windthread

talking to myself

that mental restlessness continues.  the questioning self  continuing... so aimless.  circular.  repetitive.   but i also

can't pin it down

i searched for and found the little  usb fan that Alyssia brought me 2 years ago and that i lost somewhere in the bowels of that back bedroom/closet.   Because last time when Emrie was here,  she wanted to go in and i said no...too hot in there.   Don't you have a fan?????   yes.   Turn it on.    I don't know where it is.     You need to find it.   

it moves the air...has a soft sound.   it's Good.    i didn't want it because it's yet one more thing battery dependent and one more thing with a cord.   I so don't love cords.  so    don't.   but it's little whirring breeze is a game changer.    But doesn't help with that internal conversation that has no words.       about how i can find some way to move through these new days of continuous heat.  It's been weeks.    I say to self...it's how it is now.  you need to learn how to live in it.    and it kind of ends there.  because it's the truth.  and really...there's no 

fix

i want a distraction then.   there is none.     maybe draw.   the above.   how do you draw old women?,  old skinny,  skin and bones women like me?   so i began....she is looking down at something....that's where i started,  a face looking down and the body from there and it's how i do....being so far away from what i learned about drawing,  just sometimes feeling my own face with my finger tips,  my shoulder,  clavicle .    guessing how to draw that.   Just keep making lines.  it gets closer as it goes and it

takes  me out of the heat....out of what the      heat      means .           drawing.   ok.   So we have this looking down,  kneeling body.

now what.

 

see

 

water

no water

maybe i could get some wood oil

how it might be

 

 

today

 

 

from yesterday.

it's hard not to imagine....to project.....there is NO Way to know the thinking,  the feeling of a Goat.   

Sunny has found the point in the fence line where he has full view....all the way down to Jack.   This is the point he orients from.  It's far up the fence line from the Gate...where his water is      where i bring  food.      Jack has been very much the same.  I think i can say in some sense of truth that he is experiencing    Alone.    Goats are very vocal about stress.   There has been none of that.  So i can say that all of it is ok enough.   it's not the way it was.  it's not the way any of us are used to.  But it is ok.  ok enough.  and time will soften all it's edges.

and Jan in New Mex emailed.   Jack is from TenZen.   

natural order, un naturally

Sunny Ray.    His sire was Gideon the Glorious of All.    

When we arrived here,   there was a buck forest prepared.    Divided by a fence.   Thought was,  Sunny Ray and his wether Jumpin Jack Flash on one side,   Tenzen and Nogal on the other.   All hell broke loose.   We separated the forest with a 6ft corridor.    it continued,   them  smashing through and over the fencing,  breaking totally free and wild to mingle with the Doe Goats before being captured and subdued ....moved....try again and i think   3 times till we reached the configuration we have had today until it changed again.  Buck Goats are driven.   Some more than others.   Nogal and Tenzen,  gentle Gentlemen,  still had their moments and in the end....Tenzen's final year,  had to be separated.  The final times for a buck Goat is a slow sadness.  (to watch)  (for them...i don't know)   In the wild it would just go.   They would no longer be able to prevail and then they would no longer be able to even live a fair share.   The younger bucks would take them down and they would surrender their lives to other animals of prey of their community.   

Back in New Mex,   Sunny Ray reached a point where he had to be separated from TenZen.    He was and was given Jumpin Jack Flash,  a wild minded little wether from Quibeyne Farm...Jan Gribble.   I don't remember if his father was in fact Sunny Ray himself or Tenzen????  i just emailed her to ask....she was using both bucks with her does at that time.   Either way,  he has been with Sunny Ray a long time.   Bonded.    Wethers are neutered male goats.   They do not have the ability to breed or really,  the insatiable interest.   The two little boy Goats here,  Black and Minion are wethers.  They retain some of their buckness  but mostly of spirit,   take their place in a herd in their own way.   They are paired with intact bucks to give the intact buck  relief from his buckness.   The bond is strong.   The intact buck is dominant.  The wether accomodates that.   I could go on,  but...eeee  it gets uhhhhhh,   well,   more than i'm up for this evening.   Enough to say that for years,  Sunny Ray has treated Jack Flash like a girlfriend.   But Jack was also feisty.  They did well with each other.  Until maybe 6 months ago  when something signaled a shift.   Jack wasn't so much into it anymore and Sunny Ray began really noticeably declining as a virile dominate male.  He had less interest.   Jack noticed and began challenging him.    We all thought....well,   pay back.    But then it got sad.   Jack would run back and forth between his food and Sunny's,   wanting to lay claim to all of it.  There was a lot of Challenge...the rising up and clashing horns,  rising up,  clashing horns.  For a while Sunny held his own and then he couldn't.   Last couple months Jack would ram him and he would fall...it's a Hill..fall and roll a few times before he could get up.   And then...i don't know how it happened,  but Sunny held his own again for a little while but in the last week or so      he couldn't.    If you search online about how people deal with this,  you don't find much or anything.   People do not keep bucks beyond their days as potential herd sires.  But we are us and SR is SR.  and so   it's 104 degrees today and we figure it out.   There were different possibilities but we ended up moving Sunny Ray up to the original buck forest.   Jenny and her man secured the fencing with additional t posts and repaired anything ify.   I  secured the back gate and switched water tubs.   Got alfalfa pellets in the Scoop,  found the lasso and we went forward.  I went in to Sunny and Jack's space.  Sat down.  Called him.....pellets in hand and in pocket,  lasso ready.   He had been very tame when young but in these intervening years  in the company of the untouchable Jack Flash,  become wary.   I've been working with him tho ....so this year's Evacuation might be easier for Alyssia and it payed off.   Slipped the rope over his head and with the pellets as the lure   we exited the gate and made our way up  the road  accompanied by all the Doe Goats pushing and shoving because they wanted the pellets too and we made it.....EZ.   we got there and he went IN.

That was about 4:30.   

since then.    Jack stands at his gate staring up.   Not knowing.   He is alone for the first time in his life.

Sunny Ray has moved up and down his fence,   the Doe Goats have gone there to see him.  Come and gone.   

Nogal is where he's been,  where he knows.   

it's almost dark now.    How will it go.   ??????   

 

restless

life is so big

same as yesterday but in evening light.   so....not same.   and not same because at around 5:30 there was

Rain

this does not happen.  

but it did.   just some drops off and on for about an hour,  but it rained.    Sitting at Alyssia's house earlier in the carport swimming pool trampoline zone i said.....it's like there's going to be rain....but we just kept on with other things because it couldn't possibly  be rain       and then  just after i got back here,      it rained.       it rained.  How many times will i need to say that to take it in?   Something that can't happen,  did.

i'd gone there to pick up the ice thingys we use in my refrigerator.   she freezes them at her house.  this time of year we replace them every 3rd day.  Because of the disruption  of her truck with the stolen catalytic converter  i need to go there to pick it up.  We decided to go check out the new Asian Grocery.   we ate spring rolls.   bought things we don't know what they are.   As we left her house,  we turned down her sidestreet instead of going straight out to the main street,  a block.  Drove down her street,  then out.

sounds pretty ordinary.   None of it was.

i don't know why she said to go down her street but she did and i'd never gone that way before.  We went past her next door neighbors who are being evicted.  a Big uhaul out front.     N  California is so much more complex than i have any clue.  So much more complex than anywhere i have ever lived.   There are neighborhoods.   like patchwork quilt.....??????   some made of silk, velvet.   some of  beautyfull quilt fabrics,  hand dyes,  some of old household cloth,  some of rags.   Hers is somewhere between the old household cloth and rags.   the houses are all old.  All in some state of disrepair.  They are old maybe 40's?  i don't know, wood frame,  all different but all very close to eachother,   what else can i say....if i felt comfortable doing that,  i would take many photographs of them....they are like people,  the houses.    The houses have lives and then bear the burden of holding the lives of the people who live within.   Many are rented like Alyssias.    A few are uhhhhh,   pretty,  they all were,  at some point in time,  some still are but most ...there is a sense of disarray...marginalization.   Marginal lives within.  As is everywhere,  there are TREES and BUSHES and FLOWERING  PLANTS,  a profusion.  and as we slowly drove and i tried to take all this in there was suddenly a GARDEN of  many many SUNFLOWERS...tall,  Many and a man was just coming down his walk and there was eye contact and i felt like a gawker and called out....BEAUTYFULL!!!!!!!!!! your SUNFLOWERS!!!!!!!!!  he nodded.

she says that the neighborhood just down,  close to the downtown  are the ones where you would not want to live.   When she was looking for a house to rent,  she went there.    I sit and think as i write this.   Will i ever see them?  probably not.  It feels perverse,  to go...just to look.   

the new grocery...like the new Mexican Grocery...is BIG and shiny newly inhabited and  and isles and isles of things i have no idea about and doing a brisk business which all felt very good....like the mexican grocery,  it is a family venture and  it's happening for them.   we'd read about it in the local news.   People are resilient...come here and with so much work,  make their way.   in   America.  

 

lace lady emailed this.  it's from one of the HandEye Magazine stories they did about Wendy's work.   I don't have any of those magazines.  I so wish i did but i had no access to them at the time and when i tried to get back issues it couldn't happen for reasons i don't remember.   This is a Cloth with Tay.   It's on a drum.   Dog Cloth.  and of course...this would come today.   

i am so full to the brim in this moment.   more,  really...it's seeping over the edges, 

    I live here.   Going for ice to keep food cool.  I live here illegally.   it's all crazy.   there's so much more to say,  but    it rained.  and i am tired  and there is FULL MOON rising.  there was rain and this moon on the boy's cloth scraps.    so yes.  this is what i have.

thread, Lives

i received an email from Wendy Golden Levitt the other day.   She is a Jungian therapist among other things who does deep restorative work  in her studio in Toronto with traumatized children from all over the world.   Sand tray...Textiles,  Ceremony  and Love.     See Jude Hill's Feather Cloth in the side bar.    She had worked with a boy who crossed the border into the United States with an uncle  and then on,  into Canada to find refuge  in her studio.  It took three years but his entire family has recently  been reunited through Compassionate Refugee Status and they met with Wendy  in that studio last week.   One of the cloths he worked with was the Lizard Cloth i made.   during that time he asked Wendy about who had made that cloth,  who that person was and she told him about the woman who lives with Goats and loves the earth  and this he had told his mother.    She sent a note to Wendy along with a link to the Teeter Totter Installation that proved Trump's wall false and asked her to share it with me.  Among those reunited is his grandmother.  He wants to learn to sew.  She will teach him.  He's  9 years old.

so today i spent time with the 11 bags of scraps,   taking out some and washing them.  Hanging them in the wind.   I'd like to make him a cloth...the small size that are coming now....i'll send it to Wendy and she will give it to him.  and so...to his grandmother.   I can never know,  but i'd like it to have a Goat.    one scrap is the same as in the Lizard Cloth.  He will recognize it.    I will write him a letter.    i find refuge in this.   

 

 

we go

on the way to the Curry House,  where the pellet feed is kept and fed,  i turn on the hose for that water tub.  to let it run while i do the pellet thing.   The PVC that brings water up the Hill is part buried,  part not.   the Not part is heated by Sun.   By the time i've fed,  the water is running cool.   Maybe Talkie thinks i turn it on like this for her....she comes running,  FAST,  head down,  wings outspread,  her big yellow feet flying .....  to stand in the flow,  her beak open,  little tongue flickering... Self Care... Talkie knows it's meaning.  it's her spa time.

 

us close and collective

we give each other permission. in order to give permission to ourselves.   Lacelady 's   to me     and these words came:

 

a leaf    a blade of grass   small perfect oval ball of goat shit   dog hair and sound of common robin's  SONG

the warmth of a girl/woman.  only 3         leaning in.

Leaning in     our breath smelling of Cheeto Puffs   Solstice 2021   

Word from you     Remedy.   We are of her....Our Lady of Remedies and we    ARE the remedies,     our selves.