windthread

What.....?

i have never,  in 12 years had so much trouble trying to put pics here.   I wanted 3 of Her.    it will not happen.   Not.    just this one.   and she is speaking.   i have to listen.    

my intention is to post pics of the remaining two Beings tomorrow and the next day and then just let all this rest.  

to be honest,   i didn't  read  those  two links that Marti found.    There's baggage  there.   Not belonging to the Beings,  but mine.

i keep wanting to say more,  but look at her and know that i need to be quiet.   Let the mind stop.   Things are different now.  Look at that.   ok.     

 

not much for going Back

 

the light ,    not so good.    i'd put off going down to B.   I took 2 naps.   20 min each.  i  stared at things.   I messaged with Jenny.  i ate things.    and i put off going down to B where the storage tub is with 4 of the dolls,  the fiber figures,  the Beings,  the........

so by this time,  the light wasn't so good.   But enough.    I have a lot of feelings about them.  More than i was willing to claim.   I think about making another,   for Alyssia.    What does that mean?    different things and one i thought....the faces were painted with oil paint.   Paynes Grey and  Mars Violet.  When i write those words,  Paynes Grey,  Mars Violet,  i can smell them,  the turpentine.   Then,  i had all of my so loved Friend Marge's old tubes of paint.   All bent and wrinkled.  I left them in New Mexico on the shelf.     Now,  i would need to buy NEW tubes.   But the smell is essential.     The bodies were made of silk noil.    also essential.    The eyes,  in the center,  the tiny black glass czech beads.  Essential.   Where are they?  Somewhere?

What does this FEEL like?   Why does it feel how it FEELS

When you make the faces,  the masks,   you hold the wet plaster gauze in your hand,   those strands of gauze,  the "hair",  draped over the fingers,    you stay still  for a long time,  until they begin to hold their form,   then wait longer,  then,    care FULL y ease them away from your skin.    Back then i would place them on the wood stove.   How could i  do that now?

 

unexpected

i could say it was an Odd Day.   Which it was.   But Unexpected is a better word.    Jenny didn't feel well,  so didn't come.  I made banana bread which is out of character.   but then,  Alyssia called.   She was ready to go through the books i have there.  Did i have time?   Ok.   it was on the Video thing.    Took an unexpected....hours.  Her new book shelves.   in her Room.    Her house is now a group of Rooms,  with Jeff and his kids,  her and her kids.   All have spaces of their own and then there are the community areas.   She wanted the books out of the large community area (was living room).   So...the light portable bookshelves in her room.   Last night there were just those two books there in the Message pic she sent...the Volume l s of the Dalai Lama's  7.  Today we went through almost all the books that i brought from my life before Here.  One by one,  she picked them up and we looked.   Said things.   specifically about the books and then wandering off from that to so many other places.   She ruffled through them looking with me at all the things tucked in them...notes,  letters,  all manner of things and where those led to.  I don't want to spend time with this here.  But it took Hours.   Kids went in and out,  we took time away while i cooked rice.  Came back to more of it until they had all been looked at.  Handled.  Categorized.  Shelved.   

and somewhere in the late middle of it all,  she surprised me.   She said that she would like me to make one of the Art Dolls i used to make,   there was a magazine we were looking at that had an article,  she would like me to make one now,  with what has happened with all the cloth work since.  one that bridged Then and the  now of Cloth.

she doesn't ask these kinds of things.   

i have thought  now and then what the difference might be.   How they would be so much more now.   What that would feel like,  making this difference.  There's that,  but for her to ask this..........

A while ago,  maybe a year or two,  i got this roll of plaster cast tape.  It's what i made the mask faces of the "dolls" from.    Because she had mentioned making masks of our faces now...like i used to....i made them of her face for life sized figures when she was around the age of Emrie.    It's just been here.   

i said i didn't want to make more of them,  that i could not say why,  but i didn't.  She said she was asking me to make ONE.  For her.  Just One.   

PLEASE SEE

Marti emailed this

from noon CST February 25 to midnight Sunday Feb 27

Baker Creek will donate 100% of all seed sales to World Help to provide humanitarian aid for Ukranians displaced by war.

just

toilet paper rolls.   cut folded  to make seed holders.  Planting.   I understand today how Ukraine is my neighbor.  Right over there.

where i live on this Earth

where Carefree Way  enters onto Old Olive.

the fringe of Wildland /Urban Interface  2-22-22

i don't say much about it anymore,  but the Ground i live on is Buddhism.   Alyssia and i had been talking long on phone about "the world"  and always,  for me,   John Lewis comes up.   and as always,  in conversations about the world,   it comes up how my generation had hit a critical point of beauty....we had had enough....children of   WWII people,   Viet Nam  and Civil Rights.  We were at the turning point and

we dropped the ball  and walked away.   It's always a long conversation.   a collage of so much.

she called back....late,   did i know?,  that the 7th volume,  the last volume of the series of books  that contains everything the Dalai Lama wants us to know  will become available in May?   i did not.  The last one.   

The Library of Wisdom and Compassion.     a multi volume series by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Venerable Thubten Chodron .   Vol.  1-6  published.  Vol. 7,  the last,  to be available  May 2022.   She said:   shouldn't this be on the shelves in the home?    I loved her for that.   She would not say she is buddhist,  but she said this.   and yes.   the answer is yes.   and i told her i would begin ordering them one at a time for her shelves.    and ordered the first one.  she said she had already,   so we could begin together,  share the others.      i also pre-ordered that 7th  and final Volume,   Searching for the Self.   You never know.  i was and am still,  surprised and bereft by John Lewis' leave taking.   

 

 

 

Heart of the Bones

 

where they brought me this morning,  all those cloths,   it was immediately clear.  

the Heart is in the making.  the process,  the happening.  the feeling of the process and the happening,  as it happens.  

 

oak galls

 

this last summers,  smaller than usual,  most pingpong ball sized.   Many are ordinarily twice as big.   Most likely the excessive heat.

the Hill has 3 kinds of Oak.... Live Oak,  the ones that are most prevalent  in this Forest,  evergreen.  Then Valley Oak and Scrub Oak,  both  deciduous.    I have never seen a gall in Live Oak...only Valley and Scrub.  Almost all here are down by the creek.  Have never taken "fresh" ones,  not knowing if they were being used by the wasps.   Even old dried up ones will give dye.  For sure would be a source of tannin.  

 

how it has become....is becoming

late last night i was thinking about how i'd like to get some cloths ....finished....and over into the Shop.   This would Help.   and to my left,  here at the  Table,  just under the Worm Cloth that i cannot sell,  was this one with the large red earth form.   It's been there for weeks.    It's difficult...the large red earth form...i would have never done that deliberately.  But here it is and as I've said before,  the fact that there is also the prominent piece of Toad Egg,  i accepted that it has Reason.   So,   sitting with it in front of me,  i got up and began looking through those 13 bags of cloth.   Had to turn the lamp on,  it got dark and i kept looking,  nothing working until i gave up and went to sleep.   Then immediately on rising this morning,  while the tea water was heating,  i was at it again.  I took off the scraps of sky and sun.   But now what.  Back into the bags,  running my hands through,  trying this,  that,  no  no no  but then i found one piece and then others,  actually in some way related to the first and then the Yellow/Gold piece of silk which i knew wouldn't stay,  but it provided a key to what might work...

 

the whole of it got more and more beauty FULL to me,  everything about it,  and it started  saying it was  something that had gotten born,  that earthRed thing  and all these scraps... the place it had gotten born into.   

i loved it and had to leave it to go to the Garden to give water.   When i came back,  i loved it more.   This is What I Would Make.  This kind of Cloth Thing.   if i could * i thought.  The place it was born is made of parts of Thrift shop clothing...i would leave the buttons...they are important,  and i would figure out a way to stitch it as is...all a tangle,  all dancing with its selfs,  humming,  not dancing,  but something like dancing.    I thought....like this.    Like this,  i'd put cloth together at Their direction and find a way to stitch them in this moving dimensional form,  not compromising the beauty Full chaos.   

But i can't.  First it makes no sense.    and then,   there is no room.   I would need a large like LARGE room...with tables for them to live on.   I closed my eyes to picture such a room,  and the tables were like my grandfather''s old oak library table  with shelves of National Geographics and his can of Prince Albert on the side shelf near him.   My grandmother's Begonias  along  the window side. I would need several of these.  and Walls.  And large windows.   

What IS all this?    It seems like so many things are suddenly asking to be seen,  so many things becoming understood...not just cloth things,  but some kind of All of It.   I have begun again,  reading  Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm    Stephen Harrod Buhner.   I blogged about this book years ago.   I don't know what i said then and i don't have time to go back to find out.  But i see,  notes in the page margins that i did.    In beginning again,  it is if i had never read it.   It is about Now.   i have changed,  coming here,   living here in this Forest  on this Hill.   It has and IS teaching me many things,  most i don't even know i'm learning.

 

How could i disturb this.   i would have to sleep on the floor.   Finally,  this evening i scooted what i could of it  onto the drawing board and moved it to the Table.   I have these pictures.   the *...   I DID.  i did make it.   I have these pictures.  and the exhilarating sense of  it all,  the experience.  I know something more.  it taught me,  the  redEarth form,  and i'll go forward with it and it will teach me more.  Ok.

 

domestic and wild

i need at least this much of the Wall Cloth back.    The Ecstatics still barely threaded together and pinned on the Wall Cloth.  Was prepared to take them apart,  but Not what they wanted.   I looked through what large pieces of cloth i still have and the only  one that would work was this very old table runner.   At first it seemed all wrong,  but then it seemed all right.   Pinned to this they can be moved and remain together.   it's  16 x 34.    Happiness.

 

 

The Back.   i hope you can see.   At some point this was in a walnut pot.   The marks are faint...edges are where it's most visible,  but faintly,  there are     Bones.     Ribs,  maybe.   Being the back,  it would not ordinarily ever be seen.  But i like very much knowing they are there...think of them when i look at the Ecstatics.   Maybe even just sometimes hang it this way.