windthread

not knowing. Still.

the Fire seemed where it was and so they left.  Around 12 midnight,  a call....Chico had Evac Warnings.   Nothing here, yet. But Paradise was gone.  the Dragon was moving,  propelled by Santa Ana winds.  Ok.  So.  Get ready.  I packed one of those grocery tote bags.  Tea bags.  charger cords,  laptop that wasn't working cause there was no Internet,  Emrie's Farmers Market Basket that is home for Bear and Rabbbit,  with Bear and Rabbit in it,  her fav book,  Moo Baaa La La La.  Toothbrush,  I sat.  Thought.  the drawing journal book.  graphite pencils,  sharpeners, kneadable eraser. Intense Pens. I changed my under pants.  Added an additional undershirt.  Sat.  thought.  Night,  just quiet. No sirens.  really,  no traffic.  Completely quiet.  I went out to see Goats.  Buck Goats in particular.  Spoke to them. Spoke to Talkie tho i couldn't see her.  Puppy.  Tay came.

returned and sat.  Gathered all Deb Lacativa's threads.  Gathered what i'd put on that "wall" during the day,  rolled them and put them in the bag.  The spool of neutral silk thread, a cone,  needles stuck into the top of it.  Rolled the cloths i'd been working on for the last months.  Put them in. Put them in a bag.  I got the box of seeds., from many of You,  many from Joanne recently.  Seeds.  Into the side of that box,  the 3 plates.  And i made my bed.  The quilt that Tina sent,  all it's whirling pinwheels,  made my bed and lay me down.   

And what i am most Grateful for is that all these years of working at it,  all these years of Practice,  Gives.  I said my

 mantra,  the words equivalent.....I AM....and in between,  Metta.  And i was soft and just ok. and there was no fear,  no anxiety.  Stuff was just what it was.  Stuff was.

 

 

 

 

that was about 3am.   I woke at first light,  6 something and it was a stellar ordinary morning,  as LiZ said...the leaves fluttering like sequins...sky was Blue.  Just Blue and all was so well.   I walked down to the car with these two books and with the pinch pot of Sarah Oh,  student of Debra   Price Agrums,  Artisun  Whitney High School,  Cerritos, CA  and i carried it down,  thinking STRONG,  how i really WANT to make pinch pots.  If we go through this,  i Will.  Come Spring.  And i loved Sarah Oh's pot,  her lizard,  so fat and of such Great Well Being...Sarah OH!...i love.  Love.  this pot.  It's now on the dashboard of the honda car.  For in case we need to go.

All day no internet.  The Fire  on that great new tower that gave consistent connection,  oh well and i went down to Lakeside gas and grocery which was packed.  Small talk in the line  and what i loved most is that no one said it would all be just fine and ok,  but instead we all KNEW it might not,  but were all there anyway.  I liked that a lot.

Around 3p internet came back on.  Jenny,  her man,  Alyssia and the kids came.  Did the EFFORT of hooking up trucks to trailers.  Positioning them.  It took a long time.  Good thing we had that time.  Done.

Alyssia and the kids sleep here tonight.  There are no evac warnings.  Wind is low.  There is no knowing yet.  It can go any way at all.  But for now,  it's quiet and soft and Peacefull.   For now.  And that's i guess all we ever have,  right?  For now?

a looking wall

 

 

i oh so much miss my Wall in the ROOM.  but i don't have that.   it's How it Is.  and so....how to go forward?   How to figure out what's going on in my head that i am so stuck.   and how to work with the lack of space,  like that table i had,  the round one.  in that Room.  Which i don't have,  or any reasonable facsimile there of.   HOW.  the word of the moment.  how.

all those pieces of cloth,  hanging together on the left,  that i pulled from baskets at random,  fast,  no time for thinking,  just what caught my eye...and i see that almost all of them are GREEN or some variation....so different from the browns  of  the desert,  where i no longer am.  How long will it take me to find my self here?  To begin "coming from" here?  having a strong sense of here?   I am realizing that i can't Make it happen,  can't push at it.   The second pic is from a willingness to just let whatever arises,  arise and not need to have anything at all "in mind".  I Like it.  it Feels Good.

the fire in Butte County is near.  But unless a surprising change in WIND,  it will not come to the Hill.  I'll go to dream now.

 

one more time

 

the road there wound through curving,  asxending, descending  winding through beautiful country,  homes all just Fine on many acres.  Further out from Olive Highway,  the beginning of large ranches and then,  the Olive ranches....HUGE sprawling holdings of miles of Olive trees.  Towering Gateways of rock and wrought iron.  One,  a sign for oil tasings on Saturday and Sundays.   and then this small PLAIN building.   In Polvadera, New Mexico,  i voted at the newish local elementary.  A zillion times more fancy than this.   California.  I live in California now.   I could say that,  over and over in any day...like a mantra....I live in California now and it doesn't have any more meaning than it does which is surreal, really,  but what was the same as in Polvadera New Mexico was the  smiling women who signed me in and directed me to the little cardboard privacy thingy,  gave me the big ballot and a pen.  Just the same as in Polvadera,  i filled in the ovals.   

today there was a good feeling of Exhale.  What was done was done.  All around this country.  All of us.  For our own reasons, did what we did.  Voted or didn't.  Marked this oval,  not that.   It's Done.  This part.  For now.   

Dana Milbank,  Washington Post op ed:  "  the laws of gravity have been restored. "  that sums it up,  i think.  With gravity, we can just GO.  and Go Well into the future of this country.  I feel ok.  like,  really,  just ok,  ok enough and committed to finding ways to hold those laws of gravity,  in place,  one person at a time.  i feel good.  I really feel good.

 

 

sign said, Vote Here

and i did.

proud

they're getting ready to go home and i am listening for the hot water heater to finish heating water and say alould...i am goin to get ready to go.  Julian says for what?   and just then  there's a thing in the In Box of Email from Climate Reality Project:

" it starts with V and rhymes with goat"

VOte,  he says and yes,  i say.  Tomorrow i will Vote.  I want to be spiffy.  What , he says will you Vote for?,  the government?  and i realize how little he knows at 9 years,  so i say some stuff and as they are ready to leave,  i tell him that tomorrow when he gets home from school,  i'll tell him what i saw and what i did.  He wanted to know where i would go,  how far and i told him to the Bangor Grange Hall,  down Olive Hwy to Foothill,  left.  Not far from his school.

after they left, i walked down the Hill road to the car to get the bottle of wine there.  Groceries come up in segments...heavy,  and wine sometimes stays days down in the car.    I washed my hair in the outdoor shower nozzel.  and here i am.  writing this.  

i am proud to vote for the first time in the State of California that is the vanguard for so much.  So much for the people,  so much for the Earth.   I'm proud of this.

 

what i said yesterday, does it ring true?

2 comments of 10~28 post. Marti and Cheryl. The threads pulse. Love. as is. Mo's pennent.

i gave one of the cloth baskets over for Emrie's toy basket.   The smaller one inside,  her birthday present from the Farmer's Market.  By next spring, she'll be able to go to the Market with me.  Walk,  carrying her basket.   For now,  Bear and Rabbit get carried around.  She practices Love with them

 

 

Toy basket has all kinds of stuff.  Little plastic toy figures,  bits of paper that she likes over and over,  a torn cover of a National Geographic,  plastic cups and containers of all kinds that fit in to one another or don't,  spoons, her pencils,  metal caps from her Nana's energy drinks,  some of it's cute,  some of it i'd throw out,  but it's all stuff she really likes.  

She learns a lot on her own.  Gets an idea, somehow,  and then puts it into practice.  In the last week or so,  she had begun bringing this little 1/4 measuring cup to me...holding it neatly by the handle.  Setting it down on the floor in front of me so she could Sign (sign language) ....Want.   the palm of one hand turned up, outstretched,  the other hand,  index finger tapping the up turned palm.  Want.  then she points to something.   most often this week it would be some cheese cut in little pieces.  a grape, maybe.  a cracker.  Want.   I put things in the cup.  She says Thank You.  goes off.   She doesn't choose to say a lot of words yet.  But Thank You is very clearly enunciated.  

What i am thinking about a LOt is how she lives within a context ....since she was born....that she is loved.  What does that mean?   That she is in a place and among others who will Care for her.   Who will Take Care of her.  She has absolute trust in that.  Even when she has one of her melt downs,  lies sobbing on the floor,  her face pressed into the floor,  she finally lifts her head and moves on.  And we do too.  And she is ok.  We are ok.   We often say...Love Love and pat our chests over our heart.  Love Love, Emrie.   We would do Anything for her to have a life.    For her to have what is asked for with Metta.  May you be safe.  May you be healthy.  May you be happy.  May you live with ease.  Loving Kindness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i think this is it.   Mo's pennant.  Dreaming a world where love is the answer.   Love is always the answer, yes????   Yes.  The Dalai Lama  would say so...Kindness is love.  

Marti and Cheryl responded to the Post of 10~28 so Perfectly.  and i have held their thoughts through these days since and on and will continue to.

Marti's telling of her exchange with her neighbor was stunningly elegant....stripped to stark of how things feel now....and i loved it because it tells the story of how we are,  in this As Is world.   So many things.  How can we work it?  How can we work the neighbor with his Happiness and his beautiful flowers on his porch,  his caring.  His extended hand  simultaneous with  his CHOICE???????  How can we look at him As Is?    I thought about this a lot.  Have been looking for things to read that tell me about why people may choose to be ok with the "other side".   They have their reasons.  I talked about this with Alyssia and saying it aloud helped.  From Marti's neighbor,  i was able to think from a different view point.    I thought about how,  even tho i didn't graduate college with a degree,  how i didn't follow through with some kind of "profession",  

that i knew i COULD have.  I chose not to.   it was a choice.  and Entitled choice.  How all the personal world around me had been entitled also,  by their circumstance, at least.   I moved through a world where you could create your own reality.  I  taught art and was part owner in a New Age Book store,   then i got hired to direct the Child and Family Service at a Prison,  things like that.  Because i THOUGHT i could,  i could.   Because i "came from" that kind of place.  Because i assumed a Lot.

What if, tho,  you did not have that context?  What if,  for the first time,  maybe the first generation,  you were able to find yourself in a life you never had?   Where your son was gainfully employed,  your other son doing well in high school?  What if your income from your Nursing Assistant job allowed you to have this home with flowers on the porch and blue over your doorway?  What if it was NEW?

i think.

and for sure,  he is both.  He loves gardens.  He loves his life.  and he places gratitude where he does.

I am so grateful to Cheryl for the link to the Sounds True interview with Van Jones.  I have looked for him elsewhere and he Rings True.  I listen closely and follow his threads.

I've found a young woman,  Alice Driver,  CNN opinion piece about the "migration" ,  her other writings...Brilliant.

i am looking.  looking.  

We're all in this together.  I always think of Echart Tolle saying:  Evolve or die.  Harsh.  But it rises up always in times like these...and here we are again,  in a time like this.   And there's nothing saying for sure how it will go.  There's so much in the Mix.  But on Wednesday,  we will need to just go.  So,  ok.  ok.

 

keeping

Cinderella  comes to the door twice a day.  IF the other doe Goats are off and away doing what they do,  she gets a bowl of sweetfeed and pellets.  If they are nearby,  she has to wait.  and come back.   It's a routine now.  and Talkie's routine too.  She comes with Cinderella for the scraps.  

if we were true goatherds,  with a true operation of a milking herd,  Cinderella would have been culled some time go.  For sure now.  She has recovered from her crisis of a while ago when we did the 10 days of antibiotics,  she is ok.  But just ok.  Not good.  Whatever it is is ongoing.  at a slow pace.   She continues to keep herself away from the herd.  Browsing alone and where they are not.  Ginger, her mother seems to be ok with that.  No longer needing to protect her,  going off with the herd.  Returning to her during the day and at night.  

we are not real goatherds.  We continue to not know.  We continue to wonder about taking her to a Vet.  Though she will never be a productive member of the Whole.  Not breed~able.  and so...."of no use".  Other than that she is Cinderella.  The homely Goat with the unsightly scur,  that we refer to as the unicorn horn.