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i can't leave the ClothWall pulled down. 99 degrees...inside and out, there are just wisps of air that can flow from that back room through the bathroom into Here...even a wisp is needed and the Cloth Wall blocks that. But for some moments i hung this Cloth there and looked and it was good.
i saw these words today
You didn't come this far ... to only come this far
no attribution
first the light comes from one direction. Then...from another, changing things....making them different, but then too, i suppose what they Are in that Light at that moment..
i went to the Funeral this morning. For so many years i didn't "do" funerals. I didn't go to my Mother's or Father's funerals. But i have been to a couple recently, like today. I went to His funeral.
I don't know the true attribution for these words, they have appeared here and there and they appeared here today again....
"He loved America until America learned how to love him back."
Deep watering this morning and just now again this evening. Neem has been applied. All plants that had been chewed. Tomatoes, Bell and Hot Peppers, Kale and some of the squash. Early in the morning to John Lewis and the Avacado. We Wait.
This cloth has been hanging in the Morning Tree for weeks now.
re: Ancestors
each chapter ends with a synopsis called Rememberings. This is Chapter 4 European Trauma and the Invention of Whiteness
"Trauma was not invented in 1619. For thousands of years before that, human beings murdered, butchered, tortured, oppressed, abused, conquered, enslaved, and colonized one another.
By the late 1600s the English controlled nearly all the colonized territory in what would become the United States. In England, the 1500s and 1600s were not gentle times. People were routinely burned at the stake, tortured, hung, and otherwise brutalized.
Many of the English who fled to America were victims or first hand observers of this brutality. Others were desperately trying to get away from poverty, starvation, overcrowding and the Great Plague.
It seems likely that many of the English colonists who made their way to America were deeply traumatized...and brought their trauma with them.
Throughout America's history, white bodies have colonized, oppressed, and murdered Black ones. But well before the United States was founded, powerful white bodies colonized, oppressed and murdered other white ones.
Our concepts of whiteness, blackness, and race were invented in the seventeenth century. The terms white person, white woman, or white man did not appear until the 1680s.
It was only in the late seventeenth century that white Americans began in earnest to formalize a culture of white body supremacy.
This culture was designed to blow centuries of trauma through millions of Black bodies and to attempt to colonize the minds of people of all colors.
For America to outgrow the bondage of white body supremacy, white Americans need to imagine themselves in Black, red, and brown bodies and ( experience, italics) what those bodies had to endure. They also need to do the same with the bodies of their own white ancestors."
Resmaa Menakem My Grandmother's Hands
This seems to be an intersection of things for me. Yesterday was Emrie's 3rd birthday. I fell asleep last night being sad because she cannot be a "normal" child...cannot go to a toddler gymnastics class, and really, doesn't even know that classrooms and gymnasiums of many others her own age exist. She can't go to the Farmers Market with me, take her basket and choose her own fruit. She can't...on and on. I woke this morning remembering those thoughts and thinking....when she is of age to remember, how might she perceive all this? But i then thought that what she may remember of being 3, is running naked with a herd of Goats through a forest.
I am absorbed by My Grandmother's Hands. and today i found the 1619 Project. I'd read reference to it but today, it suddenly was FOUND and i listened first to the 5th podcast, while giving water at the Wall Garden. i cried at the end. Tears. And when i came back up, i began with the first podcast.
it is an intersection...a synchronistic intersection of the decimation of the Earth, the opening to a reckoning of the power of Denial in seeing the reality of the toxic delusions of Amerika that will bring us all down. There is a pandemic that some say is due to the destruction of interface between wild and domesticated which circles us back around to the first. Synchronicity.
so these are what hold my heart. How i hold these things is to LEARN the needs of the Plant People as best i can. LEARN true history....and TAKE IT IN....FULLY. SEE how it is forming the now. It is so clear. Give all i can to Emrie and Julian and Giana in Colorado and Brinley and Fate. How i do that is to witness my self and be the best i can one moment into the next. The "best" being Open. WILLING. WANTING TO LEARN.
and still, through all this...i am needing to sew. So..this maybe is time. I placed a center piece with pins. Tomorrow, i'll take it down and stitch that piece in place. I will sew a blanket Cloth. Ok.
they are very small. the size of leads for Fine mechanical pencil. Goats require very Certain levels of Copper for their well being. This varies, location to location, depending on forage and the make up of their water. Excess of minerals like lead, iron, cadmium and manganese can absorb even a correct amount of copper before it can be beneficial to the Goat. Deficiency of copper can interfere with the development of the nervous system, bone growth, and fertility. Copper minimizes parasites. These little rods settle in the rumen and slow release copper over 6 months to a year. We will try to hide them in Fig Newtons. Some people use bananas. The Doe Goats continue with absence of normal monthly heat cycle. Which in its way is GREAT but also isn't normal for this breed. Jenny wants to try this.
the WhatEverItIs that's eating the new top growth off Wall Garden plants left this for me this morning. Jalapeno. I can't imagine. Insects are more surgical. Maybe a bird? The Neem spray came today. Would not be for birds, but ...maybe.....
Thoughts? The Bell Peppers. Most spots are round. I think they get enough water.
trying again, a second day....the Practice, but again, no one came. But rather a Sense, a strong Sense DID come of just women. Women. WomenNothing Special. Peasant women. a long line of them.
it's undeniable that i would have ancestors.
and i think i am getting his drift....i "come" from somewhere/someThing . We all do. And how that ends up with what we have today, here, in this Amerika. and it's FROM something we don't understand and until we understand that, we are stuck.
She, John Lewis, has completely recovered her assault. Recovered and gone beyond. I put purple and blue for her/Him today as his family had asked.
Why? is this so personal for me?, his loss? There is always danger. But i trusted him. I believed that if there was Imminent danger hovering, he would sound the alarm, he would lead us in the good direction, both to escape but also to Stand. I am so so at a loss with his Leaving. There is no one. No one to take his Place.
at Acey's suggestion. Cottonwood The Star The Herbcrafter's Tarot
" Your broken pieces contain the stars of hope. Open your heart to grace."
the 20 minute mid morning nap: not awake but not asleep. I can feel my body as a Container...it's mostly from my shoulders to my hips. Can feel the bones with muscle and skin as a uh, vessel. In that vessel i can feel the heart, the physical heart, the organ. Bloody, alive, beating. but all around it is space as if a large room. or Hall. there are many available memories there, all alive and current. I see the Place of Polvadera. I FEEL it. I feel its emptiness now.
and not Because of the Cottonwood, there is something to this View, this View from this Hill in this particular place, this particular Direction....this Land Scape...the feeling is intense...i said to Jenny yesterday... Deja Vu so Strong but i cannot know more. From where we were sitting there is a maybe 40ft descent...down the Hill, where i slid squatting on my heels, close to vertical which creates the sense of Looking Upon when you are at the top looking down and Over. I need to spend time there.
i am reading and Working Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands. Each chapter has a Practice. Today, it was:
"You are about to invite the presence of an ancestor. You don't know who this will be. You also don't know how he or she will appear, as an image, a memory, a sensation in your body, an emotion or a flow of energy. All you know is that this person lived at least three generations before you and died before you were born." it goes on. No ancestor came. What came was a feeling of having no ancestors. I waited. What did come was the memory of Down by the Creek in my childhood. That creek being nothing like the creek here (?) that woods not like this Place here (?) but that's what "came". He refers to this work as Practices...not exercises..but practices. Because we repeat them. that the repetitions are what work. So...i will sit again tomorrow. Wait for SomeOne.
this is just across from the gate to the Wall Garden, Campsite A. Across the road up. Looking down the slope to the creek, inthe far, the Eye of the culvert that goes under Carefree Way. This is the direction i look if i am not looking over at the Wall Garden....while sitting in one of the resting chairs there, the plastic adirondack chairs. Jenny took a day off from work today to continue her work of cutting dead limbs in an effort toward renting a chipper. the chipper is $350 per day. You need to be ready. She sawed and then dragged branches. I worked at the Wall Garden. Off and on we talked. But at the end of the day, we sat. Facing the HILL SLOPE down to the creek. A completely different View.
at some point, i looked to the right where she had been working. I stopped listening to her and was struck silent. Some Thing there. Brain sees, alerts Mind, says Meera, phonetic spanish, Mira.....!!!!! there was a SHIMMERING that was so familiar but not for Here....?????????????? My whole self became focused, alert to the moment
the Hill is extremely steep there. There are two horizontal Goat paths, but feet apart. In between fallen oak and pine leaf that is slick to the bottom of the boot...you slide. The way down is to squat and slide slide slow which i did. It's True. It is a
Cottonwood
They don't grow here.
Sunny the truck was parked there for a while before i came. There must have been a bird that carried a seed from maybe a bumper, the hood? The size of the tree would be 3 years...they grow fast, unlike Pine and Oak
Cottonwood. repeat. many times..... breathe in between. Cottonwood seeds Self. Grows. Flashes Sun Light, Glistens, Shimmers, Dances, deflects the harshness of all else. Cottonwood. TREE. This is Huge.
Every day.
We go. Down to the Wall Garden in the morning. Down half way to B in the evening. All of Us.
Ramana Maharshi advised: Do not add. Meaning, sort of, the more you Add, the more karmic energy is involved. Every time in my life i have been on that brink of Adding, i hear his words. Do not add. and then, i've added.
What we are at CAUSE of, we have moral responsibility FOR.
Without water, the Gardens would die. The vegetables are not Native to this Hill. In a mere day or two they would die. Without food the Goats might....might....become weak? We supplement their forage of the bounty of this hill. Right now it's acorns. Different for the Buck Goats that are limited. They would die. and would die from lack of water. The Doe Goats drift down to the canal and drink there. To whatever extent, i am at Cause. So....our continuing, our well being, is mutual. Goats keep defensible space against Fire, provide manure to benefit the Gardens. Gardens provide food. I give Water. Tay, as last night, keeps us Safe.
This Hill. Not Portland. So simple, the equation here, not Portland.
