windthread

Ok again

New one ordered

 

Ok

_{laptop is dead.  Not sure what can be next.}

_Love,

Learning from making? Making to....learn?

when i went looking for that book out in the Evac stuff....there were also a few rolled up Cloths.   i'd forgotten.

i looked at this one.   I always thought....Cloth with drawing.   When i look now,  i think...maybe Drawing with cloth?????    and i think about what that question might mean?   But what i am wanting to do is finish it.  Or,  if not finish,   work on it more,  find out more about it.   It's a very good feeling.  A different feeling.

 

kinds of Lives

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   ⅘I

Design to Live     Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp     2021  MIT Press    Edited by Azra Aksamija,  Raafat Majzoub,  and Melina Philippou

Preface

"The existential threats of climate change, the COVID-19  pandemic, and the rising numbers of forcibly displaced people make visible a new reality of social, political, and economic inequalities that is impossible to ignore.  As an increasing number of people are forced to move and adapt to unexpected life scenarios,  they have to find strength, inspiration, and hope in moments and in places where it seems so easy to surrender to hopelessness.

Glimpses of our shared future may well be found in the present day living situations of displaced people.  Shouldered by hope,  Syrians fleeing from conflict and crisis find their way across borders into processing centers and camps.  Ninety kilometers from the Syria- Jordon border,  a two hour drive from the capital of Amman,  almost  40,ooo Syyrian refugees found their shelter in the  Azraq Refugee Camp.  It is a centrally planned, closed camp both to address the basic needs of displaced Syrians .  Deep in the Eastern Desert,  the camp appears from a distance as an endless grid of white containers,  bordered by an infinite fence and surrounded by nothing but sand.  The barren landscape extends to the horizon as evidence of these hostile living conditions with temperatures reaching 118 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. 

Among the 15 other refugee camps in Jordon,  Azraq is the most representative example of institutional humanitarian infrastructure .  It constitutes what the humanitarian field considers an advancement in governance, security, and design.  In conversations with camp and NGO officials,  Azraq was often referred to as a model  camp for the region, designed to avoid the looser,  more incremental developmental approach seen at other camps,  such as Za'atari just  a few kilometers away.  This tightening is evident in local regulations that seep into the daily lives of the residents,  from forbidding permanent structures and plantation   to limiting customizations of inner spaces.   

Such austere environment,  one produced by standardization-driven engineering,  encourages conformity, disengagement, and despair.   This is precisely  why we were all the more inspired by the optimistic young people we met in this camp: teenagers   who follow their own path to  overcome the difficulties of displacement with bravery and creativity.  Jar for instance, feeling that schoolwork was futile, dropped out;  but  he could teach you how to turn the white metal shelters of the camp into something closer to a home with one of his many creations,  like a portable fountain.  His friend Wael focused on the camp's Taekwondo program;  he will be contending for the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.  Rawan invented a washing machine out of plastic buckets,  hoping to help hundreds  of people wash their clothes amid water scarcity and unbearable heat.  Hanaa  wrote her life scenario outside the norms and expectations of her peers by focusing on art and writing courses in pursuit of higher education .  Mohammad is the youngest leader of his community.  He initiated the first refugee led camp journal,  a platform for residents to express themselves and to be heard.    A monument to the destroyed heritage of Syria,  Abo Ali's mud version of the famous Palmyra Arch reminds people where they came from   To provide hospitality for his guests,  Jar's father made an elaborate coffeeset using food cans decorated with carved date pits.  To alleviate the sheer tedium that befalls a population deprived of work,  another artist carved chess figurines out of a wooden broomstick.  Jar, Wael,  Rawan,  Hanaa,  Mohammad,  Abo Ali and other residents at the camp show us the practical and profound ways in which they pursue human and humane lives.  Their inventions and actions tell stories about the strength in people  whose quality of life has been pushed near degree zero."

it goes on.   I see in the cover page,  as i do,   i noted the date i got it...12-2021.   For a long time it's been out in the bin of Evacuation Things in the vehicle.   I remember thinking ....who knows?    Its a strange and very BeautyFULL book.

slowly

more today.   wanting to let the drawing  draw its Self....     What does the drawing want?    What will i come to know?   As i drew today,   just  marks,   i began getting sensory memory....the plants down that long hill to the creek,  at the creek,   all the wild ones,  the weed plants,  i closed my eyes and tried to remember how tall,  what variety,  how many i might know.   Once in the summer my father would mow the hill but otherwise it was as it was.   I remembered the honeysuckle along the little spring stream that flowed into the creek,   the jewelweed that Cookie's dad told us to crush up if we thought we'd gotten into poison ivy.  The blackberry.  and   .....    those tiny wild strawberries.   distinct memories.   and i'm off and on stopping to look at the  child  face.   What is she thinking/feeling?   I don't have words for that yet....need to wait to be told.

Tonight is the first night for this year that i have closed the door.   always so hard to do,  but it's going down to 47.  It's time.  It also rained again...a chill in the air.   

old tree

i'd been so taken in by this drawing,  by all it had brought.    And then my brother's visit    Though it has been right here to the left of me,   it had become  like a dream.    Beginning  the Willow Tree....remembering it,  what it WAS to me,  to my life then    was good today.   Very good.  I can get back there,  listening  again...wait again.    I buried things under Her.   I wonder if they are still there?   

Faith in intuition

rumpled.   i debated about putting this here.   He is a private person.  He would not like being "talked about",  but i think it has value....maybe in many different ways we All might do things in our lives that are some out of the ordinary.

He attended preschool and first grade in a Montesorri school,  they were still living in Chico.   Second grade here,  after they moved.   Rode the bus to a public elementary.   it didn't  go that well  so,   Home School,  to try it out and then Covid.   Home School worked,  it's a good program and he loved the On Line.   He's very smart.   But he had very little going on in the "real world" and actually,   that suited him and well,   there was  Concern always bordering on Worry.   Me  Jenny with  Alyssia listening and filtering us and then him.    He had always said he would go to public high school.   So...it was a surprise when this last summer he told her he wanted to go to public school THIS year.  Eight grade.   We were nervous.   He is a person of very few words   even with Alyssia.   But we trusted.   What,  i don't know,  but we trusted and he went.   Having 2 friends he'd kept in touch with from that second grade,   he Went.    He identified himself to me as something...i cannot for the life of me think of the word he used,  but Socially something and close would be Socially Inept.   It doesn't  bother him...or at least it's what he's willing to say...NO deep conversations with him....   I always think of him as a  40 year old man who just needs to grow into himself.   

so when she picked him up from school today he tossed this to her. 

 Trust.   trust that things might make their own way.   If anything,   he knows we love him.  Totally and Completely.   

 i  am so proud of him,   however he managed this,  whatever it  "looks like"  whatever the reasons.   He is not thrilled.  Having to get up and walk to the front might be the longest walk ever taken.   But...i think he'll do it.   

food

Red Kuri.  One grew.  and baked today alongside the only Zucchini Pizza of 2023.   it was rainy and a high of 61 degrees.  Oven.  The zucchini was from Mellissa,   Alyssia's friend,   cleaning out her refrigerator before leaving with her mother to go live in a womens collective in Mexico.    The Red Kuri,  small,  but as they are,  so so good...the tender edible skin.   Have saved the seeds.   

birthday

 t

not a good pic.   but there,   Julian at the end.   his 14th birthday down at A.    Jenny is gettig her fingernails painted by Brinley and Emrie.    Julian is experiencing his family.   As Is.    At

first he said he didn't  want any decorations but then said maybe a little.   Alyssia got 2 streamers and balloons and a Taco Pinata.   Of course the cake with candles.   We are who we are.  

they were all loaded up  with stuff to throw into the dumpster on their way out,   all the particles  of the broken Pinata and broken balloons that the Goats can't have  and he came over....where i was sitting   and leaned into me and a

Hug

out of no where.   

so  UN  Julian

and it is enough for a lifetime.   He's 14.   He is who he is.   We honor who we are.  

 

almost

 

i can't ssee...   I almost didn't post.   Been a BIG day mind wise.   Lots of  thoughts,   Lots.   But just here.    this little summer shirt,   took off the clothesline   and forgot.....the Kantha   on the back where there was a rip from a fence snag

and i took it off and .....SAW the kantha and then FELT it...my fingers....FELT it     How Beauty FULL it is,   the repair    what it feels like