windthread

yesterday's post that wouldn't load

we walk the canal/creek road.  Three friends.   Not a dog,  a child,  an old woman,  but Three Friends.

 

 

She calls out   Snake   and stops in her tracks as she's been taught.   All our walks are with the reminder that the land belongs to the snakes this time of year.   We stay on paths.  The rest of it all belongs to them.  How she saw,  i can't imagine.  So small.  The size of a garden worm but at least twice as long.  Red.  The red of my Carnelian.    a new born.   At first i thought Red Racer but then...maybe  Sharp Tailed.  They moved quickly to stones on the side and hid their head,  remaining so still  and i love how the end  wrapped around two twigs.   We squatted a long time.

She will be Five soon.   

an other today

they are always somewhere here...on the basket,  on the Table,  in the basket   and i  pick them up.  Often.   Hold each one,  looking again and again at them and never becoming tired of looking at them.    And today i thought....it's ok to make ones like these.    So what if i make a million?      They take up little space,  really.   They feel so much like parts of me...  like Visuals of that Felt/Sense Thing.    

and i followed wandering threads of thinking....i typed in the street in Detroit i lived on when i was born through 4 yrs....saw,  not THE house because i don't know the number,  but one so similar...i recognized it....and i remembered listening to my friend Judy's older sister Ruthie and her friends singing jump rope rhymes.    And i typed in where i lived after that and the pic was blurred out but it looked like the side of the front yard,  the beginning of the hill that went down and down and down to the creek and i was surprised that i've never spent time thinking about that....how that was also a

Hill

and then the house that was my house in Ann  Arbor Mi   it's still Yellow,  like they painted it after i sold it.  Can see both the houses of my neighbors there.     All these Places.   Still Exist.   

Time slows when it's HOT...when HEAT is in control.    When the body understands it must surrender.  and in a certain way it's a freedom for the mind to wander...?

I loved very much Nancy's  [ Pomegranate Trail]   comment on 9/2....and thought how the Weft of Us that wander here is  so the same,  our weaves being who we are,  our stories,  .....the importance of the Telling of those stories....to  "share, compare, teach"

and i know now that i CAN do what i need to do when the number rises over 110.   I can.   I need to go slow.  Stop.  go again.  Stop.   Hose my blouse often,  it dries in 20 minutes,    But i CAN!   and that is great news.   I didn't know what to expect.   

IF

so....how to Live.   with If.    the immediate and the one that will/might  come?      This question i ask and ask

this Cloth is giving the answer.....amazing.  but,  how it can go.     IF you were walking.  through an unknown or unremembered place and came upon this Stick House or shrine ( or both ).   How would that Feel?   knowing that someOne had created it,  once upon a time.   for some reason,  some purpose that They had 

imagined.    

They have gone.  no longer are here.   Just this.     You stand here,  just looking,   not knowing what to think.  So you  gather some flowers from NearBy....place them gently.   and like in Margery's  stories,  things can happen fast.  Not the usual way.  Almost immediately,  some of the flowers produce a vine that wanders up one of the Sticks.   You don't notice.   it's  becoming late.  you need to return.

 

Nancy...Pomegranate Trail....sent me the link.  But if you type in

Death Valley Life Blooms  PBS America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston  you can find it on YouTube.   Extraordinary and more Validation  and related to the above.  as every Thing now seems to be.   

 

 

Trust .....Time

this  pic.  yesterday.    her first bird.    it was a few months ago when i asked her about writing her name,   and she flatly and with no fanfare said   "im not into it".    Time has passed and now....she wants to draw a bird.  She wants to learn her letters,  write her name with both upper and lower case  Es.    she knows that learning her letters is the path into learning to Read.  a few months changed it all.  time.   Trust time.  

so CatherinE has responded.   Tomorrow,   7 am for me    10 am for her    We  will Sit.   i have mailed Maria but as she is over in another Time across the world,  haven't heard back.  For her it would be 4 pm.  

i will take more Time to write about it clearly and slowly but tonight,  just this.   5 minutes.   Just 5 minutes.   Stop what you are doing.  and imagine.   imagine Trust.  whatever the word might mean to you.  and there may be hundreds of meanings.   

there's nothing to this except to say to your own self that you are doing it.  To say to your own self,  i will stop and sit.  Or...even, what Ever?....i think...for Marti...maybe she will DANCE for 5 minutes?    What Ever.   How Ever  the sense of Trust rises in you.  I thought today....this Earth,  this Planet,  is  4.543 billion years old.  4.543 years of Evolution....arriving here.,  in this moment,  for me...sitting with a child drawing a bird for the first time.   I can trust this.   i heard in some off the radar news that women in Russia are taking to the streets asking Where Their Husbands Are...demanding to know.   Women in Russia. in the streets.    I can trust that.  in the last few days...many things i can Trust.   and i can press that Trust against my face.   

So....here  we go.   Every Thursday.  7 am pacific time...will refine this...but 

there is nothing to do but to sit in your own space.   nothing to say unless you want to and if you want to,  how great that would be.   Say     i am sitting .    here ...whereEver you are....so We can get a sense of who WE are....like those little pulses of light on Jude's old blog...that planet,  pulsing    but if it's just a few of us that is also sheer Happiness for me....Sangha.  Community.  

thank you Maria

thank you CatherinE

love and love and just Big Love

grateful to be able to be grateful

this is a "sled"  that Jenny found.   She likes things like this.  that are simple,  and work.  Make things possible.   It's just a very thick kind of plastic...or,  whatever something like this is, vinyl maybe?....?   Anyway....this is some of the old straw bedding that i cleared from the Doe Rain Shelter.   Raked into a big pile outside the entrance where it's gotten rained on.  a lot.   Loaded this first batch today and yup,  the sled slid easy and perfect down and around that corner and down to here,  somehow not being bothered by rocks in the way at all,   just slides  right over them.   And.....was easy enough to pull up and through the gate into the B Garden where i unloaded it on the new area for Earth planting in the Spring.   I tried to get a second pic to  "take " here of that but it wouldn't.   I used some of the partially decomposed cardboard from around,  then this.   Will continue every day there's not rain.  There's a Lot more.   Over that will be that last bag of Garden Soil and then that bag of Mulch stuff.   It'll be so Great.    Will use the sled to bring the log branches that  will  be  borders.   Combined with rocks that will hold it all in place.  

ADD:    there are 3 wheelbarrows here.  One of them that i 'd  brought from N Mex.... a prized possession....but wheelbarrows go out of control here in a moment...the Hill....going down,  OR,  such impossible LABOR,  going up

 

 

NPR Weekend Edition  Saturday  11/13    author interview with Azra Aksamija   the book   Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp in Jordan

  So much,  but as i worked at this today,  i thought about her telling of the Vertical Gardens there,  in an endlessly bleak and stark landscape where planting Anything in the earth is prohibited.  Repeat...PROHIBITED  And so...the vertical gardens made of whatever can be found rising up against the walls of their one room shed housing  to hold containers,  plastic jugs,   yogurt containers,  to grow  SEEDS they save   that grow Food     Just sit with this a minute.   let it sink in.  

 

 

 

 

you have to wait

till the Cloth says.....This way

and Crow appears

they came late.   almost dark.  All of them,  descending on this Hill that hasn't seen anything like this before.   They had been unavoidably gone to Sacramento ....way longer than anticipated and came LATE to bring the feed...the bales of Grass Hay,  the bags of Alfalfa Pellets

Jeff was standing,  we were talking,  when i noticed and saw.....the butterflies on his left leg....recognized them as T's pants.  Said that .   yes,  he said,  he wears her.  But tonight.   tonight,  there was a forward Energy to that.  Yes.  He wears her but also yes.  She is here in the Goingness of what there is.   We unloaded the feed,  the kids taking turns with the excellent FLASH light, the Fat Max,  easily and well,   taking turns.   Feeding Goats extra pellets,  Fate,  renaming Sunny Ray.....Darling.   I think of this.  Sunny Ray is also Darling.

January ..... 2021

things that seem to be impossible to   "fit"   but then,  somehow,    Do.     in their own way.

indulgence

right away,   the scraps  "named"....    Moons and Owls   .....    and i didn't resist.   Moons and Owls.

 

Seven is very different than Six , i 'd  kept moving them around...they got out of order,  but that's ok?,  

i haven't been able to see the owls.   I hear them.   Their voices and their wings.

Red

 

i've had a lifelong relationship with Red.   i had a red cotton jacket when i was maybe 6 or 7 years old.   That i loved.  it was flannel inside.   And then,  one more red...i think when i was going into 7th grade and we were school shopping at J.C. Pennys.  I was desperate to have a red faux leather vest.   i somehow got it but never wore it.  Ever.   i don't have any memory of that story.  and then...for the rest of my life until just recently,  my relationship with red was  "I don't do red."   but not entirely true,   i did like a very CERTAIN red...my kids had a name for the red i liked...Scab Red.  She likes scab red.    But i didn't even  "do" scab red much.   and then Jude and Spirit Cloth and clothmaking and threads and i looked at red and how just  "so much",  like a single strand of floss,   was really very BeautyFULL.    This is one of the shoulder pads of a blouse that i somehow had in maybe the early 70's.   i never wore it.  just had it.   it was wonderFULL,  the designs on it...like microbes.   i don't know what happened to it.   But always,  this shoulderpad somewhere with the sewing stuff.   

Acey said,  Red.   ok.   i thought and thought i don't really have much or maybe Any red,  but then   Bing!,  i remembered this shoulder pad and this morning went to look for it in that huge ziplock bag of scraps,  the bag that's as big as i am,  really,  that i'd left out in the truck bed  in case of Evac until yesterday,  i thought it must be in there somewhere and when i looked...

there it was.   Right on top.   Sitting there.   Waiting.    

 

She says,  Acey,  

"Find something vibrantly red and create a modest self-regulated stronghold for representation of things you value and know to be true."   ....things you value and know to be true....such interesting and laden words......

"give yourself time to hold yourself steady in contemplation."      hold yourself steady....hold yourself steady

"tune out the noise until you're able to start remembering what that feels like:  authentic inner silence"

 

by the time i got this far with the pics the RAIN was descending heavy,  the light had changed,  everything had changed.  RAIN meaning,  right now,   SAFE.

this far today,  "things you value and know to be true".    The magnifying glass=science.   The Carnelian stone=Earth.  The string of Czech beads=Art.   the Found Magic of the Angel=Spirit.

Science,  Earth,  Art,  Spirit.  

 

 

Gatherings

all over the planet,  this Earth,   there are Gatherings.   Jude took us today to a Place of Gathering...far across this continent.

 

like i haven't stitched,   i also have not come here.

 

i just haven't.

 

this morning i did.   approaching from a distance,  stopping,  standing and saying aloud....I am here.

it's like having been in some kind of self created,  self imposed....container.   maybe because it was like so much was being drained,   continuing daily,  like a slow bleed and then some kind of anemia setting in...anemia of Hope  and i had nothing left to offer of anything real 

i don't know...but i do know that today i went there....first thing.   just standing.  I am here.   and maybe i reserved just enough to say...i am Ready.   Ok.   i'm ready.

i don't expect miracles but there is room to breathe now,  room to begin again.  try again.  and that's all we can ever really hope for...Trying.  Our Best.   i still have some Best left.   

 

how all things are Present inSide the Fire

in a comment 9~23    hermosa said:

"we who live in a fire based ecology are bettered if we come to terms with fire,  a holy element.  For some it is Water, for some it is Wind,  here we are in Fire's domain.  Yes, it can get dangerous  (like deep strong water)   All of us live along side the supreme elements....May we all take heart,  stay well and strong.  Holding on."

so in all those preceding days of not acknowledging this image of Fire...i chose not to look.    I look today.  Closely.  

i think this must be  Kaffe Fassett?   it was gifted quite a longtime ago.  

i would not have paired the two words....ecology~Fire.  I google  Ecology and the most simple sentence:  "the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and their physical surroundings."   i love hermosa's words...fire being a holy element  which i have always "known" but never Known  and still...do not truly know.  I suddenly in these days,  SEE how Fire is shaping us,  Teaching us what can help Us survive....if we choose to learn.