windthread

this day is now this day

i wake up and begin reading again.   I have been folding over the tips of the pages that i need immediately accessible...maybe just  one sentence,  but that sentence.    I do the cry no cry thing.   Get over it and then two pages later,  again.

looking out the windows,  there are 5 windows from where i sit at the Everything Table,   all i see is Trees.  I am surrounded by Trees,  encircled by Trees,  held by Trees here in this travel trailer on a Hill in Northern California,  the last place i would have ever imagined myself to end up.  Roots run underneath this travel trailer.  Closing  my eyes and imagining this,  i can't.  There must be such a thick  net.  I want to work at trying to picture this.   It's cold...45 degrees,  a little warmer in here,  but i haven't yet used the heater.   Closing the door at night has been enough of a separation,  heat  is the final isolation  from them.

They are  waiting.   2 days toward  the end of the 10 day forecast offers 50% chance of Rain.  They wait how they always have,  how they know how to do.  

 

now and then i pick up and hold the small heavy black Buddha that Joanne sent me.  I don't know what it's made of  but it's heavy and its heaviness helps.

this day

Am half way through.   I don't know what i expected,  but i did not expect this.

i quit reading fiction long ago.   The last was Louise Erdrich,  who i love beyond love.  I don't read it because i have no life then.  My life is in the pages,  the words,    I hurry through necessity so i can return to my life,  which is happening in the pages of the book.    I don't know what i thought i might find in this book but i have found 

what i needed to find.

half way.  I don't know where it's going at this point.  I am uneasy but totally compelled.  There is more truth here than anyWhere i've been for so long.  Is it True?,  this is Fiction.  But is it True?  I went to pick up the dear Honda Car from the Emissions mechanic today.  It's been a week again.   This time they replaced leaking hoses .  3.    Alyssia and Emrie gave me a ride there.    It's better,  but the consensus is that i need a whole new carburetor.   OK,  but they don't do that.    Don't now anyone in Oroville that does.  Maybe Chico.   I leave and head for the grocery store and at a corner see a 

TREE

i am startled by it.

There are trees Everywhere in Oroville.  Zillions of trees and at the corner of  Robinson and Lincoln,  there was a single most magnificant tree.   Why didn't i take a pic of it?   I don't know,  but i was filled to the brim with the Sense that so many trees in this small town/city  were touching roots...touching

and that the power people PGandE  were going to shut down the electricity at 4pm  AGAIN because of high Fire threat....and the book so far says nothing about Fire and Trees and might not,  but  here,  it's Fire and Trees and i want to get back home so i can get back into my real life inside the pages of the book  so i hurry.

 

and i understood.   Finally,   today,   something about this Cloth that has been on the Wall Curtain for i guess months now.  I can go forward with it.   I finally understood its language.

 

focus

to dig a hole,  for planting a small tree.  This is the tool.   You kneel or squat.  After a while, end up  sitting.   Feel with your fingers and find the perimeter by fingertip.   Then,  this tool.   Moves  down along the edge and over time creates enough of a gap that  the  Rocks are loosened and can be lifted out by hand.   For this one,  i filled the hole with water and will wait till tomorrow to try again.  Once it's out,  i think i can plant the Fig.  This is the third day i worked on this hole.  

 

tilting the paper just a little...in morning Sun....the graphite looks like silver.

"graphite pencils produce grey or black marks that are easily erased,  but otherwise resistant to moisture,   most chemicals,  ultraviolet radiation and natural aging."  wikipedia

and with kneadable erasers,  you can just press,  just firmly,  and lift the mark away,  layer by layer,  particles by particles.

graphite is Magic.

the drift

this sits on the Everything Table.  as do the InkTense pencils.   In case.   

this is where the In Case went this morning.

not far.

I don't know what's going on.  Something,  i guess.  

I rearranged Sunny Ray and Jack's water  tub  and mineral tray.   Fluffed up their new feed bin.   Filled Talkie's food carousell,  checked her water.  Collected EGGS.

Minerals to the Doe Goats.  Their water.  

filled two buckets with manure and feed scrap and carried down to the newly planted  Grevillea lanigera  down in front of the grape vine fence.  With some apprehension because they are so newly planted and i'd not gone since Friday.  But there they were,  all green and vital and with NEW blossoms.   Troweled in some of the manure and then gave the rest to the far grape vine.

Made some mashed potatoes.  Didn't eat them yet.

I don't know.   There's just a sense of Something,  and i don't know.  I DO know that Mercury is in retrograde.  Whatever that means in this particular time

Otherwise...i drift.  WONDER stuff.   Float.

 

for nothing

i touched the InkTense pencils to the paper,  then the brush and water and  moved things...softening the marks,  bleeding them out.  For nothing.  No reason,  but  just to watch  it happen.  Began the day this way.

Jenny came and for the first time Ever,  we did nothing.  We sat in the sun and went through the shared rolodex of our minds.   It wandered,  back to when she was little to now in her own children in the grand children,  old homes,  ways of living,  Fathers, what to plant down in the meadow here,  worming for the Buck Goats,  and intertwined was the glaring fact that Talkie was not here.  Talkie is ALWAYS in the middle of everything,  she chases Jenny in the truck up the Hill.  She was not here.  I hadn't seen her this morning.  Didn't really realize that until  sitting with Jenny,  out there,  in the sunlight,  and no Talkie.  I called her and called her...nada.   so it shifted.  How to feel about no talkie,  because that had been the possibility all along with the Free Range,  and then the conversation would go into some other realm the seed for the meadow,  how i used to cook vats of Indian Food,  why not now?   interspersed by long moments of silence and then me calling Talkie again.   Well,  we would say,  we knew it might go this way and then to my feeling kind of at a loss with the Cloth work and  back to yesterday and how it was so

soft

and on to whether we would free range chickens of the future and at that point....there was Talkie.  Just right there!  2 hours late, but right there and her most excellent Talkie self...?    Where had she been?

Jenny left.  we'd accomplished nothing.  Didn't even make the effort.   Not sure how this feels.

 

 

us

my grandson Jeff.  Alyssia's brother,  my daughter Jenny's son.   His Woman, T and their 2 year old daughter Brinley to whom this day was dedicated.   They live in Sacramento.   A Birthday.  She and Emrie are 3 months apart.   In this pic,  Jeff and T are setting up the rock painting table.  He had his times,  but i can say,  with deep conviction,  that he is the best Dad ever.  He is now living his dream.   He has a FAMILY.   His theme song  since he was a little boy  would be the Barney song.   I love you,  you love me.  We're a happy fam i ly.   He's Got it.   Finally got it.  Bless him,  like really, Please,  Universe,  Bless him.  Bless them.

 

missing from the pic are me and Jenny's man.  Otherwise,  Us ,  minus as usual my son,  his woman and their 6 year old daughter who live in Colorado.   on the right is Fate.  Who is doing really very well,  finding his own particular Way in this world.   You also see Julian with his sling.  He broke his arm two days ago.  New skateboard incident.  The look on his face is often the look on his face to me.  I love him.  He loves me.  We do not find it easy.  I don't know why.  My challenge.

 

 

This is the Feather River.    This park was completely under water 2 years ago when the spillway of the Oroville Dam broke and flooded.    It took two years but the park is back with many many wheelchair accessible trails.   The river is a Salmon Run.

Today we saw many spent,  dead salmon at the bottom.   Washing to the shore.  They come.  spawn.  die.  Feather River.

image

i emailed Marti this morning,  asking that she use her Super Power to find me a good pic of my Collaged Kitchen Wall somewhere in the archives.  The wall in Polvadera.    Collage,  Acey,  Nichobella post.   

She found many but first on the links was not the kitchen wall,  but MORE.    If you have the inclination....

post of  6~15~2011  ....the Unexpected.   And in same keeping with that....again,  so much,  the Unexpected.  How things Spiral.  Spiral Out and In and back out and back in,  over YEARS ,  but remain True to the Whole of It.   It's One Journey,  making its way.  

so i don't have paper images for collage.   The one piece of paper above was from a National Geographic.  Emrie has mixed feelings about it.   She likes crackers.  She says Parrot Bird.  She studies the image and understands that someone is feeding the parrot a cracker.  She likes that part.  But something makes her uneasy.  She has no language for that.

next to the Uneasy Parrot is a scrap that came with a batch from Jude.  And above,  just pieces from the basket that were on top.  What my eye liked.  At first glance.  So i stitched them to a piece of paper. I don't have any glue,  either.

But in the doing of this,  while Emrie was asleep in NAP TIME,  i got lost somewhere else and that's worth the world,  to get lost in somewhere else.

color, glorious color

the base cloth is Deb Lacativa's.    It set this into Motion.  and rocked me all day long.

What a miracle Color is.

She DID it!!!!!!! oh, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I got a call yesterday from Parker,  Arizona.  From our community's sister,  Peggy McG.    She was in town to buy supplies and go to the laundromat,   and so had phone connection.

SHE IS THERE!!!!!

Parker is a town just outside of   Quartzsite,  Arizona  where since 2008,  the Bob Wells  RTR,  Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, occurs yearly.

I don't know when Peggy and I began watching his UTubes together,  but we did it for a long time.  Me in New Mexico,  her in Minnesota.   She clicked in to me because of how i left Michigan,  in 1989,  in a 1973 Ford Econoline Van.   Went to Oregon, Arizona,  back to Michigan, and on to New Mexico....initially determined to live in the Van,  Fern,  Forever.  I didn't.  And I never did get to Quartzsite either,   which was my second Intention...to the yearly Gem and Mineral Swap Meet  there.  I ended up,  over and over,  holding down "some kind of fort" in various Somewheres.

Peggy,  however,  DID IT.  She is THERE!  Last summer,  she methodically divested her Self of Stuff.  Sold her House.  Bought a Van,  had it fitted out,  and set out By HerSelf  and  i get this call.  

I am SO BEYOND HAPPY FOR HER and vicariously for me....she's doing it for both of us.  Just am SO HAPPY!

U Tube.  Bob Wells,  Cheap RV Living    in general.   2019 RTR,  November 9th ~ 20th  specifically.  He will be doing Vlogs from there daily.   8 years ago,  when the RTRs began there were 40 people in attendance.  This year 5,000.  They camp on BLM land and offer workshops and hands on work for  those wanting to live on the road.  It's extremely beauty FULL.  Go look.

I think everyone who reads here has a home.  I have a home of sorts.  But still....it's just THRILLING to imagine living like this.  Taking the minimum,  WakingUp in the vast Beauty of national forest campgrounds in a very small HOME that has everything a Home might need.  Being  FREE.   FREE.   She took her sewing machine.

I love you Peggy.  Thank you so much for it ALL and yes,  i do hope you make it over this way in the next Soon time.

LOVE LOVE LOVE BIG LOVE to you!!!!!

 

all the small joys

i'm looking for a word,  the right one,  and i can't find it...it's on the tip of my mind,  but what it is close to is

permeable

like a membrane,  for instance,  the amniotic sac.   It's this that is so freely open to the Whole of this Earth,  this Gaia,  things come in,  pass through,  circle and return.  Over and over.  The whole FeltSense of the forest,  the ground beneath the feet,  the "air" that touches,  is breathed in and breathed out that is the same for all Beings.  It's Our Air.  Our ground.  Our Selves.  And when this is a presence,  so many small joys are magnetized to become known,  felt.