windthread

this one

of Alyssia's face.   She must have been Four years.     She sat        so patiently while i applied all the wet strips  of plaster gauze.  Until  they dried enough to finally remove from her.     I think,   in El Cerro Mission,   N Mex?    the figure holds a frayed Sweet Grass braid   a Cottonwood  branch

simple pleasures

so....when it's really HOT.     and your mind  has gone kinda blank.   you have yet to acclimate.   Not wanting to spend yet another day staring into the Trees,       ok, then     finish making the pillow case.    from that twin sheet you'd gotten at the Socorro Thrift Shop ,  N. Mex  a million years ago,  that you have loved for so long,  that finally ripped up the middle  and it's FINISHED and

it's Beauty Full.

a pillow case.  Joy,  sitting,  feet in the Spa pool,  stitchiing,  stiching  backstitch as Jude taught.   This.

then....phone.   it's Giana,  my son's daughter, 9 years old in Denver Colorado.  Saying she has two questions.     First,  her mother got her writing paper.   I listen....writing paper.....    she says there are 4 designs.   and begins to describe them and i understand that her mother got her

stationery.   3 are flowers and then the last...something about poppy seeds...???????  i don't quite understand,  but i tell her how when i got sent to live with my Aunt when i was Six,  i was miserable.  Didn't much like that Aunt,    i was so  miserable she would make me Poppy Seed Cake to cheer me up and i LOVED poppy seed cake ,  so, i chose the design having something to do with Poppy Seeds???????   OK she says,   pragmatically wanting to move along to the second question which is....what address would i like to receive mail at?     The questions taken care of we move along to chit chat...her taking Sailing lessons,  i read this on Face Book,  she tells  how she prevented her boat from capsize, how she is NOT looking forward to 5th grade...too much homework....and i say some stuff about her father,  when he was in school....and say....for some reason,   well....he was always Cheerful,   and she responded    I honestly think  he's too cheerful.   I said huh? and she said they were playing some game and he somehow threw a book and hit her in the head and  he was cheerful....and i said well,  yeah,   he can be.   too cheerful.  i guess.

i love

kids. 

now...unlike when i was six or 9,   now,    how  they freely have thoughts and opinions and express them and you can have a conversation,  mutual     

and i ended up telling her that one of the best things about writing letters,  affixing the stamps on the envelopes and

MAILING

is that you then have to 

wait.

and   it seems forever, and sometimes you even forget.....but then      there's the day that there is an envelope in the mailbox.  Your name,  your address.   the marks of cancelled stamps.   and you open it.    and    read.    And  there the person IS.  on the piece of paper   that you get to hold.   Sometimes tuck into a book or something.    to find years and years and years later

mid March

"Severe Weather Patterns"   on display during the night and then into waking hours.    the relentless downpour,  the

WINDS,  threatening, really.... but i look,  as always first thing, at the weather app and at Today and then at the forecast....and the 7 days ahead.....,  these numbers.   which represent the percent chance of rain.   so....after today's 100

9   1   36   37    50   56

so.....to just make it through today.   I  "suit up" ,   ready to get Out There to feed at any slight let up  and did that.  coming in to sit and stare and listen to it all  and decided to try       to visualize  something different.   I got quiet and visualized in DETAIL  walking to B Garden...opening the gate,  going in and then on...what would i do?,  if i could?,    everything in the smallest detail.  This worked off and on and so i did it off and on and the Severe Weather Continued ON.     

 

and then,   late,   there  was this.    Maybe.   Maybe we can move from this first time ever weather into something more familiar,  something more....Gentle?   Maybe.   For the next days at least it seems so.   I am so beyond ready.   Today was really really hard to stand and face.   it's been since December. 

.

 

reason for optimism

the blossoms were still here this evening.   

Cal Fire.   I thought about this today.   Butte County  "contracted" with Cal Fire this year.   There is a new "fire app" called  Watch Duty.    These two things.   I hear the sirens going up Olive Highway....i click into Watch Duty.   if it's a fire,  info is there.  Sometimes its vehicle accidents or small incidents of different kinds.   But with Watch Duty i can track a nearby fire almost immediately and they update every 15 min or so.  Cal Fire does not hesitate.   They have totally consistently been On It.   i thought about how it has made a real difference this season.   i feel now like we have a good chance.   And that's enough.  

and back to the blossoms.    i sat quietly there,  just looking at EveryOne.    How it's not a lush garden.   but a garden.   a garden of many plants,  growing.   I looked at the two Hopi Sunflowers that face me as i sit in that plastic adirondack  chair,  their small and complete perfect  faces high atop spindly stalks and they Asked:    Why are we not enough?    

I realize i imagine a midwest garden....here.    on granite with the minimal amendment i have supplied so far.    I have made no raised beds.   there is  way more rock and stone than earth.   I see them.  those SunFlowers,  see the bell pepper,  crookneck squash.  tomatoes,  cucumbers,  the one green bean and Malabar,  the patty pan that can manage one at a time.   They are so much,  enough.    If i give them more,  they can give me more.   WE.   US.   Together.  They do their Best.    And very clearly,  the   "statement    "....i need to save their seeds.   Their seeds will remember this summer of 2022.

fact:   it's 11:22 p.m .   84 degrees.   typical.

Where i hope to go

more,  Stephen Harrod Buhner

 

"Once you come to understand,  in your experience,  that you are just one life~form among many,  that you can meet the other life~forms here in moments of tremendous intimacy,  it enables one of the most wondrous of explorations possible.  To leave the human world behind,  the surface identity of the self,  and swim,  only one life~form among a multitude,  deep into the metaphysical background of the world is to enter a place where we meet there as living beings,  identical in nature at the core,  similar intelligences,  all given birth by Earth,  all expressed out of the Ocean of Being into form.  And in those moments of touch,   we look back at each other with luminous eyes and tell tales of the lives we have lived and the lands we have seen and speak of the commonalities of what it means to be alive on this Earth,  kin,  all of whom came from common ancestors long ago.

And then....sometimes,  in unique moments,  deep inside the experience,  we slide completely out of our frame and totally into the other's....and they into ours.  We then look into each other's eyes....my eyes through your eyes,  your eyes through my eyes.  Touch with our hearts,  your heart,  my heart,  and mine yours.  Here we experience the deepest possible intimacy that any living being can know.  There is a communicatory interblending of soul.  Something of the other then resides inside me and something of me inside the other.  Like the viral blending of genomes, we become in that moment a part of the other and they a part of us.  And when we return to this world,  something from the other remains inside us.  It makes us truly barbarian,  no longer civilized.  We are no longer presentable in polite company.

Still....it is possible to go even deeper yet.  It is possible to move inside the scenario itself,  the place from which all life~forms emerged.  It is the place where background        becomes      foreground,  the place where      environment      is the intelligence encountered,  the place where communication of a very different sort begins."

just stopping. anywhere. look around

coming up from Campsite A.  I stop 3 times to rest.  Sit.  Look around.  Look down

 

just this much.  Evidence of so much.  The rocks,  millennium.   Myriad fragments of plant people...stems,  leaves, seeds.  Small bits of these from seasons past.  Seeds clustered and lined in crevices between the stones and rocks.  Tree things

the arrangement of these "components" could not be more elegant.  Beauty IS.

 

 

look up and the going is going.  Searching for just the right place.

to stitch a butterfly's body

you realize how little,  really,  there is to it.  We mostly focus on their Wings.  Their Wings.  Butterfly Wings.  but then,  there's their bodies.  Which aren't much at all.  But then,  there is the Spirit of butterflies,  the All that they cause in us when we see them,  sailing and sailing and sailing

but back to the bodies,  the physical bodies.  How did they evolve?  I don't know.  I never have taken the time to find out.  I know that their numbers are dwindling.  Maybe i should know how they came to be.   

as i tried to stitch today,  the day all RAIN and so little light and i turned on the light of the table battery to even see enough to put the needle to cloth and couldn't really tell how that was going,  i couldn't see,  the body so few stitches of single thread of Deb's floss.  So little,  this body that carries the Wings.  But these butterflies,  the midwives to whatever that is in the center, getting born,  no matter what.