windthread

live collage

prompt:  an open treasure box of  experiences/creative devotion/whimsey

Alyssia had an appointment.   They arrived at about 10 a  and  Julian just kept sleeping.  Emrie and i had A DAY....it's been a couple weeks since she's been here for a chunk of time and she has changed so much already.  Her imaginative play has BLOOMED,   her ability to include me in the imaginative scenarios become honed and intentionally deliberate.   We needed to clear the bed in that back room so when it was her nap time we could ask Julian to move there and while clearing,  brought out the tool box of pencils and tool things that was new to her.  What is depicted above is about a third of it along with the tried and True from her half of the Altar.   Everything you see here came into play,  all according to her sense of them.  It's hard to give words to it because it was totally experiential and of the moment.  I never did understand what the Darner that Michele sent meant to her but it was very involved in it all.   Things from the toy basket that she hasn't looked at in weeks were brought out,  towers were built with blocks.   It all wove back and forth for hours until she was rubbing her eyes and we moved Julian,  who chose not to go to the back room that we had cleared for him,  but to the bench at the Everything table,  his legs and feet over to the Old Cowboy's mother's chair.   Nap time.   I lay down with Emrie when she does for her nap until she falls asleep.  Then get up and most often spend time just looking at the Scene.   Imprinting it in my mind.   Transient times never to be repeated.

an open treasure box of experience/creative devotion/whimsey

when she got back,  we fed the Goats and then walked.   Emrie carried her FisherPrice telephone and the work goggles that she calls the FireMan Glasses.   Went down to the Goat trail above A and over to the Round Swing.   Swang a long time.   Many mushrooms growing and i am working up the courage to trust the identification enough to EAT some.   There was the lower leg of some being....from maybe the knee.   We studied it.   Decided it might be of a wild turkey?   But WHAT might have taken it down?   We searched for the rest but found nothing.  it will remain a mystery.  We let Emrie choose the path back.  This Way she would say.   Come This Way and we would follow her.  

bigger than i'd wanted to go

 

the prompt:  what will you usher in to begin to rectify the damage incurred by the agent of destruction you have banished?

i tried to avoid the prompt's easy direction from yesterday.  coming up with something genuine,  but small and personal.  I didn't want to go ......there.....because it's complicated in my mind.  Way too complicated for a collage by an old woman in a travel trailer in the woods.   would open up a thing that is a fetid place to this old woman.   But here it is again and i guess i just go there and say what i think is true and right even if awkwardly and insufficiently stated.   

If  THAT  one is gotten rid of,   it is only the beginning  at best,  of a whole new  wide open expanse of where we might go at this moment in time.  He is simply the standard bearer of the almost or The half of the population or voting population of this country.   If he becomes Gone,   then what?     What we face is still the cascading destruction of the planet which is our Life.  The reality is that WE have been at cause.   For YEARS.   Because of what we WANT and because of what we feel we should  HAVE.  And when i say WE,  i speak for my Kind.  Lets just call us european anglos.   or   white people.   There are flaws in this statement and Alyssia points them out when we get into the subject.  But i'll stick with  my  premise.    white people and whitish people like what they have.  They want to keep it.  And they now want to keep it for their children if they have the wherewithall to notice that things seem to be going South.    Their children.   But what of All the Children?  the bee children,  the tree children,  the fungal children,  on and on   all of humanity who have lived  purposefully and sincerely all over the globe.   

What about Everybody?    Every Thing...thing being all living things?   What about it?    All living things have allowed our lives to evolve.  We haven't noticed.   Cared to notice.   

I go to that beauty Full interview on Future Primitive with Daniel Christian Wahl that i was fortunate enough to find,  just in time.   So much is there.  But for the moment,  he says that  Because we designed this....this kind of life....we can RE design it.  

but what we need to do is           REALLY LOOK.   we need to SEE what is.   SEE who we are.   SEE what that means in the larger causal context of a living planet.   

 

 

we have to ask questions.  We have to ask questions we have not thought we needed to ask before.  We need to Listen.

We need to LOOK and try to SEE.    We need to open to Who and What might have answers that will allow life to continue.  It's not about how many windmills it will take.   It's about Love.  Love of all of Life.  ALL of Life because we need it.   We need to learn to KNOW that.  It's All ONE.   

All our Relations

bannish

what do you need to Bannish?   Get rid of it.  Now.

Procrastination.

  It's never the end of the world.  Stuff does get done.  Eventually.  But what it does is cause a constant drain,  leaking out,  of Energy that wants other use.  Good use.  Purpose~fully....maybe even Joyfully.

After feeding self breakfast,  i thought about what to do....it's Raining,  so that helped...just Inside possibilities and i wanted to work with the prompt but this was sitting next to me on this bench and i really need to get back there and try again but i thought,  i'll read later  but later comes and goes and it would be tomorrow in a minute and i just need to DO this...get it DONE.  

so...procrastination.  it's not gotten rid of,  it's a life long habit,  but i did it today.   and spent time feeling the feeling of doing it today,   and maybe the collage would be an image of what it might be like if there wasn't such a tangle to drag along behind me.

 

 

 

consider

Prompt:  Consider the center of it all as that relates to you and your life/the world you've made around it.   Focus:  our body's coiled  energy  ....  what we are carried by when we breathe deeply and keep still.   What does that center look and feel like?

My meditation Practice.

i used the Payne's Grey Inktense Pencil and wet it a lot,  pressed down the rumpled tissue while still wet.  I like what  happened.  Will do this more as a Ground.    Be sure to enlarge the dark image.

 

NEED

 

this broccoli plant is two years old.  wintering over again,  in the spring she will become Three years.  I should take a pic of her whole self,  she more almost vine like,  dangling over the side of the wall and sprawling.   The florets ARE broccoli.  This years leaves are tough.  She flourishes.   Whatever she chooses to do,  she can.  We will let her die of old age. (if that ever happens).

 

and again,   the Glorious Collard Tree.  

I NEEDED to be OutSide today.  I hauled buckets of manure/feedscrap down to A.  I counted and need only 6 more buckets.  Or 7.   After the drizzly/rainy week it was a Beauty FULL golden day of sun,  and 52 degrees.   The Goats helped by supervising the shoveling,  inspecting the buckets and accompanying me down and up the long road.   I thought how lucky i am.  How many in this world get to walk with a herd of Goats?   And a chicken.   Before going back up,  i sat at the picnic table there.  After a while a tree frog began speaking.....the usual  sound,  but inbetween some different kind of speech,  little single syllable chirp sounds....i stared into the weeding debris.  It couldn't have been further than a foot away from my boots.  I watched for any movement.  None.  Only the sound.   sitting there, somewhere  hidden,  speaking.   

Before i went out i lit a stick of Nag Champa.   Satya Sai Baba.  From Mirran's gift shop on the Plaza in Socorro.   There's only one left.  I'll keep the box for collage,  i smile.  I came back and this house smelled like my house,  like my house, which ever one,  has smelled for over 50 years.  I've been saving these last sticks.  Why wait.  Smiling again.  

 

Prompt:  something literal and mundane that's central to your life.  How could you exalt this in a way that expresses its internalized value to you.

My Signature.    Literal.  Mundane.  and i wrote it on !!!!!!....the inside of a billing envelope from my credit card company!!!  which i'd begun to tear up until it clicked....Hey,  grace....this is wonder Full....for collage!!!!!!!     But my signature.   Yesterday a MVD day and toward the end i had to sign here and date,  sign here and date and i forget exactly how she indicated that she was eyeing the lower case g....but she was and she caught herself,  her head went a little sideways and her eyebrows flashed up and down it was all so subtle and instantaneous...the old woman with all the name changes,  with no way to prove physical address,   and to top it all off a lower case g

it was hopefully the final day of having to account to formal authorities for what i'd done over the years,  account for decisions i'd made during 50 years plus.   To just stand there and admit.     I think that's it.   sort of.   she surprised me by saying ok now you can go over there and take the written test.   eeeee.....i hadn't factored that in.   It's been over a month since i reviewed the 2019 California Driver Handbook.  I'd been there again for 2 and a half hours,  Tay out in the parking lot in the car with expired plates.   I didn't know what the legal percentage of alcohol in the blood can be.  I didn't know who gets ticketed for  passengers without seatbelts if they are minors .  Stuff like that.   I flunked.  I said to the guy who gave the the bad news... I haven't gotten a ticket since i was 19 years old.  Have never been in an accident.  He said...That doesn't matter.   but at least it's now on me,  grace,  with the lower case g.

Tree Woman

Prompt.   build yourself an appropriate protective talisman,  lucky charm,  or kitchen witch/guardian totem for your real~life garden,  private interior realm,  or a special corner of your home.

For inspiration consider what would best represent the vibe and themes that have emerged from the first half of our challenge's time/focus commitment.

Early in the still dark i read.   I drink tea and begin marking time on the clock because i need to be gone from here today.  But i got the flash light and got Tree Woman out of the drawer.     I sit,  holding Her.   This image,  from a large page of Natl Geo maybe 40 years ago?   Back in Michigan.   No...only maybe 35.   She has migrated over the years from inside books,  dictionary, folders,  drawing notebooks,  boxes of paper, books of family photographs.   She's moved and moved.  Been lost so many times and found as many.  There was never a fear She would be Gone,  it was just a matter of time till She showed up again.  A lot of times i looked but couldn't find Her.   Eventually,  i decided that it was somehow purposeful.   I'd always find her when i really needed her.   The large photograph was telling of a man in some country in the Continent of Africa,  i don't remember,  who had built a platform high in a tree that looked like a nest.  I can't remember why he did that.   But this small part of that photograph was STUNNING to me....incidental to the story of the photographer,  really,  not even a part of it.   But i have had her so long and with all the handling by me and by her Places she's been,  the paper is worn thin and fragile.  I found her most recently in that tub of paper things,  down at Campsite B.   The tub with the damp wrapping tissue.

it was She that came instantly to mind with :  what would best represent the vibe and themes that have emerged from the first half of our challenge's time/focus commitment.  I don't have anymore words for this right now.   But when i finally made it back home,  i got her and i got the scrap baggie and began going through.   i thought i wouldn't be able to focus at all,  but i could and did and got this far.   To glue her down.   To glue her down is ummmm,   is  ___________[something].   No word.

But i look at her here among the other pages so far and i think of that term KeepSake that Acey gave....KeepSake.  KeepSafe.

Maybe She doesn't need to get lost anymore.   Maybe i have arrived at a place where i can keep her safe and she can keep me safe.   ?  We are both old and thin from the wear and tear of time passing.   Both of us will be compost in not too long.  But in the meantime,  we have work to do.

explore ..... style/substance

 

so looking more.   There is the question of the prompt.   of Style and Substance.   I needed to think about the meaning of both words...in context of collage.   And specifically,  in the context of just these pages of collage.  They are all i have and all i can look to that would represent Style.   Just these.   So....not a lot for definitive interpretation,  Right?   I think i don't HAVE a style yet.  and then substance....does substance mean Story?,   what Story do they convey?  Do the images speak to some central  thought?  theme?  individually and then together?  And all this while wondering too if i might just not understand the terms?   

What came more into focus is that without ....intention....with just following the prompt and going through the Possibilities i repeated a core ummmmm,   a core.....well,  statement.   That is that the Ground upon which all my imaging rests IS a constant sense/awareness/response to  the thing of Spirit.   Or we can call it the belief in a Great Consciousness of this Earth and that in which it floats.   Another way...the Consciousness of Life .   And this then brought me to the first part of the prompt,  explore the visual dynamic between your creations and your sense of attachment to them.   This,  being just so clear.   How much i loved to find Spirit,  The Great Conscious,   in each.   It's just There.   No matter which images i chose.  It repeats so steadily.   And this has great meaning for me....attachment...not just to the pages but to the underlying pervasive  display of who i am to me  and how devoted i am whether i want to be or not,  to that relationship with the Great Consciousness.  I don't need to keep trying to find out more or justify either.   It's just what it is.   This also pulls in the making of the Evolution Cloth which was begun as a resolution work for coming to terms with my own realistic sense of the state of affairs of the planet.   And then,  the state of affairs of homosapiens.    The collage work and the cloth work are totally related.   And accomplish this Of Their Own Accord.   Without my even asking.   So....attachment?   Yes.  a Great sense of attachment and also gratitude.

 

a RAIN day,  all day and as relief from the round and round stitching of Evolution,  i began the first Bee.   There needs to be MANY bees.   Because Many Bees will be needed.

holding in my Heart

this is an image Acey sent.    When i do the Going Through Ritual of all the Possibilities i hold it a while  then continue on.  Today i held it a long time and thought i would want it as the final pages of this booklet.   It will require a double page.   I want to give this image GIFTS....surround it with Gifts.    It will be a different collage from my "usual".   I spent time with this today.  I was grateful for the space of time.   Like drawing in a deep breath.  Letting it out slow.   Having learned things.

some conversation and another request that you listen to Future Primitive podcast with Daniel Christian Wahl

i so much appreciate all the comments and Interest in this collage process.   SO much.   Thank you for each comment in the last days.    I hope for more as it goes along....to help me See.    And i might ask questions of You too.   I think that would be a good idea.

i am interested in hearing that there is a heightened sense of sadness perceived in these pages.     yesterday,  i talked about great sadness .  There is no other way possible to feel when living the momentum of destruction of so many lifeforms of this Earth.  But also then,  the collage image itself was to me comforting and yes....hopeful.  I am hopefull that somehow Spirit will prevail and there can be a continuation of human love in some form.   In the image,  i could say that after all is said and done,  Spirit will confer and re create what ever Spirit deems needed.   And my favorite part of the image is the form on the wrist of the Spirit on the right,   which i immediately and joyfully saw as an Earthworm.    What is more a symbol of Hope than a worm?  A worm in the garden of Gaia?  

the page above.   Maybe this one?   I probably should have explained this one.   The top image is of a  soccer goal net created by kids at a Syrian refuge camp.  With what was at hand.  presented in the Nat Geo article as an example of the incredible resilience of Spirit of children in the most dire circumstances.   The kids play.   And below,   a Healer in Venezuela who takes his patients into the river where they are supported by family as he works with the Spirit of the river to heal.  They become well.   Maybe she looks dead?  

otherwise,  what looks sad?   Tell me.   

 

 

so i followed the prompt for today and looked at them all together so far....almost half way through.   And i really,  like really love them and they are so much More than i would have imagined could come out of me.   I don't want to change any thing.

This month will,  i'm sure,  change my cloth making.  I am only working on the Evolution Cloth for the month.  Not starting anything new.  I want to wait.   

The paper collage so far for me is a personal dialogue with self.   a Conversation.   What's on your mind today, grace?  well, grace,  lookie here....and me an grace talk a while.   and figure out how to feel,  how to go forward,  how to love everything anyway.   It's more,  but that's enough for right now.   The cloth making is how i try to create image for Others.   Other human beings.   Images of What I Love Anyway,  everyday,  love so hard.

so...those are some thoughts.   There is another thing that is on my mind.  And anyone's thoughts about that will be greatly appreciated.   These collages,  unlike Acey's,  are made primarily with images that are the Art of other people.   The drawings and paintings Acey sent me and then all the Photographic art from National Geographics all the photographers.      It's the image that "makes" the collage.  It's the materials used that gives strength and beauty to whatever it is you Do with it.   An example is Jude's vast collection of incredible textiles...the megamendung for instance stands out,  but also....so much of her fabric isn't Ordinary.  and not easy or even possible to find if you go looking.    I use Deb Lacativa's .fabrics.   So...cloth is one thing.   But the collage is very much another for me.   I don't have a collection of paper anymore.  i don't have Interesting and Unusual images to draw from.   And i'm on the brink of feeling like i want to go in search of some but of equal weight,  i DON"T want to.  Nisargadatta: "do not add".     So.  This.  and also...crediting the artists.   I realized a little late that i don't give credit to the artists that Acey sent...she had left the words on the borders....i tore or cut them off,  not thinking.  eeeee

 

selves, care, here/there to/from THIS MUCH.

i read the prompt very early.   There's a 3 hour time difference,  right?   and it was still dark and i put the kettle on for tea water and read it again and  well.....i felt uhhh,  sad.   I felt blank when thinking of the term care package.   when thinking about wants and needs that care packages have to do with.   and i realized how all my sense of what i might want and or need in this world today has been altered so radically by things so far beyond my sense of ,  of what?   beyond my sense of....anything i ever might have imagined.   I realized how i live now with a great BLANK SPOT  out in front of me.  How i don't even go there anymore.  How it's been easy to not live in the future because my sense of future has been stolen and crushed.   I felt very sad.  I thought that i wouldn't do this one,   at least not now,  maybe not ever.   

but then....i trust Acey.

so after listening to two This American Life podcasts while i worked at creating a pot of chicken soup without garlic because i forgot to get some,  and with only thighs,   adding a ton on onion,   making the sleeping bed go away,   feeding all who rely on me for feeding,  sweeping the floor,   rearranging the overfull compost thingy,  pulling my hair back and into the barrette,   i cleaned the Everything Table and read the prompt again.   and Again.  3  times.   Nothing had improved.   So i just got the baggie of scraps,  the folders of images and began the ritual of Looking Through.   Maybe's off to the side.  No's in a pile.   I had zero idea if anything would come.  And then There.   The central image of the Two of Them that are the Same but Other....how i'd looked at that many times now but this morning felt a flood of love for this image.  And it went Easy from there.  

i don't have words for this.  I DO have Deep Feeling.   Who is Who and does it matter?   What's happening here?  What has already happened?   I really don't WANT words for it.   I just want this.   and i Really just WANT THIS.    I've looked at it off and on through the day and i can imagine looking at it off and on through Many Days,  like Many.   Maybe there will be more articulated Story.  But if not,   just this.   Just This is good.   This is very very Good.