windthread

everything, yes.

 

 

 

from day break    

i think this is my most loved  Cloth in certain ways.  I want to go to where this Cloth was From and sit there awhile

 

How many Crows?   Are they just coming from the Crack in the Sky?  or are there Many?

 

today there is a shadow of a Crow on her face.  I didn't do that.

 

then,  the Lizards.  I don't know if i can make them this small with thread,  even a single strand of 6 strand floss....small.  they are small.  these are with pencil.  Can i do it?

 

Toad egg cloth strung around the structure for the green beans as trellis

 

seeds planted at the foot of each stick

"Thirty years ago,  Edward Abbey wrote a novel,  The Monkey Wrench Gang,  in which his hero blows up Glen Canyon Dam,  the huge desert dam strangling the Colorado River upstream from the Grand Canyon.  Getting rid of the dam was an outrageous idea then,  though the novel helped spark the birth of the radical environnmental organization Earth First.  In 1981,  the group announced its existence by running a three hundred foot sheet of plastic,  bearing the image of a mighty crack,  down the dam,  which never seemed quite as eternal and immutable again.  "

Rebecca Solnit

 

somewhere here on this blog maybe in 2014,  i wrote about the implosion of the Elwha Dam.

you can go look on Utube about that.

the Condit Dam in 2011,  the Elwha Dam in 2012,  the Glines Canyon Dam in 2014.  FREE.  FREE flowing rivers.

the lower Elwha Klallam people began when the dams were built.  They never gave up.  They never quit.  The dams are GONE.

 it's Dusk.  this day is ending and i am feeling so small.  just so small.  But i am here.  Caring.  i am here caring and so small.  but i am here,  caring tho so small

 

 

 

 

watching the Moon

in a blue sky,  this moment,  pale,  translucent white in a blue blue sky blue sky,  still over in the East,  across the ditch

followed Sydney and Talulah over to Rudy's the mechanic's place in case Sydney's truck quit and also to bring them back to their house.  Shared some concerns with them and felt good that Talulah who is only 12 didn't hesitate to offer her thoughts  and was very sure of herSelf.   I told her that.  Stay sure to listen to instinct.

Cleaned for Allan and brought home a ton of food from his Bernie potluck,  the curried pasta especially.  He will try to get the recipe for me.

Watered the Pea plantings.  If they took,  any day now they will RISE

 

the Face and then just some single strands of thread to be able to envision what her Hair might be like

"What lies ahead seems unlikely,  when it becomes the past,  it seems inevitable.  In 1900, the idea that women should have the vote was revolutionary;  now,  the idea that we should not have it would seem cracked.  But no one went back to apologize to the suffragists who chained themselves  to the gates of power,  smashed all the windows on Bond Street, spent long months in jail,  suffered forced feedings and demonization in the press."

Rebecca Solnit

 

 

Awkward

 

Awkward.  Awkward moments when it seems things just will be at a standstill.  There is no next to be had.  Often when beginning on work away days.   Which today was.  Often there's nothing to do but wait until a day can unfold from dark morning and release whatever it is that can happen.  In this moment i am thinking that i will need to draw the face before i can know how to go forward from there.  Draw the face.  See her hair flying in Wind.

this afternoon i kept wanting to ADD MORE Earth,  but for its own reasons,  just this much is what it is.  And i think about how when i travel and watch the land here splay out around me,  this is often how it appears....simple.  Not much.   

So...i'll wait.

 

There is "company" in the Way Back.  A roadrunner.  A roadrunner that is completely comfortable mingling with the doe Goats...moving between then,  almost touching their feet, in out and around.   When i go Out,  i yell at it to go away and it moves off some but does not go away.  They are very strange "birds",  really,  feeling more reptilian than bird,  though they have feathers.   They are omnivores.   I don't know what attracts it to the Goats and the Way Back.  They hunt baby rabbits,  baby quail.  They hunt Lizards.   I keep trying to get a pic but the above is how it always comes out.   

 

LATER

"Schell describes how the United States lost  the war in Vietnam, because,  despite extraordinary military superiority,  it could not win over the people of that country and finally lost the confidence and support of its own citizens.    "In the new world of politically committed and active people, it was not force  per se   but the collective wills of those peoples that were decisive."  In other words,  belief can be more effective than violence.  Violence is the power of the state;  imagination and nonviolence the power of civil society."
Rebecca Solnit

 

 

how people say No to things when Yes can have so much meaning beyond what we might imagine

 

these are at Bear Mountain.  When i was there a couple weeks ago i got some.  They are $2 .  I can't capture the oh so vague hue of the photograph of some...such an almost invisible color,  one a bluish,  one a greenish but just so so so vague you are not sure you are really seeing it.  Then 2 are just a very soft grey, black/white/Grey.  Some are blank inside.  Some have verse.

 

the print is tiny.  I use the magnifying glass to read it.  Double Click here.  It is a part of what they are that the print is so small.  The whole feeling of them,  the image,  the print,  the words have a dreamlike quality.  They are all photographs of such familiar scenes that i have seen in New Mex over and over.

the photographer is Margaret Menache    the word crafter is  Chandra L.K. Bales

Yesterday i bought all the rest in the card rack.   Danielle,  as she wrote up the sales slip commented that she will see that i meet Margaret.  That because i am so taken by her work,  she knows we will like each other.    Another reason to appreciate Danielle.  She has interesting sensibilities,  interesting responses.  Margaret is in Albuquerque.

i had sent the first batch every few days to a friend who i used to clean for,  the one who gave me the truck, Sonny,  when  They moved to Salida, Colorado some years ago.  He has been having Stage 4 Melanoma and with treatment was declared in total remission 2 days ago.

Creating these message carriers,  the image and the words,  they could not have imagined that this would be their Work.   At some point,  Margaret the photographer either got the idea herself or as suggested by others,  to create cards of her images.  Maybe she sells prints of the photographs too?  I will come to find out.  But anyway,  either her own mind said Do It or she followed suggestion of others and i am sitting with them today,  being soothed,  softened,  lulled by them.   She could have said

No.

She didn't.  And i am grateful.  

So much talk about "selling" off and on.  To me,  other than the most basic of food,  someone's creative Beauty is so much like food for my Heart.   And i give that energy substance called money and in turn, they buy food.  It's Grand and oh so Beauty FULL.

So,  i don't understand the No.  

Why not?

 

i cleaned house and lit Nag Champa.

8:25 pm.  lit more.  Ok.  

 

the smoke from the incense curls.  The dog sleeps.  

it's 9:07pm.   I will go lie down in my bed.  Outside my window,  there is no war.  there is no earthquake.  No one is shooting  guns.  The smoke curls.  The dog sleeps.

 

the Day gave its Self, the best it could

it began with Oddness that i would never have imagined and well,  not from the DAY,  which only seems to Carry things....and i worked to let that Oddness go,  to not let it be toxic

There was the book signing at the Library in my town of Socorro

 

this began in the Women's Writing Group that i started at the public library when i was still involved with Story Circle Network.   After a couple years,  i stopped participating.  The Group continued.  Karla continued.  She continued with her single Passion of the Titanic.  Today there was a Reading and a book signing...her self published book.  I do not at all love the mystery of the Titanic but i do love the mystery of Karla's love for it all.  She wore a Titanic T Shirt and Titanic socks.  She has Titanic key chains and there were Titanic ice cubes in the shape of the ship in the punch bowl.  Love is what it is,  myriad and Karla loves the story of the Titanic.

I had arranged to meet with Danielle at the Bear Mountain Gallery in Magdalena this afternoon,  after the Book Signing.  "Weather" turned ify and could even have meant snow at that elevation.  So i sat outside the Library in town and wondered what i was doing.  Why.  There was a huge urge to just go back home.  Instead,  i turned the key in the ignition and headed to Magdalena.

 

so here we go.

I like her very much, Danielle.  She's blunt.  She's had that Gallery a long time.  She's lived in and loved/not loved Magdalena for a long time.  

I took five cloths.  not all finished yet.  we laid  them out on the jewelry cases and looked.  I walked around and looked at the wall space,  at what is there from day to day.  One whole wall "belongs" to the weavings of Dan Klinglesmith...of the publicity  blurb above.  His weavings are FINE.   There are paintings.   I'll take some pics when i take these lightweight Cloths to hang.  But  things there have WEIGHT.  The Cloths are incongruent.  In the center of the Gallery room are nicely hung quilts and rag rugs.  They have Weight.  The Cloths are so 

light

so light,  so light

We talked.  I said i wanted her to see them in this Space so she could know what they Are and Are not.  She asked what i  imagined i wanted from the hanging for the gallery and studio tour...did i want to sell them all?  Did i want them to simply BE there?  What was my intention.  Again,  i really like her.  She doesn't mince words.    We took a long time.  We looked at all the wall space.   We thought.  

and i came home with a formal inventory print out to fill out and send by mail on Monday.

and ok.  it's good that i went.  It's good that the Cloths will be there and it's good that i Stood and Faced what i know.

 

 

a tender day

On Being    Krista Tippett interviews Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult.   Please go listen.

 

the Other Sides of things

 

 

this is First Iris     a Cloth that Patricia Spangler made that i bought from her.  It's ordinarily on the wall,  just to my right as i sit at this screen.  I look at it every day.  It is maybe the most extraordinary cloth i know.

 

i took it down today and ran my finger over it,  feeling how it knows Things.  How it knows what it is to Rise from a tuber that might sit dormant for so so so long.  So so so long and yet Rise.

"The great human rights activist and Irish  nationalist Roger Casement investigated horrific torture and genocide in South Africa's Putamayo rainforest  a century ago and campaigned to end it.  While on this somber task,  his journal reveals, he found time to admire handsome local men and to chase brilliantly colored local butterflies.  Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism.  And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful,  alienated,  and isolated,  joy is a fine initial act of insurrection."

Rebecca Solnit

.....~.....

drawn really fast on a print out,  just to see how it feels.  The crows don't really look like crows,  the lizards look more like elongated tadpoles,  but just to see

 

resillience

this is what's on the other side of the fence along the Buck Yards....that acre that a while back i talked about maybe buying if ever any money comes from the Old Cowboy.  Buy it only because Charlotte who owns it has begun thinking of selling it.  None of her kids wants it.  She moved to Magdalena to land of her parents acres some years ago and it was rented for a while by some good people and their children but that didn't work out and it's been empty for maybe what,  4 years?  Falling apart.  Like stuff does here unless little things are constantly done to undo what Wind does.   That dead tree was a flourishing cottonwood.  The renting family grey watered and it went to the tree and to a vegetable garden they had.  It's probably crazy to buy it.  She wants a lot.  But remember, i said i wanted it as a Buffer.   It would mean this whole end of the road would be me.  Hmmm.  I think about that.  But it would mean that people with loud music and party energy wouldn't be there.  It would mean that the Buck Goats would be able to live their stinky little lives without offending anyone and that causing trouble.  Trouble.  Don't need Trouble.   Anyway,  that trailer,  a big one,  is imploding.  Needs to be GONE.  But,  as i passed it today on the way to the post office is Saw THEM again...how amazing.....

 

 

Charlotte's grandma's Rosebush cutting,  now a bramble of BRANCHES,  thick,  mostly barren but there today,  still,  blooming.  Had it been pruned,  it might almost be a tree...

so i hold this in my heart tonight.

 

and that crack in the Sky....i saw today....what comes from it is

Crows

many many crows.

 

 

 

some things i know, some things i don't

i know rain on this New Mexico Olive in the morning as i brush against it taking feed to the far bowl in Nogal and TenZen's yard.  The raindrops this morning, double click,  were like jewels

 

i know Kochia,  the DOMINANT weed here,  always here,  always dominating and this year a Bumper Crop.  It has a high protein content...good for Goats and if i could let them Out,  they would make quick work of it ......BUT  ONLY after making quick work of the trees,  the bushes and so,  it's there for me to pull and hand feed as much as i can.  Weed Whack the rest.    Kochia = Work.

 

what happened here, i DON'T know.....   This week's pound cake.  Same recipe but divided in half.  I am not good at math,  but i think i can divide by 2 but maybe not.  At first when i looked,  it was rising up all over the outside rim of the bread pan,  like Really, rising up all over it so i took it out and cut off the rim stuff and put it back in for some more minutes.  What did i DO????????  Obviously, something,  but i really have no idea...................

 

and then here.   NO IDEA.  But the Cloth is strong.  OK.  Strong even that  separated curve of SKY...why?  how to deal with it in stitch?  What is it DOING?  WHY?  But as i try to change it,  it won't happen,  so,  i look.  Waiting.  Looking.   Many  "possibilities" came and went throughout the rainy day but at the end,  it's just this much.   OK.  Tomorrow then.

"Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us,  it's more predictable, and in a sad way, safer.  Authentic hope requires clarity....seeing the troubles in this world...and imagination,  seeing what might  lie beyond those situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable."    

                                       Rebecca Solnit     Hope in the Dark

 

 

 

 

 

Timing

they had arrived together,  Sixteen Writers On The Decision NOT To Have Kids and

 

it's just WONDER...FULL that i read 16 Writers first.  It was easy and fast and so much energizing,  reading what women in their earlier years in this life say,  reading the arrangement of the essays that Meghan Daum deftly put together.  Looking on UTube for her and finding her and finding her with Cheryl Strayed and it so meshed with past conversations with Granddaughter about her college classes in the humanities,  human services,  how she told me that there is a great deal of activism ....she is older than most of her fellow students at the age of 27,  that the young ones are very energized and how i was surprised to hear that,  asking if they were in denial and she said no.  No denial.  but they just are GOING.  They are GOING with what they are committed to.  Just Going.   But in keeping with the first book,  many of them,  at least at this young point of their lives,  are not at all interested in having children.  There is a WHOLE HUGE thing to talk through here and it will come,  but it hasn't yet.  So i wait.  Wait and begin this

 

"Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward,  but history is not an army.  It is a crab scuttling sideways,  a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking  centuries of tension.  Sometimes one person inspires a movement,  or her words do decades later;  sometimes a few passionate people change the world;  sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do;  sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal,  and change comes upon us like a change of weather.  All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.  To hope is to gamble.  It's to bet on the future,  on your desires,  on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety.  To hope is dangerous,  and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

I say all this because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch,   feeling lucky.  I say it because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency;  because hope should shove you out the door,  because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war,  from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal.  Hope just means another world might be possible,  not promised, not guaranteed.  Hope calls for action;   action is impossible without hope.  At the beginning of his massive 1930's treatise on hope,  the German philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote,  "The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming,  to which they themselves belong."   To hope is to give yourself to the future,  and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.

Anything could happen,  and whether we act or not has everything to do with it.  Though there is no lottery ticket for the lazy and the detached,  for the engaged there is a tremendous gamble for the highest stakes right now.  I say this to you not because i haven't noticed that the United States has strayed close to destroying itself and its purported values in pursuit of empire in the world and the eradication of democracy at home,  that our civilization is close to destroying the very nature on which we depend...the oceans,  the atmosphere,  the uncounted species of plant and insect and bird.  I say it because i have noticed:  wars will break out,  the planet will heat up,  species will die out,  but how many,  how hot,  and what survives depends on whether we act.  The future is dark,  with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.

Here, in this book,  I want to propose a new vision of how change happens,  I want to count a few of the victories that get overlooked,  I want to assess the wildly changed world we inhabit;  I want to throw out the crippling assumptions that keep many from being a voice in the world.  I want to start over, with an imagination adequate to the possibilities and the strangeness and the dangers on this earth in this moment."

Rebecca Solnit

 

a Second Iris

 

Mexican Elderberry,  stricken down a few years ago by unheard of temperature of 17 degrees below zero,  but somehow Just Going,  today,  forming blooms

 

the much maligned Salt Cedar  which will grow anywhere,  not matter what.  Salt Cedar.  Salt Cedar that bees love.

 

Salt Cedar, copper and rust

 

dog