windthread

this i can.

at the base of one of the tomato pots.  2 of them....this one accidentally knocked over,  not knowing it was there...appearing "overnight".    Studying the pamphlet Mushrooms of California  J. Duane Sept,  i think it is Good.  But i would need to find someone i could "drive" to....mushroom in hand....but i CAN.    This i CAN do.  Mushrooms....in B Garden.  Already i saw a Turkey Tail beginning on the log over next to the Pomegranate Tree.    

Post 2.

Opened to that blank page....thinking of some kind of map,  or diagram.  Sat staring.   Put the pencil to the paper and began the 

HAND.   When i draw these things i have to put my hand or body or face in place,  then i touch my self,  feel myself to try to know how to draw.   I held my hand.   This way.   Because it was the gesture that CAME.    STOP.    STOP.   i'll continue to try to get it right...palm is outward.    Hand is relaxed but firm.   STOP.   

it was the gesture that came from waking to the world this mornng.   Making tea,   opening the  "News".   and even,  beloved NPR...there  was NO GOOD NEWS.      NONE.    Even NPR.    

So much antagonism,  commotion,  adversity,  division.   Which is how it IS now....as we try,  i guess,  try  to make other Ways...but for me...looking at the bag i drag in  the First Post....i asked this morning....What's in that bag?   And the answer was surprising ......Junk.  Crap.  and none of  it mine.   I remembered a book i once had about ritual.  The one that has stayed,  held...when you are caught in some kind on web,  some kind of confusion...unfamiliar....not Yours......to feel.    Where is the strand ,  the fiber....where is it attached to you....often your wrist...it's Under.....that cord.....attached there and  you loosen it,  undo it and hold it Out,  saying.....Here.  I believe this belongs to you.   

so i Uncord.  I hold the fiber out.   Here.  I believe this belongs to you...the world....the Confusion.  Here.   I will continue to Live as best i know how.  I will continue to stay aware of the multiple x a zillion complexities.  But in my Day.  Here.   I will uncord.  I will declare that i belong to this Hill.  To the Trees,  the Mycelium ,  the lizards and skinks,  the bees, birds Goats,  chicken and cat...Dog,  People,  Garden and on and on and on   i declare.   I lift my hand and say STOP.        this junk isn't mine.  i won't haul it anymore.  Done.        STOP.

.

 

 

 

the beginning of August. Image One. continue to the next post

because Typepad will not allow me multipe pics.   This here.   the drawing of me....traveling in the circular,  hauling baggage.

go to the next post,  please.

maybe

maybe if i try to DRAW what's  going on?   i might be surprised.

am also still very much here.   Continues to be on cloth Wall.  I look at it much of any day....sometimes closely,  a lot of the time just a kind of gazing.  I want to keep these scraps together just like this but i also for some reason don't want to stitch them down.  or...maybe don't want to stitch them onto a base cloth?     which would then separate them from the rest of the Installation?   and i need it all just like this until  ~something happens~  maybe    i do the drawing.   Which would go here with them.   

Maybe i like all this because it's avoidance.  

it was a glorious day.   there were MANY MANY  Bees     Tonight i'll close the window above the bed and behind me here at this Everything Table.  Will still leave just the screen door....it was 52 degrees last night.   It's always hard this time of year,  the closing up.., separating inside from outside.  having to wear clothes.

 

 

a paper bag

as an example.    of  what i am trying to work with.    

those folders....in them....this  bookmark of a drawing i'd made,  that was somewhere back in some years,  somewhere back in those manila folders.   Do not know where the original drawing is.        But this morning,  it was propped up against the paper bag here on the Morning Everything Table as SUN rose and at this perfect moment,  the bag....which contains bulbs for Egyption Walking Onions,  the mailing bag,   was Set AGLOW.   Illuminated.   ILLUMINATED  with this drawing leaning into it   and i was filled with...........filled with.........what?    I was filled with how it is to be alive.   To just live.  Moment to moment and in those moments,  always hoping i can 

do better

but i don't.   do better.  or i SOME do better.   But i can't find the place that i call Better.    Where i just

Am.

i don't allow mySelf to be there.  Where i just am.   Where....as Emrie instructs....we don't know because it has never happened before.....so we just say that.   I am where i have never been before.   and go.   

 

open. open day.

jenny messaged yesterday....not coming.  She was exhausted,  both physically and of heart.   She messaged that the hospital where she works had only 3 icu units left.   The week had been grueling.  She couldn't move.    Today at around noon she messaged again.  Got called in to work.  Not coming.   They are full.   Will now need to redirect patients to nearby hospitals.  If there are no beds,  triage will begin.   placing very sick people on palliative care.   this is Northern  California.   United States of America.  

i got word from two Cloth/Fiber women....both are evacuated from the Fawn Fire.   Redding and Bella Vista.   Just North of here.

so....an open day.   i found self drawn to those manila  folders  in that Organizer Thing of the Old Cowboy...all those  little drawers...

I was looking for something...i don't know what the something is.  But it's somewhere here.   I can feel it.   

these folders that hold hundreds of pieces of paper...some directly drawn on,  many from printer (and drawn on) ,  most from N Mex,  and many from National Geographic    Julian's drawings from when he first drew,  before he got to that age when boys quit.    going through them,  i was surprised by how much of ME is here.   I have always intended to just leave them and have,  infact left them 3 times already,   but today...they are stacked here on the Table and destined...maybe...to that tub in the back of the truck.    This feels to be an 

iindulgence

but .....?    what is that?...an indulgence?    i look the word up and it's not easy....the meaning i'm assigning....the meaning i am looking for.   So...they take up a lot of space on this table.  Tomorrow they'll go either out to the truck or      back into the drawers.    ?

 

 

learn. This has never happened before. Journal Page.

i understood something in it's Complete Ness this morning.  In a flash.   and as soon as it happened,  and as soon as i  began trying to give it words,  it unraveled and hid from me.   I guess i'm not ready.   ?   or    It's not ready to reveal its truth.   But these words here and this pic maybe can keep hold of the knowing that i knew if only for a second.   

Here,  Emrie was to my right,  at the "end" of the table,  on the Old Cowboy's Mother's chair.  She had gotten all her things from her side of the altar to the table.  She hasn't done this in a while...all of them.   i am to her left.  the altar behind me,  that basket with the drawing board and calendars,  stones,  Things of the moment to my left ....the stack of small Cloths i'd taken off the Wall Cloth.   I moved the stack  to the table in front of me  so i could look for something in the basket and with out a word,  she took them and pushing all her small objects to the middle,  began to arrange the small Cloths.  She was totally and completely absorbed.   Learning.*....i was silent and simply watched.   She turned them over and back,  up and down and it took her 3 tries till she got them "right".   Some were OtherSide up.   and she began bringing her Things from the middle to place on them.  She talked to herSelf.  Sang.   It was as if i wasn't there.   After a while,  she sat back and looked at me,  including me again in the moment of time.   I said....what's happening here?   And she said      I don't know.  It never happened before.   and began to play with them,  putting the stone lizard in  Michelle's Yellow Truck,  driving it over to the helicopter and asking for something to drink.

*i have been understanding this...for a short while....let the new be new.  Do not interpret Now by the past.  Do not feel the need to Teach...anything....anything at all.   Grand mothering doesn't need to be that.  Grand mothering, or here,  Old nannaing,  can be just Being With,  in a so so complete way.

 

This has never happened before.     She said that at least  4 other times about something that happened....like when she flew/fell out of the Meditation Swing as it was spinning,   skidding  and scraping her knees and palms and i said what Happened!? and that answer...i don't know...this has never happened before.  

this has never happened before.   When you are just barely 4,  almost everything has never happened before.  You have no life history to look back upon....all you have is what happened and its Context.   Now.   

Here's where this all gets tricky.    I want to stay with this...with these words of hers....it never happened before.   I want to stay, quietly,  thoughtfully...Open.    I want to resist the urge to interpret what is happening in terms of my own history...because it DOESN'T   APPLY.    oh.....eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee this is hard.    So....i'll leave it for now and just add that my own experiences DO NOT APPLY to what she is Living as a 4 year old girl in 2021.    The word CONTEXT   is  crucial.   Tools and  Skills that i have in my napsack DO.   but they apply Only in the Context of Today.   Things will never go back to how they used to be.   And would i want that?   Was how stuff used to be so Great?....no.   So what do people Do?   They  can  stay quiet and look at what has happened that has never happened before and LEARN.   How do we DO this?,   this moment Now?   We learn together.  Everyone is the Teacher.  Everyone can Learn.  

 

 

 

dark

second sleepOver.     They arrived at noon,  Alyssia had a dental appointment in Chico at 1.    Between noon and "bedtime",  we did a thousand things.   small things.    ordinary.    nothing amazing.    but a Thousand.   She just turned 4.   Still is  comforted by a "sippy" of milk at bedtime.....which,  at home,  she  now  gets for herSelf.     So,  we watched as dark came...sitting outSide,  we watched and listened as Talkie went to bed...going foot by foot up and over the Tree Branches to her highest twigs and settling there,  all the while talking to herSelf.  it got darker and the bats came,  swooping.   Quieter and Quieter and she missed her Mom.   Her house,  where there are electric lights and street lights and a constant small flow of commotion on her street...people,  moving,  doing things.  Dogs barking.  Cars.   Here,  only DARK.   She missed her Mom.   But she said it was her bedtime.   I kept saying well,  maybe soon.   But it became clear that it was that Sippy thing of Milk she was needing....that signals the end of a day's worth of doings.   So we filled the thing,  chose our pillows,  settled in.   Holding hands.  and  it wasn't long at all and the Milk was gone and she still Missed her Mother and it was still Very Dark.   Very Dark.  and Very Quiet.  And we were both pretty wide eyed.

So i said...OK.  Let's Go. and got up and got  out the headlamps that we had remembered about and ordered from our Auntie Amazon a week or so ago,  and i asked her if she was ok with it and she had no answer so i said OK Let's Go and we set out.  She said she was afraid,  and got her long curved stick from earlier in the day   but then she kind of likes Drama,  so i said well lets just go anyway and see what happens and the first thing we saw were two moon eyes per Goat GLOWING where they had settled in to lie in the road for the night,  all those glowing moon eyes and then Jack's and then on,  Tay running ahead,  and more moon eyes in the brush that turned out to be Puppy and we talked about how night is Puppy's favorite time of all and as we walked she waved her long curved stick and this pic is of that.   down and down to the end of the road where we sat and turned off our headlamps and just were there...in complete Dark ness.    

 

 

watermelon vine travels

Fall equinox Michelle Day

maybe you can see....down at the end of this road,  the double gate that opens out to CareFree Way,  the  nothing road that comes from Old Olive.   Up,  in the tree...in the FAR DISTANCE is the ridge...many miles away,   where i've never been yet  and need to go.

i am walking.  Down this road at dusk and then,  into Dark.   Michelle set out.  Often at dusk into New York City.  on foot.   Such a Wonder to me...her setting out...into the City.    She did it.  Over and Over....came home.  Told us what she saw.