windthread

closer.

woke this morning...deep sleep,  usual vivid dreams.  Put kettle on,  come here and nothing.

  well,  no Internet.  Looked at the "tower"...no internet light.  Picked up phone,  no dial tone.  Looked out the window.  No world.  No world beyond the immediate space of the yards.  Beyond,  the horse pasture next door,  the alfalfa fields,  the road beyond,  the over the freeway foothills,  on to the RIM.  Gone.   A dense grey FOG.  No shapes.  Nothing.  I thought....wouldn't you know it.

Drank my tea quietly,  thinking.  This is how it could have been.  Presuming this to be temporary,  this morning,      but,  letting myself realize that this is how it could have been.  Actually, still   could BE.  

Many people around here live without Internet.  Many in the World live without Internet.  Up on the Navajo Nation Alamo Rez there is no Internet.   It's something to take in.  How little you would know and be affected by the rest of the world.  Your world would be your yard.

So that,  but also it stood in contrast to what's happening now.  The singularity of it,  the isolation,  compared to what we in these last months have conjured.  The contrast...bas~relief....  Here with Tay and Tazmeena.  No larger world.   There,  that Hill,  all we imagine.

But it was Sydney's birthday and she'd called the other day for me to come for breakfast.  So i just went and we had spinach/kale/cheese balls,  sauteed zuchinni ,  and when Jamie came,  Talulah's other mother,  she made quinoi waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.  Sheila,  Sydney's marriage  partner made a secret coffee.  Then Pat came.  I really had never met Pat but have heard her name over and over from them,  Pat has been a long time friend and i immediately liked Pat because she was my age and even more,  My SIZE.   So we sat at the really small kitchen table and on the steps down into the kitchen and ate with our fingers and  then i went out back with Talulah and the dogs and watched her,  who is almost now 13 years old do cartwheels and headstands.  I found that so totally satisfying.  We didn't talk much.  But it was so totally satisfying.  I told her about Emrie.  And how watching her,  i thought about how Emrie one day will be almost 13.  

When i got home the Internet was back with it's green steady eye.  The phone.  Almost as if it hadn't happened.

Travis and Everett came and finished off the electric on the Horse Trailer.  Put the new tires on,  minus one lug nut that was back at Travis' home in a pocket somewhere.  But close and we went to Bills and hooked up and brought back the Homemade Trailer of such Effort.  Brought the old cowboy's truck to pull it but it's now staying here....his truck.  It will pull the Horse Trailer like it did when Jenny and i brought the Goats back here from California 5 years ago.  Circle....circle is circling.

 

 

License Plate.  Legal.  SO hard won.

 

Old Cowboy's truck.   He's bought it when he sold his parent's ranch in Colorado.  When his mother died.  It was the first truck he'd ever bought.  Cash.  He first tried Prescott Arizona but no and ended up in Socorro.  I began working for him the first summer he arrived here.   Some years before he died he quit driving.  Had backed  up into a car in the lumberyard parking lot.  Said they had parked wrong,  but he quit driving.  After that,  i would drive it to my job in San Antonio once a month,  to "give her a good run".  Couple of years before he died he signed it over to me but kept it in his driveway in Socorro.  Which was fine with me...i don't consider vehicles to be landscape items.  It's a big truck.  Wouldn't have wanted to park it outside the fence like i do the Toyota and the Honda.  It's a 1994 Chevy Silverado,  4 wheel drive.  Has 38,ooo miles on it which includes the trip Jenny and i made to California and back 5 years ago with the Goats.  I just told him i needed it for the weekend.  Didn't tell him the truth till we'd made it back.  

 

 

a high of 48 degrees

so...two days.  overcast or actually raining.  Cold.  Which allowed even more space from the intensity of the last few weeks.  Space.  silence,  inside and out.  Tomorrow back up in the 70's again and we will begin again.  But the quiet,  inner and outer,  is in beautyFull contrast to what it had gotten to.  

Two things to note.

on the 24th i received the box from Taking Root.  Things Cynthia had intuited to send.  One of which was Tension Release.  a tincture.  "to support the relaxation of mind and body".  Organic alcohol, glycerin, Skullcap,  Passionflower,  Motherwort,  Blue Vervain and Rose Petals.    How to use:  2 - 5 droppers full.  Straight or to a small glass of water.  Repeat every 30 minutes or as needed.  Up to 25 droppers per day.  That first day i put 2 droppers full in maybe 2 Tbs of water.....went about the evening feeding.  Somewhere along the line in that i realized that i wasn't BUZZING...wasn't uh,  "wired" but more my regular self.  ok.   Woke next morning and again,  the rush of adrenalin...this was during the time that the use of the Goat trailer could be denied.   2 droppers full.  same response.  And then, once more,  the next morning...the morning of taking all the PROOF  to MVD.    So i can say this.  Once again,  Lani of Taking Root is Herbalista Supreme.  Because of my sensibilities,  any allopathic "medicine" is not an option.  Because of my own physical make up,  i need,  need to rely on my own Self to find my way.  Just how it is.  Always HAS been.  no need to try to make anything OF that,  it just is.  For me.  Everyone needs to find their way for themSelves and it differs.  Heart to heart Body to body.  I have no blanket judgement.  We all know ourSelves best.  But to say that this tincture WORKS.  it WORKS.  for me,  in an unprecedented  time,  so much riding on my Going...so many lives....the overwhelm of that Need.  and i was flailing.  The Tension Release allowed me to gain some equilibrium from the overwhelm of the physical body.  I wish it were not so.  I wish i could have accomplished it with just Sitting,  Breathing,  Being.  But i couldn't.  maybe if there is a next time,  maybe i might be able to,  but this time,  i am grateful for that release.  Like a spell was broken.

Then the second thing was yesterday.  Sometimes SoundsTrue comes into the email in box.  There was a mail about Eckhart Tolle's  seminar in Australia.  I have loved him since a long time, but do not follow his work.  It is so similar to Buddhism.  But i kept passing by that Email until i thought there was a reason.  Clicked it and there was an online synopsis of this current teaching.  Listened to some and to the "webinar" at the end...webinar,  a word that makes me cringe.... but 

he talked about the incessant voice of the mind and talked about a tool....   To take one's attention INTO the hands...our physical hands...take the attention There...   FEEL the hands...hands the physical beauty of the hands...Feel them.   Feel the feet,  the beingness of the feet...FEEL the feet,  he said that if we are intensely focused on feeling what our hands/feet FEEL like,  then in those moments,  we are UnAble to have other thoughts.  I 've tried this a few times and it's True.  Will work with this.  

Just now it began raining Again.  eeeee.  a cloud burst.    But there's tomorrow.

 

this is in the lower,  lowest,  left of the Diaries Cloth Other Side.  Where we are now.  For the Going.

the point of Beginning.

Just hung up from Alyssia's progress report.  They worked all day.  Set those gate posts for the Buck half of the Goat Forest.  Hauled river rock for the French Drains.  Pounded t posts.  stretched fencing.

i wonder what Emrie imagines as she floats in her water world.  Listening.  Feeling.  with her growing brain,  listening  Soul.   We will have so many stories to tell her of this time when she is Here and Not Yet.  

 

 

 

 

 

Cold, Windy, Rain off and on, but still.....

but still....so much to understand,  to well...just see.

 

in the morning.  For the first time i know of,  Oona is ON the right side branch of the fallen Tree.  It's UP...about 3 ft above the earth...she must have jumped up on the base and walked out there.  Everyone appears to be taking no notice,  but that's just deceptive.  They knew.

 

 

late morning,  it was Onday.  Onday and Arctica challenging.  All through the afternoon.  and

inspired by it all,  Just Going and Celia.  Look at her beauty Full form,  Just Going,  her head butting form.  Just Going who has been experiencing some kind of very quiet challenge over the last few weeks...waiting always to be the last to come through the cooridor,  being chased away from feed bowls,  being the last in the order of things.   Usually there is just upper and lower.  groups.  but it's been Just Going...in some separate category and one that she was buying into for whatever reason.

Look at her beautyFULL   FORM,  focused,  heading in for the hit.  

All this.  so deliberate but so just like talking.  Communication.  The contacts were sure,  but soft.  Easy.

 

Took the Magic Diaries down and began cutting off all the stray threads to make space for what is NOW.

 

it looks like acres...miles....such an Expanse of just going

 

i took this pic for Alyssia,  actually.  To show her my effort of practice packing.  But then thought....

 

looked at it and wondered...What would CHANGE

if i was smiling?  Double Click

 

they met today with a local Solar Company...local being really local,  Oroville.  He loved the Hill and saw only potential.  The Electric company charges $1,200 to even come to give an estimate for running electric power.  What it costs is a mystery until you pay that amount.  Non refundable if you decide you don't have enough money.   This local Solar guy will submit an estimate to them on Monday.  Being local and being  "small" it's all up front.  Other larger Solar companies have payment plans.   It's my HOPE that the amount given on Monday can happen.  I'm not so much at all about payments.  They are a drag on energy.  So if anyone who has any surplus energy can,  please cross your fingers for an estimate on Monday that can be met.  Even if it's a little scarey.

Alyssia's house will be the main bub of electricity.  It's where the washer and dryer are...remember there will be a newborn...lots of washing.  It's where the freezer will be that all of us will use.  Otherwise,  i don't use any significant amount of electricity.  Daughter Jenny, her man,  minimal.  So

crossed fingers, Please?

 

sitting with Wind Man

this morning...so BeautyFull,  so bright, so warm  and as it goes sometimes....i went to the window,  as if being called,  and looked at the line of scraps and there, on the line among them,  a bird.  I first thought it was the tanager back,  but it was so brilliantly colored...i think an oriole?  ....flaming orange red....as i grabbed the camera and carefully opened the door...it flashed up.  The branch,  at 11 oclock?

incredible among the  cloth scraps.

Off to get the spare tire for the horsetrailer put on the rim Travis found.  Then a whole new mechanism for the toilet flushing thing...was hissing,  seeping water.  Home.  Thinking to just go with stuff that needs to be done,  but WIND had come from over the Rim and was GUSTING HARD,  that wall rattling Hard and so i just went Out.  Sat in a Janet Chair and closed my eyes.  Scanned all my

"systems"

how just so tired.  

Nap.  and thinking ....now.  now i'll get something done.  But ended up going back to the Janet Chair and back to sitting, eyes closed.   Tomorrow i'll begin again.  Today i rested.

 

 

Just Going through a World of Maybe(s) when you Know For Sure

but it's still,  still,  a World of Maybe.    Rinpoche of Jewel Heart Temple advised...Follow the Law of the Land.

 

Title and registration for both Horse Trailer and this new one that i am referring to in my mind as the Goat Boat.    The  herd's   Health Certificate from Vet.  The lack of  any one of these could have made the GOING

impossible.    We are down to the line.

But it got done.  Today.  Weeks of working toward this.  it's done.    

and put off,   until there was no more time to put it off,  

 

Beauty FULL Nogal's strong and fierce scur horns.  Only one was curved and causing a callouse on his back but Vet sawed both,  with the bone saw,  "to make them even".  Nogal stayed in the hut the rest of the day.  He can't see himself...what does he FEEL?  Something.....something  but he ate in shell peanuts mid afternoon.  He's getting over it.  

 

We're burning Karma.  and it smells like incense.

Chogyam Trungpa said:  "practice like your hair's on fire".  ok.  ok and ok.

 

 

inundated with doings

today was the 3rd trip to the MVD  motor vehicle division,  3rd for me,  and i think 5th for Travis?

all to get a license plate on a small ordinary utility trailer.

They never tell you the "whole story" at one time.  Just some.  Tell you what is missing.  Then you go back with that missing thing and there is yet one more thing.  Then another.  Today we thought we had it knocked.  They gave us a vehicle identification number to tatoo onto the trailer frame.  Travis brought his tools to do that,  i think a 10 digit number.  Tapped away in the parking lot.  DONE!  and YAY!!!  We wait more time till it's our turn again and she blithely states that it is raining and they cannot come outside and look at it to verify it in the rain.  There was a single cloud above that would drop maybe 12 raindrops at a time???????????  HUH??????  She said no.  She didn't explain until i just stood there staring at her in disbelief....she finally explained that if there was so much as a single water mark on the paperwork,  the State would reject it.    o.   ok.  so we go back tomorrow.  Each time you go,  you take a number and wait your turn.  Almost always it's a couple hours.

so that was today.  Work away in the morning hours,  this immediately after.

I think,  When i Get There,  i will do nothing that involves paperwork for as long as humanly possible.

 

looking for the Diaries Cloth i also found this.  Walnut dyed Silk Noil  from during Jude's 20th Century Rags workshop.  Handsewn.  a Morning Dress,  a 

housedress.

i will put on this housedress and do NO paperwork.  I will wander with Goats and look at plant people.  Will find out where the wild turkeys live.  Will take Emrie down to the canal and watch the water.

 

 

 

 

 

today

This morning,  before  Work  Away.  Emrie's Cloth about Magic.

following the pulse, the Red Thread

woke to BrainPickings,  Maria Popova.  There,   All These Wonders....the Moth.  Read.  feeling the pulse backward to where someone just had posted the cover of this book,  stories,  and how our lives are stories.   and was sure it must have been Deb G so left her a question on her blog and then thought, no, maybe it was Dee and went to look there but couldn't find it and by then,  Deb G  had  replied that it was Hazel....beep beep beep beep, the heartbeat ticked along the Red Thread  and i googled the Moth...HOW DID I NOT KNOW OF THIS??????????   and saw that these are on Utube and watched a few,  and read i guess on the Moth page how these stories are about Risk and Courage and the Unknown and i was so Clear that this is why i work so much now with Fear....and how it's not some kind of Weakness that i need to OVERCOME,  but a Real thing that is fair enough in the circumstances of Risk and Courage and the Unknown and i said Aloud,  I AM AFRAID.  and suddenly i needed to find the Magic Diaries Cloth...which toy box was it in?  and i found it 

 

 

hung it.

Stared.

when did i add this?....the place of Entry?....not that long ago...maybe a couple months?  give or take?

 

at that same time,   i gave her arms.  Just with pencil,  but arms nonetheless.  Stuff to DO.  Need arms.

staring....that thing of Unknown was present.   This side i Know.  I wondered if i might just add to it over on the Right Side??????  But,  what about the Other Side?

 

 

this is it.  Ok.  the Other Side.

 

and i thought about how when i was searching for the Moth,  i went to Deb G.   How she has this thing for FieldNotes that has always held me even before knowing her,  but so strong from knowing her

Field Notes

wikipedia

"qualitative notes recorded by scientists or researchers in the course of field research,  during or after their observation of a specific phenomenon they are studying.  The notes are intended to be read as evidence that gives meaning and aids in the understanding of the phenomena."

and i got out that drawing book that i'd started when everyone,  almost everyone, was here last year and that i'd thought  about doing something with, but didn't  and i got my Elmers glue and pasted stuff in and wrote some things

what's the difference between journaling and Field Notes?  

Field Notes are OBJECTIVE  descriptions of what one sees.   Here,  field notes would,  in this moment be about FEAR   in a 71 year old woman,  sending off a herd of Goats whom she has become Part Of.  Who have come to see her also as part of Them.  Ethnology.

ON THE HILL.

they have accomplished almost all the Goat World.  There are 4ft actual and real metal gates between 4x4 cemented in wooden  posts.  They made a corridor along side the outer fencing that can accomplish something similar to what i learned from the Vet here last week.   They have,  in place, what will be needed as a overhead shelter for the feeding.  for the storage of feed.  Alyssia took her dog Zoey who took risk and found courage and ran the perimeter into her unknown.    They talked to the adjacent neighbor whose dogs had ravaged the kids easter baskets and eaten chocolate bunnies and earphones both....he had heard them yelling at his dogs to GO AWAY,   and he agreed for them to use his present Tposts for new fencing which will limit his dogs,  a necessity in our thinking for the Goats and future chickens that the kids want.  Maybe not...dogs run loose there????  Learning.  What else?  other than it all goes so slow????  But there is phone reception always now and so most likely, Internet....so i can keep TELLING you once i get there.....

 

 

 

 

Earth Day 2017 a gentle disarray

mostly,  i pulled Kochia.  would wander away,  thinking to think or do something specific but then it never would happen.  Thoughts would begin but dissolve.  Doings would be approached but dissolve before i got there.

I watched some on this screen off and on and thought about how what we do now,  when we are afraid or when something is deep in our heart,  we March.  We gather and March.  How strange, really.

 

the Giant Sage,  out in the Front Oasis i saw,  has grown such thick arms up from this Earth here.  It will be there forever now.  It's next to the Mirror Chair.   I thought to cut some pieces and make a smudge stick but then just took this one sprig.  The fragrance is intense.  I played it a small song and will leave it here to dry until some moment i want to burn it.

 

the Mirror

 

back and forth to the Raft.  Will take the diamond stick.

daughter Jenny called this morning early before setting out.  She talked again about how the Hill seeps.   Sweats.  scratch the earth in some places an inch and it will seep.    I think how before Us,  nothing was "built" there.  There is the original road,  a path really,  that they follow to someone's originally  imagined homesite at the top where her home will be.  No one seems to know that history.  Before that,  maybe only the Yahi people.  Who didn't "build"....just lived.  Do you remember the story of Ishi,  Last of His Tribe?  Oroville is where he appeared from out of the wilderness.  Maybe he walked that Hill.  Slept there.  Knew it.    Not all of it seeps.  really,  not much.  but there are two places.  One is on the road/driveway that needs to be strong.  The second is closer to Alyssia's site for her home.

So today was French Drain day.   They have been watching the water,  it's movement,  it's need.  How to learn the way of that water,  give it something it likes,  see if it likes it.

 

 

Looking, taking note, slowing down

roots and some small marks with the Inktense pencils.  I used deep purple, baked earth and saddle brown....slowly.  care full y.  I fooled with the eye.  You can see that i tried it as a Goat's eye,  but then took that away...almost.  

 

these second year Holly Hocks....grand grand grand and on grand daughters of Georgia O'Keefe's at Ghost Ranch....they,  so Strong,  will bloom early this year. 

Why did the coyote sticks photograph so    BLUE   ?   Maybe because i think on and off about taking them with me.  These are the sticks i salvaged from our local dump years ago.  Never made a fence with them,  but they have had many uses.  They are salt cedar.  Tough.  Indestructible.  

and to Offer this.

have had something going on in my left knee.  I can't think of what i might have done to cause it?  But an ache.  And then yesterday,  an accompanying twinge in the left butt....which alerted to that time some 12 years ago that i had such a thing with the Sciatic Nerve....that,  as i tend to do,  i just tried to ignore and assume time would heal it,  but i ended up spending a lot of time with exercising...movement...that worked....it's been 12 years....so it worked...but now,  needing to do so much and now,  having learned from Life,  i feel like it's ok to uhhhh,  help things along?

So the Structural Support Tea from Taking Root,  the so gifted herb woman in Vermont,  near Cynthia.  I have a half of a large bag left....CYNTHIA...take note!!!!  I have a LOT left!....Do not Send!!!

and two days,  a quart a day and today i barely notice the knee.

Structural Support:   Modulate inflammation, increase circulation,  nourish connective tissues and support the body to heal skeletal ailments,  old and new.

Gotu Kola, Solomon Seal, Tulsi, Peppermint, Ginger, Horsetail and Nettle Leaf  organically grown or ethically wild harvested.

TakingRootVt.com

this tea is what healed my shoulder after the Fence Crash.  and other than food,  the only thing beside an asprin maybe twice a year that i believe in.  and topical arnica.

off to sit on the porch and watch Sun settle on the Rim

 

 

What i saw.  What i watched.  Wind.  There is not so much Wind at the Hill.  Will miss,   Will miss this kind of Wind...this late day, dusk, kind of Wind.