windthread

a woman

it's 8:30 am.   Tay and Tazmeena have eaten.  I fed them.  How they like to be fed.   I cooked myself fried potatoes with red chili and ketchup,  a hamburger patty and a pile of fried onions.  Mustard on that.  After this i'll go feed Goats,  check their water.  Wash my hair.  Dress.  And on my way to the new Tuesday work away,  i will stop at Midway Elementary School and vote.  You never know,  but usually there will be only a few other people there voting.  Never a line.  

 

saved the onion skins

 

sat down in the Morning Chair and thought how i'd just read how She had placed her ballot and coming out said how Happy,  just so Happy she was to be voting for herself as President of the United States.  I let that sink in.  

in all the contention,  the bitterness,  the fear,  the ugliness of these last months,  there has been really no time to think of this but sitting in the Morning Chair i realized that the sense of it has been there as an undercurrent....and ignored, really.  But this morning for just these few minutes before getting on with the day,  i think about it.  Tell Tay that a woman might be president.  Tay thinks too.  We think.  And i let myself think about her maybe late last night,  lying down in her bed...does she wear a nighty?  Did she lie down next to her husband?  Or maybe in a separate room,  next to his?  How she has been married to him for a long time.   Then,  a woman slept.  To rise this morning and put on her brassiere and Set Out into this day.   She's tough.  She's what she is.  And she is also a woman.  She has breasts, like mine.   She has a womb that carried a child.  Like i do.  She is not young at all.  Like me.

it's been said for a long time in various places that what can change things is if Women take their rightful places.   That women will make THE difference.  Vandana Shiva says that.  Has said it for many years.  just one example.  

she put on her little pointed pumps.   her lipstick.  and walked out her door.  

 

 

holding

time

so is it  5:35 or 6:35?  Sky says  6:35,  dusk.  Computer says 5:35.   an hour away.  Feeding Goats,  the hour matters.  

 

 

Cleaned the chimney pipe to wood stove,  taking off the screened cap that prevents birds from making careless decisions.  Sucking out the soot with a shop vac borrowed.  Ready.  Ready to burn.

Doe Goats are hot.  Nigerian goats come into heat monthly and so can be bred around the year.  But for whatever reason,  November is a particular kind of month.  Actually,  November is the month that i too would choose to breed.  5 month gestation,  bringing them to kid in  late March or April...when it begins to be warm for the little ones.

The bucks out there blather and blubber,  all steamy to do the work at hand.  The does,  almost all of them today are in the middle pen,  their tails Flagging,  calling out.  In its way,  a horrible day of Goat noise.  But it's how it is for them.  To Just GO.  to breed and bring forth new of themselves.    I try not to listen.

 

Soon.  A woman who is driven.  a woman, driven.  will be seated There.  We aren't used to that.  a woman driven....we know men,  driven....nothing new.  But a woman driven.  What

might we expect from

HER?

What can we DEMAND from HER?

reprieve

...................................................................!~SUN~!...........................................................................

Out in the pasture

 

their Voice...an oh so singular Trilling

 

double click to see their Beauty

 

my belov~ed Mercy,  standing on a small rock can keep your feet dry.

This camera...whaa....her legs are like a normal goat,  not these short ones the camera shows us here.

 

and a beak.  one might think a beak would be easy to draw,  but not so much.  To make it  a Crow beak...such subtlety.  I think of Mo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

day of Thunder

had begun during the night and then into morning and just going.  Thunder that stays,  rolls and rolls and rolls around into itself and back to begin again.   I have never known thunder like this before.

 

 

from early this morning.  Now,  more.  More Sky Water than from the whole of the monsoon season during the summer...in 2 days,  maybe even just in this one day.

 

Tay loves the muck boots

 

 

Today,  November 4,  2016  the Paris Climate agreement enters into Force.  

Today on Democracy Now there is an interview with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers,  Indigo Girls....there is the name of the man who is CEO and owner of the pipeline that pushes to enter Standing Rock land.  We have a name of a person.  A place to send a LETTER.  Kelcy Warren CEO and owner of Energy Transfer Partners.   Owner of Cherokee Creek Music Festival.  There is confusion in this man's heart and where there is confusion,  change can take hold.

 

Came out in 2004.   Probably the book most needed in this country of the US of A.  And i thought about the buddhist term...karma ripening...and thought about how maybe that's exactly what it is.  There are so many ways to talk about these days,  but maybe this is what makes most sense to me.  A collective karma here,  in this country?

So i went to UTube and watched and listened to all those things that i love and loved so much when i had to drive the long drive on Sundays years ago.  How on my way home i would listen to Native America Calling and turn up the volume loud and rip down that freeway watching the land to left and right,  rims,  and how the singing and drumming were such natural sounds to what i saw.  Black Lodge Singers...Crow Hop,  Northern Cree Smilin,  and even the most loved dorky NDN car,  Keith Secola.  It's all falling into place,  even the horrible confusion of the election...that kaleidascope  thing.  There will be so much WORK to do once the mess of the election is finally over.  WORK to do.  Nothing will be Over,  it will be just Beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

indian

i googled a question of how many reservations there are in New Mexico and there was no site that gave me that information.  I'll need to find my map of NM and count them myself.  

and i guess that when i said,  live like an Indian,  what i'd had in mind were reservation indians and those on their fringes.   There are of course,  persons of Native heritage that live all over the place and among all of the rest of us.   But i guess i am thinking about Rez indians.  The indians that went where white people told them to go and stayed there.  Reservations.  Spend a little time thinking about what that word means.  Reservation.  How those "in charge",  identified land as such and told people to go there and stay put.  Laws were enacted.  Treaties signed.  Treaty.  think about that word,  too.  And think about how these things aren't just "stories".  But the history upon which Today breathes.  Here,  where i live,  is Alamo,  Navajo Nation.  Just on past Magdalena.    These are people i shop for groceries with,  spend time at the laundromat with.  But that's pretty much the extent of it.

one of the first things about indians,  about, i think,  all indigenous peoples,  is the common understanding of taking only what you need.   Take only what you NEED.  Give Thanks.

 

 

what's it mean, live like an Indian?

i thought about that.  off and on during the night and then again all day as i worked to clear the space behind the horse trailer,  between the buck yards.  Cleared it for when Travis and Everett will come to dig a grave there for Gideon.  The 3 of us will do it.  He's a big Goat.  even now.  

 

the trailer that will haul some of the Goats to California.  2 horse.  Will need tires.

 

the scrap pile.  Indians have scrap piles.  You never know when you will need the exact something.  All around this,  all around the horse trailer were Kochia,  some taller than i am.  Gone.  They are dry now,  crunchy,  and Goats like them a lot.  So shared between the 2 buck yards.

 

here's where we'll dig.   It 's soft,  used to be a place where we dumped wood ash from the stove.  At the back fence.  directly between both yards.  A good place for an old Goat to rest.  We need to do it now.

 

in the last months,  he has grown old.  older.  He no longer has a mane.  and i realized the other day that he isn't growing his coat for the cold months. Sometimes now he sleeps by the feed bowl because it's easier for him.   Gideon.  Gideon the Magnificant.  Gideon the old man.  So we need to be ready.  When it happens it will be sudden and we need to be ready.  For him, for me and for Jack Flash,  his best bud.  Flash is willing to be touched now.  Another sign.

 

 

 

Nogal.  the pretty boy.  if for whatever reason,  Jenny doesn't come for them by spring,  i'll breed him.

 

and excellent, Wonder Full, Nerdy, homely TenZen who throws very excellent and Beauty Full kids.  Who daughter and i FLEW from  Boston, Mass to New Mexico.  TenZen.

 

 

sideways but o well...the mint.  New  new leaves.

 

 

Wind helps young Locust tree hold the Walnut Cloth

 

rips of Toad Egg cloth from spring.  They didn't make it this year.  Not enough.  Some will survive to try again.  

 

 

 

inside out

another work away and i wanted to make some kind of mark before i left.  This was it.  Threads to the past days were many.  It's November.  My birth month,  an uneasiness to this, always.  The drawing as they do, came fast with no forethought...draw 2 eyes and whatever comes next just does.  I was  surprised and pleased,  set those two scraps of cloth on it,  more pleased....Happy, even.  "The world in my head",  i think.

 

found this old drawing.  Closing my eyes, watching the thoughts.  Back to the creek of my childhood where i was sure my  "real people"  lived.  That whole world and life i created there where i was an indian,  or my horse,  or some times both in a single form.

All my life the connection with the First People,  sometimes actively, sometimes just an underlying thread.  All the drawings,  reading, and then in my late 20's, early 30's,  actual Study but within that New Age energy that never felt OK.  When the word

appropriation

rose up.  Backing away.   And that question,  the Basic Question....What =s a good life? and my leaving to find the answer.  Travel the continent.  Through reservations,  RoseBud,  where i first experienced how the directions of East and West,  Sun Rise and Sun Set are the same,  no separation.   And the guy at the gas station telling me it was the time of Looks Within.

Arriving in Hopi Land, direct to 3rd Mesa in search of Helen Sekaquaptewa who i'd seen in a PBS program just before leaving,  she sang a song in the background of the documentary,  it drifted through the whole of it.  I needed to know the meaning, i said to myself.

3rd Mesa, me and my dog Lucy in the dark before dawn,  walking through the dark houses until we were at the edge,  THE rim of the world,  watching Sun's first light creeping over that edge.  I prayed for knowledge.  Turning, walking back,  suddenly dogs rushed out snarling and growling, attacking Lucy who fought them back,  we hurried then and doors opened...women threw pots of boiling water at us.

Waiting at the trading post back on 2nd Mesa,  sitting on the curb.   When it opened asking how to find her.  "no one knew"  who i was talking about.  I knew they did.  She was the matriarch of an old and powerful family.  Nothing to do but wait.  Every couple hours going again to ask until finally,  a young woman gestured....over there....Where?....there,  that house.  Almost next door.

I stood at the gate and waited.  A youngish man came out.   Told him i was looking for Helen Sekaquaptewa that i had heard her sing a song on TV in Michigan and i needed to hear her sing it,  and most, tell me the words because i needed to know their meaning.  He went in for a long time,  came out, OK.  I followed and there at her kitchen table she was,  eating cherrios,  chasing them one at time around the bowl with her spoon.  Her son told her what i had said and then i asked too if i could make a little movie,  i had a camcorder.  He looked startled...they are NOT allowed,  NOT wanted and were a severe rudeness.   She spoke through him asking why i wanted the song and i said it was for me and my daughter,  her babies in Michigan,  that things were not easy with us and i needed a song.  She nodded and put down her spoon and sang.  just like in the documentary,  a thin soft winding circling song that repeated the refrain many times.  I cried and asked if she could tell me the meaning.  She said it was a lullaby about two black beetles walking down the road.  One always trying to ride the back of the other. The look on my face made her laugh,  a soft soft loving laugh and she gestured and said through her son....it's no more than that.  Nothing is more than that.  Take the song and sing it to them.   She was born in 1898 and died in 1990,  a year after this.

There are more stories  of me here in the SouthWest trying to find my way in Native Ways and places,  making mistakes and learning that if i wanted to learn what i wanted to learn,  i'd need to find a way to Live with them.  I'd need to EARN it.  But i was always on the edge of returning so i didn't and there was also that constant sense of Appropriation.

so i just took that part of me inside and remember thinking one day....i Can't become an indian,  so i'll just try to live like one.  And here we have this  "sovereign nation of one" in Polvadera.  i look at this drawing this morning and see it as being connected to native imagery.  Appropriation?  but then,  this my year of going into the decade of the 70's.  I'm old.  Maybe because of having waited and lived,  maybe i can put what is Inside,  outside.  What If?   How would it feel?  What would come of it?