windthread

just going

 

Ceanothus.   California Lilac.

Flowers give green. Leaves,  a tan orange.  Root a red brown.  

Daughter Jenny,  who presents a disclaimer right off,  for a lot,  has searched.  I said i need one.  at least.  She has searched.  Today she brings this one.  When she brought it to  the check out place of this local nursery,  the woman said.. "oh dear".    and "oh my".  She didn't know what to say...it was somewhat scragly,  but Jenny said she WANTED it,  her mother.   The woman said then ok,  maybe $5   Jenny said...anything.  doesn't matter,  anything...it's seemingly the ONLY native lilac in Butte County.

Flowers give green.   Leaves a tan/orange.  Root a red brown.

Standing. Facing.

how does one Stand?    When hatred is not an option.  When violence is not an option.  Then....how does someOne stand?

Here,  she stands with.  Stands with the Spirit of Earth...maybe called Mother... Mother Earth,  or,  maybe one of the Mother's devas?   I always have hesitation with the concept of Earth as Mother.  Earth is so much more than Mother.   So...here,  maybe one of Earth's spirits....i think there are many.   But we all find images and word images to help us Hold Space.  All are true.

the whole of the commercial cloth...the more i looked,  the more All of it was needed for this.  

i finally got the hole deep enough and planted the hydrangea.   The Fig,  also from mother's day,  continued to develop yellowed leaves,  that dried and dropped.  Not for lack of water.  Alyssia has difficulty making decisions.  She is "easier" with things having multiple possibilities.  But Alyssia is not here and the fig tree needs something.  I could have repotted it???  But instead  dug and planted it on the ridge behind the Wall Garden,  just behind the 2 SunFlowers that have such Will to grow.  I don't know if it's where she might have envisioned it,  but it's where it Is.  Gave Water.

and for The Children,  yet another day.  Another day of Emptiness.

 

feelings

if i could.

if i could snap my fingers and become 30 or even 40 again...if i had made different choices,  if i had in my wildest imagination imagined this day today,

which i could not have

but if i could have,  this would be me.   I would travel and simply STAND at the places where inhumanity occurs,  i would stand,  silent,  focused and Raise UP the fiercest of all Metta i could,  i would hold the fiercest of Tonglen inside me until i trembled.  and beyond.  

fierceness

Jenny (daughter) and i loaded the Old Cowboy's Pick Up with Stuff today.   We went at a steady pace.  Talking in between.

We loaded the tent that Alyssia and the kids had set up late in the winter months, early spring.   She'd found it on the Buy Sell Trade facebook thing.  It was missing the piece that covered the screened top...used a tarp for that.  the midling kids had set up housekeeping in there but then there were some winter drenching rains.  We loaded it today.  We, I mostly,  went through the Goat Trailer...the one that transported the Doe Goats.   All manner of things were stored there over the Wet winter months.  Some of it gone now.  We loaded the several bags of quick crete cement at Campsite A that had gotten rained on and were now solid concrete bags.   I think 6 of them.  Fencing wire scraps.  

in between,  we talked about working on how to let the herd of Doe Goats clear a lot of the land.  That Official Person will be coming soon to do the  "walk through" and give or not give the ok to go forward.  We want to at least have a Plan to present.

the day was extremely FINE.  Warm but not hot.  Easy breeze.  Birds overhead.  No baby needing baby things.

late in the day Alyssia called,  there is a spontaneous camera thing on the phone,  she said click it  though she knows i don't much like that,  but i clicked and there i was and there was Emrie in Texas....i said....EM!   Emrie!  it's me....!   She stared,  then looked like she was going to cry but then went about her doings....the image rocking and turning.  The Aunties were coming to take them for ice cream and then to the Grandma's place.

this pic of the cloth....i rummaged through the baskets that are here...on the bottom of one,  this commercial piece...it's 13X28.  Was a gift from someone a long time ago and i don't remember...am so bad about that....but it's pinned to the wall together and as it has been since i've been here,  since December,  it's colors that i would have not used before.  But i look at it,  from here where i sit at the little table,  across the distance of maybe 13 ft to that wall,  

it's fierce,  the color.  the pattern of it.  maybe.........

it's another day and the children who have been taken from their family,  from their one loved parent,  those children will spend yet another night.   I read an account of a doctor who was allowed in to a facility.  The children were fed.  their diapers changed.  But the rule was that the care givers could not hold them.  Could not pick  them up.  As she observed,  a small girl maybe 18 months lie on her stomach,  pounding her hands into the floor,  sobbing uncontrollably.  

Wind came

 

it's different here,  than at the Other Place....when Wind comes.   Here, this Hill,  there is almost always some movement,  but gentle...drifting through,   across and down.   This Wind today though,  blew my hair.  Blew through the 100 ft trees,  Rushing,  Shushing,  the sound of ebb and flow....tides.  a Pulse.   As if from a Great Heart.  as if.   i think about the words,  as if.

i love very much the marks on this cloth.  Takes me again back to the paraphrase from Women Who Run With the Wolves.  Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Stand and face what you know.

 

 

so i have this Time.   Alone,  to do with what i Will.  

the first since December.

I am haunted by an image.   Slate,  first,  an article by Dahlia Lithwick  that Mo linked for Dee.  But since,  different places.

the midsection and legs of a young woman,  being searched,  in headlights.  It's night.  You can't see her arms but know they are on the vehicle...up.    At her knee is a child,  girl child,  maybe 2 years?  Pink jacket,  pink shoes.  The child is crying.  I can assume that the child is crying because she wants her mother to pick her up.  The mother doesn't.  The mother can't.  The child will never understand why the mother didn't pick her up.

I  took a nap today.  The good kind.  20 minutes,  mid day.  The kind of nap that allows me to wake....Cleared....wide eyed,  knowing nothing and slowly focusing and realizing where i am.  what i am.   I worked at the hole i am digging for daughter's Hydrangea plant that her son,  my grandson,  gave her for mother's day.  it's late to plant it,  but...better late than never

Earlier in the morning,  i cleared Campsite B.  Picked everything up.  Put things in their two respective tubs,  bagged the junk that they seem to be attached to...the energy drink containers,  chip bags.   It's ready for early work tomorrow.

I hauled down two bucket loads of Goat manure and placed it in the Wall Garden,  gently,  around the plants that grow there.  Gave water.

I walked up and over the top of this Hill and cut some few twigs of Manzanita to add to the jar outside the door.   Bundled some scraps and submerged them.

late in the day,  washed my hair with the Outside hand held shower thing,  at the back of this travel trailer,  the water there heated by the Sun.   it's for camping convenience.  

Way back in the morning,  during tea,  I listened to the latest On Being pod cast.  I wasn't going to.  I felt too raw and didn't want anything gentle and civilized and kind.  But i went there and Frank Wilczek was being interviewed..a theoretical physicist,  mathematition and Nobel laureate.  Who has written a book called A Beautiful Question:  Finding Nature's Deep Design.   It was a beauty Full interview and though i don't imagine i will understand much about the physics,  or the references to mathematics,   what i heard him say,  I KNEW.  I knew to be How It Is.  I knew it to be How It Is since i was a child...watching dust motes,  watching the flow of the creek.   I ordered it from Amazon.  along with some whole cardomon seed,  taking me over budget for this month,  but WTF.

late in the afternoon i stood,  thinking i hadn't accomplished anything today.  I looked at the Refuge Cloth on the wall.  I thought about how i imagine mySelf to be a cloth maker.  So i went back into that bedroom here and began pulling out scraps of cloth from baskets.  What "wanted" my attention?   All the while,  i'm seeing that young woman,  the girlchild.  Thinking,

what good is this thing of cloth making?   

I have no answer.

Alyssia and Emrie missed their plane on their way to Texas to see Emrie's father.   Their luggage went on but all A had was a backpack.  They had to sleep in the airport.  It is conceivable,  given the present tenor,  that passengers might be....uhhh,

detained.

Alyssia is brown.  My daughter is me...light,  blue eyed caucasion.  Alyssia's father was black.  She is brown.  Her married name,  to her son's father who is Puerto Rican,  is spanish.   Emrie is brown.  Her father's name is spanish,  El Salvadoran.  Both Alyssia and Emrie's father are veterans of the United States Navy.  it's where they met.   8 years ago.  But it is conceivable that she might be detained.

detained.  

Emrie,  taken from her.  Like the child taken today,  while breastfeeding.  Emrie breast feeds.  Taken.  For how long?  How long would it take to figure it out?  What would that mean to Emrie?  Why was her mother not there?  Why was her mother not picking her up?

This is Happening.  Like in Germany.  When people were taken to the showers.  The children HERE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are said to be taken to be "cleaned up".  They don't return.   WHAT IS HAPPENING?  We are heading head long down a slippery slope.  No amount of protest will change it.  So.....WHAT can we do?  Maybe nothing  .  or?

 

 

 

the canal/creek

a part of the Hill.   It's a canal that was created for the run off from the Oroville Dam Fish Hatchery.  Many years ago.  How long i will eventually find out.  But right now,  it's a creek.  Fast flowing.  When i get IN it,  any time now,  will probably be to my waist.  It's clean.  There are fish,  crawdads, water striders and just beginning now,  MANY dragonflies.  I put my feet in.  There is no easy access,  a steep slope down.  Tay tried to think about it.  Puppie watched.  It's possible we can make a little landing.  Will talk about that.

two things

comparisons.   to need or want to choose one thing over another....to judge one thing as better than....

How everything carries its own Beauty,  its own unique singularity,   not more than,  not better than.  The specific singular Isness....to appreciate this....just for what it IS.

And then.

Finishing reading The Moth Snowstorm  .... Nature and Joy     by Michael McCarthy

"At some unknown moment between  1 July 2006 and 1 July 2007, according to the demographers of the United Nations,  a momentous milestone in the history of humankind was passed with no one being aware of it:  the percentage of the world's population living in towns and cities exceeded 50 per cent.  Henceforth,  most people on the planet would live urban rather than rural lives,  and for the first time would no longer be in close contact with the natural or even the semi-natural world  (which farming represents);  a majority, and a rapidly expanding one, would no longer have direct access to the rhythms of the growth  cycle, to the effects of seasonality,  to quiet, to the visibility of the stars, to non-industrial rivers and natural forests, and to wildlife ~ to birds and wild mammals, to insects and wild flowers ~ even where, as in more and more places, wildlife was impoverished.  Nature in any form would no longer be part of most people's everyday experience."

the book came highly recommended by the On Being interview a while back.  And tho it was full of so much,  i'd hoped for more,  i'd,  as always, hoped for advice on how to just go.  

I come away with the thought that no one knows how to just go.  

so i guess, maybe,  just this.  Whenever possible,  tell,  like TELL things you feel and see.  TELL them to the guy at the gas station,  the cashier at the grocery.  Whether they seems to want to hear or not.  Just TELL.  Tell how there was this so small bird this morning,  how there was a skunk in the compost,  how the Goat Manure seemed to change the pepper plants over night.  How it was sad that there was a possum squashed on the highway.  Any  thing.  Every thing.  Become the keeper of the Field Notes.  and share those.  Any way we can.  I know that many of us here already do that on blogs,  but to keep on,  and to share it face to face as much as possible.   We can't forget how important any small thing IS.  Every small thing is.

change again. On our own.

Destiny,  the extended family foster child left for Michigan last weekend.  For the summer?,  for Life?  she will reunite with her father and  unite with her mother for the first time.  

today,  Julian, the 8 yo son of Alyssia will  fly to New Jersey to spend the summer with his father.

Alyssia and Emrie will fly to Texas  for two weeks to spend time with Emrie's father,  to meet her Grandmother there,  her Aunties.  Cousins.

The threads pulse.

Tay and i,  Tazmeena,  Puppy,  the Goats,  the one remaining chicken, Talkie,  we wait here.   it's 99 degrees today.  but a dry heat.  Alyssia and i reviewed all the functional things i need to know...the grey water for the travel trailer,  the use of the generator to charge the phone and this laptop.  Daughter Jenny will come weekends to work on the Hut.  But, in general,  we will be on our own.  How will THAT feel?   

 

as if suspended, mid air

felt like that.   A little of Everything.   the strip of french seam from some article of Thrift Shop clothing...i think  probably a design that everyone of the 70's might have had something?   I cut the threads,  tiny threads and finger pressed it flat....to the Other Side.  The intense pleasure of that.

i drew a little.

shoveled along the doe Goat fence line,  loading some just so FINE and already Beauty Full  composted manure and feed debris  into a tall bucket to haul down to the Wall Garden where plants,  especially Pepper plants are having yellowing leaves.

the hose from the main connection down to the travel trailer blew a hole....there was,  for a little while, till i noticed,  a small stream flowing past.  Fixed that with a different hose.  All is well.

Last night, during the night,  maybe about 4 am,  give or take,  a sudden strange sound.  a single sound,  repeated.   Loud.

Tay and I sat straight....ears pricked,  eyes wide,  listening.....I don't know how to describe it...maybe the "word"  KWAT....made of a thick plastic,  like the old fashioned bakelite?   a Plastic sound, large,  maybe the size of a large triangular grapefruit?   I googled night birds in N Cal today...finding nothing.  I can't imagine tho it being a mammal,  What kind?   It's dusk now.   I hope it happens again.