windthread

a gift

it was 97 degrees today.  Full Sun.  Dry Heat.   I watched the Goats.  There are places of shade,  you can see over on the right along the fence,  the fence creates enough shade throughout the day to accommodate a Goat.  But they were Out and About.  In the far distance Cinderella was working on their Hole to China.  Sometimes they would be lying IN the feed bowls which are black rubber stuff or plastic.  Hot, i am sure.  But no concern.  I watch this,  thinking about how it seems we will be making the Cross Over to the Hill in the heat of the summer.    Something we'd hoped to avoid.  But watching them today,  i see that though they won't love it,  being on the road,  they will manage.  They did once before.  They will now.

and out of no where,  i was given a gift.

 

the base cloth which is Mexican Elderberry dye has been on the table for a long time.  A vague marking of the right eye.  Graphite.  just vague.    I've picked this cloth up now and then and looked.  Set it down.  Today,  didn't set it down.  the second eye and then,  just from the existing scraps in the flat basket right there on the table,  it Came.  Beginning with the deep Teal

No Thought.

just stitching down without any concern for how it might look,  just stitching,  including that small thread wad in the lower left, stitch it down,  ok.  Every time i was tempted to sit back and think,  i knew i shouldn't.  I should just go and wait till  "the end".  There was the sense of camouflage,  cover with organic form and substance and the word   Feral   came.  

 

Feral

Comes from some other place as a gift.  Is kin to Agency.

 

Brought out the HousePlant.  which began years ago as a stem.  Has never bloomed.  Was covered with  layers  of dust.   Each leaf,  dusted gently.  But maybe there was no need for gentle so much because it is such a fierce plant that i remember to water only once in a while but some how continues with a life of its own having little to do with me and my remembering.  Maybe will remain outside, hanging from the Old Apricot until and or through Solstice.  Maybe.

 

 

just going

began with good intentions

 

but the Cloth,  the Agency being,  insisted,  so ok.

 

 

one of the two Uniforms...front

 

back

 

what do you DO?  with things like this that you just love so much?  They are thread bare.  There is no hope in mending.  They would need to be totally reconstructed.  Which would make them NOT how they have become.  so What do you Do?    I thought about burying them here,  maybe near SnowBunny.  And this is a good thought,  but then i love them.  so much.  so...i'll take them and maybe use them to dry off newborn Goats.  Wash off the blood and the afterbirth until they totally dis~integrate.   So...they go.

 

this is a wool vest.  My friend Janet,  of the stolen Janet Chairs, made it and i bought it from her.  It's from the wool from her mohair  Goats.  She spun it and crocheted it.  a small medium size.  the yarn is course.  It's BeautyFull and Fine but i won't live where i might wear it.  If anyone might want such a vest,  i would be so glad to send it.

I went through both Toy Boxes.  I have 4 old wool blankets.  What would i use them for?  I don't know but i also can't part with them.  I CAN finally,  like finally,  let go of the wool,  the heavy wool ankle length poncho,  my Clint Eastwood poncho.  It's with the Thrift Shop stuff.  It's taken many years to reach this point and here i am.  ok again.  

So i am ending up with 2 garbage bags of clothes.   Altogether.  One and a half i probably will never wear but that i love.  A half bag of working clothes,  underwear,  socks.

 

 

i have 3 pairs of shoes.   My Birkenstock sandals,  a pair of boys work boots and these Crocks that i got at the Thrift Shop.   The crocks are pretty much done in.  They are my everyday shoes except in winter when i need to wear the boots for a month or so.  Otherwise,  i've worn the crocks with wool socks.  The Birkenstocks are town shoes.   I looked on Amazon at the Crocks and Jenny says there are tons of Thrift Shops in Chico,  so i will wait.  2 kinda 3 pairs of shoes.  ok again.

 

feelings

unsure what word (s) to use.  just emotional will have to do.  Not sad,  not good but not bad.  Just, well, feelings.   Tried to focus on a few things but it wasn't happening.  Went from packing boxes to the cloth back to boxes to making a list of all larger objects i will take,  trying to imagine them all together and in a Uhaul and i find that really impossible,  to picture stuff in one of those trucks.  Picturing how i would stack them.  so back and forth and really being stuck on wanting to put that figure on cloth.  

 

while looking for muslin for that, found this big piece and thought maybe i just won't make any more Cloths for a while.  just use this big piece like a flannel board they had in Sunday School.  Just press stuff on it.  An installation that could change by the minute.  

 

so the paper drawing and a Glennis moon i'd found while packing.

 

 

 

 

but i kept wanting to draw this figure on cloth so i did,  and tried to figure out how this could go and i can't.  There's a limit to merging drawing and cloth collage.  So...it just got left this way.  And that emotional, uneasy feeling remained all through the day.

 

first wild sunflower

 

 

 

 

how it is for me

days go into days and then go into days.  I think about things.  But no more., when, suddenly,  something happens.

 

went into town and got 4 more of these.  The books.  The books  are in them.  So when i unload them There,  they will be ok.  There are 7.

the Plan,  the original Plan is that there will be a communal building.  Which will house stuff that needs housing.  Will be a communal kitchen.    i am going on this original plan.  I have veered off sometimes to a storage shed behind my hut.  But really,  i think not.  I think there would be this communal place.   The books need to be kept dry and chew free.  So in these they are.  Maybe they will remain this way.  I'll know how to find any one of them...will label the container.  ie:  ones with Mary O,  Rilke.  Ones with Arundati  Roy,  ones with how to grow raspberries.  When i need something,  i'll know how to find it.  

OR maybe they will become some kind of Library.  I like this.  Like this a LOT.  a Library.

 

the Books of Knowledge.  From my life forever as i know it.  Lands and People.  NOT in a box.  they need to breathe because they are old

 

and all the cloth on those utility shelves in the bedroom is now in similar containers,  half this size.  There are 6 of them.  I need more.?  maybe?  Still all the cloth in the baskets.  How to do this?

What else is all the kitchen stuff.  How do i pack that?

The art stuff i think will be easy enough.

All the Outside Stuff...the tools,  the rakes,  shovels, wheel barrows,  and then all the sticks,  the rocks,  it's really hard for me to imagine how this might present when loading a Uhaul.

There is no date.  Like nothing on a calendar when it will HAPPEN,  but it will happen and i need to be ready.

there's all the baskets full of cloth that i don't know how to do and i need access to for this last Cloth that i'll work on

so i am packing Stuff.  but also i am packing my Self.  Ok.

and about Agency,  which remains a Presence,  a strong and fierce presence....

i don't know which one of them said it,  in the last days there were so many,  but one said

"this is for Syria".

and i think.  re Agency

if you live in a place where there is nothing but war

Iraq,  Syria, Sudan

if you live in a world where the sociological psychological concept of Agency is non existent, is really inconceivable,

and then

There are countries  that give lip service to Agency and you might live in one but the reality of your life may not really include Agency, not really, not ever

what if you were born where there is blood in the streets?  always  blood in the streets?

I used to believe that as an American citizen i had voice.  That it was my inalienable  right,  my birthright and i am seeing now that this is no  longer true

 

 

 

 

working away, coming home to the Heat of the Day

before i left this morning i did this...pretty much as is,  except for the

hands.

then left.  Came home to take off my clothes and plop on the futon couch in front of the Magnificant Oscillating Fan i bought last year, and fall fast asleep.  Waking,  it's 90 something outside and probably not a lot less inside,  better just because the Fan moves the heat around.  Couldn't find the urge to do anything so picked up the drawing and 

got lost in it.  

lost in the hands.

the palm of her right hand faces backward.  this to me is a gesture of  "back off".  I use this gesture with Tay when she is running hard with one of her 4 ft branches.  Whenever she gets close,  i use that gesture and she understands it to mean "change course",  "not ok".  Here, it's different tho.  Here it means something different and i don't know for sure yet.

the palm of the left hand.  This hand faces forward.  and so,  opening rather than stopping.  but a certain kind of opening.  A   being open, maybe.  Not an inviting,  but a uh, being open.    And it's this hand that i made marks for over and over and removing with the so loved kneadable eraser,  over and over and becoming totally absorbed by how just the smallest touch of graphite would change everything and again and again.

this was very satisfying....making the marks,  making my own hand assume that position,  trying to get the gesture close to right and never achieving this,  but the doing of it all was so totally satisfying and the Fan oscillated it's own rhythm and it was good.

 

young tree who planted her self

the All Day Giving Water day....Sunday

inbetween moving the hose and just being,  i drew a little

but while standing with the hose at the Volunteer Young Mimosa,  seeing that it's first Dr. Seuss blooms have begun,  looking UP

i felt something on my foot...top of my foot over the arch and brain couldn't identify.  This was a split second,  less,  but it totally registered...brain function...

something i couldn't identify on foot and i looked down to see a maybe 4 inch centipede half way across and because it was a split second there was nothing to do but the experience of it and it continued across into the moist debris of the water bowl but....but the sensation of it's 100 feet,  or would it be 200?,  anyway,  it's MANY feet traversing the top of my foot was

absolutely WONDER FULL...it's softness,  almost weightlessness,  but somehow sensation of each "foot" as it made it's way to water...   I can't tell you.  really cannot think of a way to tell it but the brain image of Centipede! and the actual sensation of it on my skin was two whole worlds apart...the sensation of it was sublime.  

 

continuing with....agency    You could double click

 

Cheese.   don't know if i've already said this?  but i went a couple days ago to Jan's,  the dog trainer Jan to see her new additions that replaced things let go,  the things let go being her herd of meat sheep.  She ended up with 3 new does and two just weaned bucklings because i'll be gone now...no more bucks from here and...and a new herding pup.  So i went to see this transition and came home with a half gallon of Goat milk,  from one of TenZen's does,  and it's rich and excellent.  Cheese.  i saved the whey and froze it and will take it to her this next week for feeding to her hogs.   Me...will make Saag Paneer.

perfect sometimes comes disguised

had to spend most of the day in town to get paperwork finished for the Going.  Came home to Tay having waited long at the gate, in the heat of the day,  we sat under Old Apricot Tree, some breeze.   me, re-mind-ing about this moment being the only moment really 

and then,  i found this in the inbox from Nancy Erisman,  pomegranatetrail.blogspot.com.  I don't know how to put it in the correct form of the poetic text,  so,  just this way will need to do

SOMETIMES

Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest,

breathing like the ones in the old stories,  who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound,

you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests,  conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what you are doing right now,  and to stop what you are becoming while you do it,

questions that can make or unmake a life,

questions that have patiently waited for you,

questions that have  no right to go away.

SOMETIMES     From Everything is Waiting for You   David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

this is

IT.  Totally and Completely IT.   Thank You Nancy,  beyond Thank You and then more.

 

tomato plant.  Planted so late.

 

 

 

 

30 ft x 21 ft of Planet Earth

that much.  where i spent the entire day.  I gave water,  i pulled kochia,  i dug 4 holes and planted 4 tomato plants,  over a month later than Ever Before.  

 

this is my friend.  my Belov~ed friend.   that i hand  washed and hung to dry in the Old Woman Apricot Tree.  I've begun wearing her.   its been around 40 years that she has hung in a closet. Couldn't bear the thought of wearing out.  I love this shirt.  again today, when i washed in the bucket in cool water,  she bled.   just some,  but she bled color.  

 

 

 

 

 

i drew a picture for Field Notes

 

 

strand of seeding Feather Grass joined me on the chair.  DOUBLE CLICK

 

used the lid of the enamel pot to make a Toad Soak.  Used to refer to this as a spa,  but right now i don't want to.  It's a place where toads can sit and soak in evening on into the night.  Earlier,  when dripping water into the tomato wells,  sitting with that Grass seed head,  i watched the lizards come to drink.

this is us.  Us.  Google Map  5 Encantada,  Polvadera, New Mex,  USA.    

agency

 

a while back,  and i don't remember why,  i was groping for this word.  

Agency

was one of those things,  at the tip of the tongue,  NEEDED,  but illusive.  Agency.  I emailed Dee,  giving her context,  begging her to come up with the word.  She couldn't.  and i couldn't.

a couple days ago i read an article on dying, and there in it..."a dying person has very little agency".....    !!!!!!!!!!  my word!!!!!   Agency!!!.  YES!

so today,  i googled  Self Determination   Agency

" the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power."

and then still  looking,  i see this from National Center on Secondary Education and Transition

"Self-determination:  Supporting Successful Transition  by christine D. Bremer, Mera Kahgal, and Kris Schoeller

Self determination is a concept reflecting the belief that all individuals have the right to direct their own lives.  Students who have self determination skills have a stronger chance of being successful in making the transition to adulthood,  including  employment and independence.  Starting with the 1990 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, transition services must be based on student needs and take into account student interests and preferences.   To accomplish this goal,  students must be prepared to participate in planning for their future.  

Self determination encompasses concepts such as free will,  civil and human rights, freedom of choice, independence, personal agency, self direction and individual responsibility.  based on the assumption that people have inborn tendencies to grow and develop psychologically, to strive to master challenges in the environment, and to integrate experience into self concept.  This theory holds that these human tendencies are full expressed only within a supportive social context.  That is, self determination is not achieved simply because an individual has certain requisite knowledge and skills;  it is also important that key people and institutions in the person's life provide a context conducive to self determination.  that even when youth have excellent self determination skills,  they can be thwarted in their efforts to become self determined by people and institutions that present barriers or fail to provide needed supports."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so......here.....on a day that i felt so so Flattened,  so broken,  so Sad.  The WORD showed up in such a fine  and great way.

Agency

Agency.  How do i find my Agency amidst it all.  How IMPORTANT to still and always search for and find one's Agency

Agency.   ok.