

Both

In/Out   Dig/Stitch   back and forth,  often just moments at a time. Rain/Sun  Rain/Sun.   Restless.  But i think of Nepal.

 

 

Flax.  Planted in a small rock room.   slow purposeful digging out of the sand floor of this room.  Filling in with composted soil.  Mixed together.  Watered 3 times with it seeping down each one, then the plant set in.   All the while,  Tay lay near watching.  I said nothing to her.   Intending to convey that this was nothing For her.  Separate.  Of Itself.  They had given me Flax last year and i'd left it in a pot.  Didn't make it.  We'll see.

to the right...that first rock room,  two of the Chocolate Plants.  Natives.   didn't get a pic.  Rain.

Looking at this today,  i will continue to fill the Diamond with rock rooms.  Maybe herbs.  Am not so much anymore for growing flowers.  But these were Given and so.  

 

i seem to want two pics today.  Just small difference between them....but still,   a difference.  I want to make a cloth like this  "planet"  that is a copper  float from a livestock water tub.  The colors.  The abstract design that means Nothing really other than 

Beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doe Goats spend all the planting time in the Migrational Cooridor watching, and pretending they weren't except for Onday.  She just watched.  It's right behind the Diamond.

during the IN times,  the times of Rain,  i stitched the details.  Realized that the ordinary sleeves won't work to hang the Cloths to the screen,  so they need small ummm  cloth pieces so that the salt cedar twigs are exposed in the middle and can be afixed to the screen.  Ok.  

and all the while i thought about Beth's comment way back,  wondering if i would include words with them.  This was about House of Wind  House of Sand.  She said that the words made a difference.  so i thought about that today.  I don't know.  I need to write up some kind of explanation for them...how they are made of recycle.  some straight from the Thrift Shop,  some plant dyed here,  some recycle dye from Deb Lacativa.   About how anyone can make a Picture that tells a Story that has meaning to them out of fragments,  scraps,  bits of cloth and how much i love this.  How i learned this from Jude...Spirit Cloth.  How teaching and learning ripples out in a never ending pattern through time.    and i did have a few moments to cut some twigs from the Salt Cedar for them.   I rubbed off the new growth.  A lot of it is still on the kitchen floor and there is the scent of it as i write this.  I also decided NOT to cover the "other side" of them.  There was an urge to do that to make them more  "familiar".  But No.   The marks of the stitches ....i love them.   How random they are,  how without order.  Like how the Cloths go together for me.  Random.  Out of Order.  But ends  up being What They Are.

 

 

Before s

No point in putting a pic of Metta here...nothing new you can see.  A LOT of invisible stitch,  the tabs on the back for holding the hanging stick.  It's DONE.  except for the final picking off of cat hair.  It's amazing how much cat hair of an old cat can float float and float.  All while i was stitching, i picked it off and all while i was stitching, it floated back.  

Late last eve,  a phone from Mike and Thelma,   would i come this morning to work with them in digging and planting the Fermin Venencio Chavez Memorial Yerba Mansa Garden?  Yes.  So early, i went and took the camera too.  Their place is a veritable Paradise and i was going to take pics,  for Julie, but  once there,  i just admired and helped.   They are the ones who had the Native Plant Business till a year or so ago when they just Quit doing it.  But their Place,  there on Hope Farm Road ,  a rocky ridge is just beyond  Grand with trees, bushes, vines, plants.  Taking a pic of it all would have led to some uhhhh,  well,  something.  Mike has put in and continues to put in an extremely extravagant drip system.   which results in a kind of Garden of Eden.  

It was great,  to wander around and look,  to help plant the Yerba Mansa that we had all gotten from along the ditch bank under the tutelage of Fermin last fall.   The ones i brought home here were stolen by Tay except for one which didn't make it.  Mike and Thelma put theirs in their greenhouse and they were beautiful this morning.  

they gave me this one.  I will do it differently this year.  

a Chocolate Flower and a Flax

two more Chocolate Flowers

a Japanese Honeysuckle...in the pot...to replace the Native Plum that didn't make it.  It's the time of day that SUN saps all the color from things...hard to see,  i know.  But in the morning maybe.

i brought rocks from the Way Back up and will put them in the Diamond tomorrow.  First i'll bring compost  and dig it in.  Then the rocks and the Chocolate Flowers,  the Flax.  This in hopes of having Tay understand that they are supposed to be here.  We'll see.  

The Yerba Mansa,  i'm not sure.  But for Sure,  NOT in a pot.  It needs to be Free.

 

 

and then maybe to Balarat

so...say five years in Detroit.  or so.  give or take.  and then a slow boat to Balarat,  to where Elizabeth Denny is,  in the Central West of Victoria.   Southerlyposts.blogspot.com.  We would need to camp out by the lake because there's too many of us.  But still,  somehow,  i would get some time to sit near her quilting place.  I would sweep up all the oh so small scraps under her table and put them in my pocket.  She has the most elegant cloth pieces.   Elegant because they are from "somewhere before that i know" pieces.  I love them.  

But then what?  Probably i would want to come 

Home.

Thunder storms off and on today.  A smallish bird THWAKED into the window of the door to the way back.  The THWAK was so LOUD that Tay ran to the far end of the house and only very slowly ventured forward.  Unsure.  I looked and a smallish bird was lying on its back on the porch...feet curled,  still except for hyperbreathing.  Some moments later,  the breathing had slowed.  Some moments after that,  it was turned and breathing Slow.    Some moments after,  had moved closer to the door and just was still.  Breathing.

the raindrops stopped and the Goats came back.  I heard the sound of Goat on Porch and there they all were,  surrounding the porch  in their semi circle like they do,  staring and Onday was ON the porch just very over the top of the bird,  looking.  She turned her head so she could look at it with  one eye from the side.  Bird just breathed.  

i opened the door as little as possible to squeeze through and picked it up.  So soft.  So very soft and it struggled just a little and i carried it out to the Oasis and put it through the fence and it fluttered well to the low branch of the Three Leaf Sumac.  

For the rest of this evening,  the Goats continue to come to the porch and smell.  They stand and smell.  Knowing something happened.

 

 

and i was hoping,  but i think not.  Spent a large part of this day with invisible baste  through and around the colors of the Wings.  Here,  it's obvious...and it can be Touched.  But with the pic,  i think it's well.....invisible.  But there is a BIG difference in the feel of it.  How invisible baste (Jude Hall..Spirit Cloth)  makes the collaged fragment both One with the Cloth but also at the same time, More of its Self....????......it's quite wonder Full how this happens.

the butterfly's feet....need to be redone.  I wanted to see how they would look,  so just did it.  So, ok.  i see and it's not right.  Ok.  tomorrow then.

AnyThing can Happen

i've got some sort of Big Thought incubating.  I have NO idea what it is.  But it IS there,  just out of view.  

the new National Geographic was a clue.   Stories on Dolphins and BEEs! and of all things, Detroit. Who'd guess.  Detroit.  I was born in Detroit.  Spent my late teens and very early 20's back in Detroit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i thought about when we are young,  we get an Idea and we go for it.  Then at some point along the way,  we get some kind of Image of Who We Are and we begin Feeding this image.

What if i sold everything.  Bought a big horse trailer,  took the Old Cowboy's Chevy 4 wheel drive truck that is really mine now and just took off.  

I have a friend,  Wendy.  Still there.  She never left.  I had my first Real apartment with her.  She has one of the houses in Detroit...one of the old really beauty FULL ones with beveled glass everything,  oak door casings,  it's Elegant.  It's still an ok neighborhood,  her's.  Barely.  What if i showed up.  Me and the Goats,  Chinche, Tazmeena and Tay.  And unloaded in her back yard.  There's a guy who has a hydroponic talapia farm.  What if i wandered the outlying areas of the inner city with this Herd of Goats.  Cleaning and fertilizing neighborhoods?  Can we SEE it???????

MANY invisible baste stitches today and i keep fooling with the face

 

the day of Earth Day, 2015

had a lot of intention.  all Heart felt,  sincere,  Good

prepared the asparagus bed but didn't yet plant.  Soaked them.  Kitchen sink again.

DID wire the sticks together.  sat a long time.  looking.  ripped two long strips of the "Toad Egg" cloth and tied.

added sticks to what will be the Cucumber trellis.  

Sat at the Raft.  Watched birds.  Listened.  How the Meadowlark has been so much here for a while now but suddenly today the Mockingbird filled the air.  Meadowlark gone.  Mockingbird instead.  Watched the harvester ants.  Constant.  Dawn till Sun set.  Constant.  Butterflies came to wherever i was giving water.  I watched the movement of their wings,  their preference for just damp sand or actual places of water.  Checked off and on the House Finch family.  He continues to be the primary feeder and today i can see clearly two open beak lips begging.  Just after mid day,  she had to sit on the inside rim of the nest.  Most likely because it got hot...Sun on their metal roof there...too warm?  So she sat higher up...gave them space.  Tay and i were standing under Doris' Snake Tree looking at the Cucumber Trellis and something plopped down from above to just where our feet were and it was two paper wasps,  seemingly locked in mortal combat...going on for maybe a full half a minute and i was expecting one to be killed,  but in the end,  they suddenly both flew UP back into the tree leaves.   We didn't know what to think.

an aside in a conversation  about Iris with Deb Lacativa,  she mentioned a side of her home where she doesn't walk and that had stayed with me.  I thought...is there any place like that here?

 

behind the Yard Gate.  I hardly ever look here.

between the Mexican Elderberry and the Guinea Hen Palace.  Where there is the skeleton of the little New Mexico Olive that died for no reason so long ago.  Where cats are buried and Tay's bones are thrown.  I tied some purple silk.

And for some reason,  i though about a movie that i have loved.  Quest For Fire,  1981,  and how much i loved it,  how i wanted to be Ray Dawn Chong.   I thought about how simply we Began.  So simply,  our species, and how incredibly different we are now.

i finished the blue thread breath

and put the bag of clay in the window to warm with the Sun thinking i might finally make that pinch pot.  And i wanted to just think about all this and i did.  How we use the word Ecosystem.  How often that is a term for our surrounds,  but really,  i am no different in this ecosystem than the harvester ants,  the mockingbird,  house finch,  wasp,  butterfly.  How i do what i do but no different than how they do what they do.  I am OF it.   One of many here.  ONLY One of many here.  And i will end the day by sitting with the Goats.  Will sing.  Just like the Mocking bird,  the dove.  I'll just make my sound.

 

 

Earth Day eve

and every day is Earth Day,  but still...on my calender,  just like Christmas and Easter and Passover,  it says Earth Day.  Tomorrow i will do Tonglen.

and a little while ago,  Mo reminded me of the Living Shrines of Uyghur China....as a way to keep Tay out of planted areas...

the little fencing.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

i won't do the small fences.  But looking,  i thought about how she completely does not "see" the Raft,  all the things on it...as something for her too.  She goes all around it.  dragging sticks,  her antlers all around but not there.  Ever.

so i threw a lot of these sticks over the fence from the Way Back.  There's a big pile of them...coyote sticks for fence making,  but maybe i'll see if they will indicate some kind of boundry for her.  spread them farther apart than this and plant at the base of the sticks and maybe inside their circle?  

and some to shore up this trellis that fell apart this winter.  The cucumbers will need to go here this year.   They had always been where the Migratory Corridor is now.  

was gone a lot of the day to Old Cowboy's so not much left by the time i got back.  Printed this and drew a line with pencil to get a feeling of it

and i began.  a very thin, single strand of the variegated  blue and ivory...pale....barely there.  Don't know if it will show up here, even with double click.  Think i like it. 

Just to see how it might go.  Have 10 days Max to be ready.