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so…i got stoned.

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i like each stone a lot.  i like them within their company a lot.   BUT,  all of a sudden the Cloth felt Busy.

is it?,  i'm wondering?   or is it that it is just so long that i have seen the bottom….plain.  and,  if it IS Busy,  what will happen with the addition of the lizards that i had imagined to be among the stones. ?. ..

so…am just going to Look for tonight and tomorrow morning.  see how it all feels.  Today was not an easy day for quiet looking.   There were HUGE  Wind gusts, dust devils you could see coming at a distance.  the far fence that is most vulnerable,  once again, fell.  Twice.  Then, final time, i just left it.  the dogs know that i will ignore their escaping a couple times.   they speed about and make their grand tour through the horse pastures and i ignore this.  Then,  at some point, it's enough and i yell at them.  Enough!  they are not young.  by this point, they have each managed to hurt themselves a little,  are limping and usually that's that.  Today, maybe because it was such  Crazy Wind,  they kept it up.   So the last time they limped back through the hole in the fence,  they found that their dog beds had been thrown out on the porch and the dog door closed. 

Today it was 71 degrees.  Tomorrow there is supposed to be snow. 

 

 

 

 

 

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48 responses to “so…i got stoned.”

  1. deb Avatar
    deb

    well, Everybody must get stoned!

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  2. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    yup and just a variation on a Theme, i’m thinking. all
    involves a whole lot of sustained
    Looking
    i remembered when my friend Jane and i spent what seemed like hours in a local Detroit inner city grocery store
    staring at the first half gallon of Heavenly Hash icecream we had ever seen. trying to decide if it had been planted there by narcs or if it could POSSIBLY be for real…
    this would have been maybe 1964? and here i am. all these years later still
    Looking
    trying to figure out what’s real.

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  3. Robyn Ayaz Avatar
    Robyn Ayaz

    Yes, I feel like that today Grace – what is real? I have just found out that someone very close to me was not who I thought – or rather they had a whole different side I knew nothing about and that I just cannot comprehend. So what is real? Sometimes there are so many flaky things going on, you wonder if that is really you in the mirror! The stitching is real at least, holding the cloth – otherwise…….

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  4. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    it’s interesting, isn’t it.
    how this Cloth Stuff is playing out. i am fond of
    saying that i have no regret…or, only one, and it
    isn’t mine to regret, really…, being just a pawn
    in someone elses.
    but the Cloth. the Cloth lives True for me. and
    sometimes i think that i guess it’s a regret that i
    didn’t find it before
    but i didn’t. but i am so deeply happy that i know it
    now.

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  5. Valerianna Avatar
    Valerianna

    The scale of the cloth is so large, might it call for some LARGE stones? Maybe the busy-ness you feel is about scale? Large elements – boulders? on the bottom of the center cloth might give it contrast and depth. I;m thinking in landscape terms I guess, but its reading that way for me. And because it is, I’m seeing an anchoring element on the bottom. But, that would be my solution. I look forward to seeing where the cloth leads you. Its leading me around a beautiful collection of stones and grasses blowing in the wind. Small creatures scurry here and there and an arc of dark birds flies overhead. Warm, dry day. Just a little past noon. I love that the scale of this cloth means that I am watching the progression over such a long time, I really have gotten to know it – at least within a few degrees of separation.
    Love the story of the dogs, though I take it you weren’t laughing! Pasha does a crazy zooming around when its really windy. He gets incredibly riled up. I can just imagine what a pack of dogs do!
    I’m just paying attention to outside – seems your wind has made its way up here. Just in time for me to go to bed. Being under a tall canopy of trees in high winds does not always lend itself to a peaceful sleep….
    Long comment. Not lots of human contact today – all day in the studio – and looking a lot myself. Dissatisfied with my work, wanting to go deeper… So, hope my opening monologue about stones and boulders and anchoring elements is ok. as you asked – “is it?” though I imagine that is more a question to self than to readers…. I’ve been asking myself all kinds of questions today….
    And don’t even get me started on what is REAL!

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  6. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    you made me smile after a LONG day. i like the stones.. they are grounding 🙂
    your dogs also made me smile.. poor things out on the porch. i wonder how long that lasted.
    poor theo is here beside me with his elizabethan collar on and looking sad. we have gone to the dogs..

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  7. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    dogs with elizabethan collars.
    the now deceased brother of these dogs is Markie. he
    and Ramone got neutered at the appropriate age. came
    home with their E collars. those were the days when
    daily escape was what we did. they dug holes under
    the fence (that provided them with safety) and i patched
    it up. Over and Over and Over. Years.
    but back to the E collars. neutering. so…problems
    there. both had an undescended testical. mind you,
    except for Chinche, they are chihuahua/terrier. small.
    so a small undescended testical… 2.. back to the vet
    to get these drain tubes installed along their “equipment”.
    rudimentary. great vet. did the minimum. so…them
    their Collars, their plastic drain tubes running along the
    length of their weenies…and i go to work for A FEW
    HOURS and come home to find Markie, out in the road!!!,
    collar and all…a hole under the fence to accomodate it…
    they are old now. i think the “babies”, Ramone and Lily,
    are what, 8yrs? 9? and it’s the same old same old. they
    are Opportunistic. See a way out/Go.
    i am old now too and tired of trying to keep them in one piece. the across the road dogs are creepy. who knows
    what can happen. but…somehow, i feel like i have
    completed my Karmic Obligation.
    (beds/dogs IN now. dog door Open. they are on their
    own for the night. tomorrow, i’ll prop up the fence
    again. probably with snow flakes in my hair)

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  8. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    Many things to think about with this. i will wait till
    morning.
    love to you………

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  9. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    good story.. i have never been a dog person until moving in with the doctor. now we have two. since i’ve been here we have had dog back surgery, rat poison, giardia leading to irritable bowel syndrome and 6 months of diarrhea. total paralysis for 10 hours…that is on one dog.. she is still living. now poor theo hit by a car last tuesday. .. feel like my karmic debt should be finished soon. couldn’t they just give me years of pleasure now.
    sleep well friend. hope the snow misses you ..
    suppose to be nice here tomorrow. i could use a nice day at home..

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  10. jude Avatar
    jude

    busy. not sure. sometimes a composition seems busy not so much because of things but because of the space between them. sometime evenness does that. your mind runs around not knowing where to focus. and it gets tired. and looking is much like being stoned if you aren’t looking for anything in particular, usually that changes after looking a bit. except when you are really smashed. ha!
    what i like about story cloth, if it is really The Story, is that you can wrap yourself in it and rest till tomorrow. might be 70 here today. might not.
    i am so like those dogs lately.

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  11. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    I AM WEARY TOO GRACE. A March weariness, a life’s weariness sometimes takes hold. I posted nothing today. Just reading my blog roll now at 10AM, the day already slipping away from me and I’ve just begun. I think Jude is right about the space between all the elements…that it makes the eye wander from room to room trying to follow a path that has not yet been laid out for it….I mean that the business you are feeling about the piece…the whole piece….the whole vastness of the piece….might be just that….that the elements themselves are searching for their connection. So I suggest that perhaps you might think about that connection in some concrete way, and then make the connection visible…..lead the looker into the clothscape the way you would lead someone into the landscape…one foot after the other, making a path visible till the elements connect logically for your narrative. Every element feeds into the dialogue until the whole cloth speaks in one voice. Your voice.
    The dogs are a part of the landscape too, and the wind, and being stoned, being grounded in your space with all it’s elements, history, and knowledge. We cannot blame a dog for dogness any more than a human for humanness. My dogs (cats and birds)…those that fell to my care, were my trials and pleasures, my comfort and distress. To themselves they were just creatures.

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  12. Henrietta (aka ani or zani) Avatar
    Henrietta (aka ani or zani)

    i don’t think it’s too busy but i think jude and valerianna have good thoughts. i think they are too carefully place – maybe deliberate. i once saw a film on the way jean arp created with his cut-outs. he would throw them up in the air and let them fall as they may for the placement. maybe that would be a way to try placing stone – toss them up and see where they land…just a thought. cheers –

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  13. saskia Avatar
    saskia

    hmmm, had a look over at What is style post to compare the whole piece with the above version, yes there is now less emptiness down below, and it feels different.
    oftentimes adding/changing something in one (or more) spot(s) means change somewhere else…..it would seem you have arrived at a turning point in this piece; I think in my own work it always happens, things flow easily for a while and then I add someting and that brings along a change and means I have to really LOOK and STEP BACK and RETHINK the piece as a WHOLE once more, and that very often means taking radical steps, brrrrr like cutting up or removing bits I really liked….but in the end the piece becomes what it should be. I’m sorry if this sounds vague, but when I am in the midst of this process, it feels anything but vague, it is very real and scary and enjoyable all at the same time.
    not that this helps you Grace, I very much like the idea Henrietta suggested of throwing bits up in the air as a tool for continuing, your eye will decide anyway.
    Maybe you need to add a strip of cloth under the middle panel for weight and depth, oh I don’t know.
    and those dogs, they do keep one busy; over here our dog had an infection in his arthritic left frontpaw, he is now recovering but boy was he ill all of a sudden, he’s limping now, I do wonder how well he will be and if we will be able to continue walking together; for the time being he is improving by the hour I live with that! xx

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  14. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    theater, movement and alive are the words that come. there is quiet stillness in the individual areas, but the whole is a lifetime of story in action, maybe moving with the wind?

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  15. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    well…What IS REAL?????? the constant selfasking question around here.
    I like very much your response…which combined a response to this cloth but also a response to you Of you….the
    best kind.
    and i am thinking about size…but what i saw most this
    morning is the close to invisible
    tree.

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  16. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    “the space between them”
    “evenness”
    this might be it.
    if you’re like those dogs then my sympathy to the Man.

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  17. jude Avatar
    jude

    he always takes me back….

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  18. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    “to themselves they were just creatures”. yup. and
    about keeping them safe….maybe the key word is really,
    KEEP

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  19. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    it’s a very GOOD thought….

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  20. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    i’m guessing it’s the tree…am going to see what can
    happen there
    and
    i hate to say it, but
    maybe more grasses (eeeee)

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  21. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    Action…an important thought…..action…hmmmmmmmmmm

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  22. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    I laughed at your dog story…combined with your related comments…a great essay.
    I like how the stones and birds make a frame of sorts, So now I wonder what will happen with the two side rooms.

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  23. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    so far.
    we all have our limits though
    they are off again today.

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  24. grace Forrest~Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest~Maestas

    OH NO!!!!!!!
    when i said that i remembered Mr. Bill on Sat Night Live…
    do you remember him?
    OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    this is like doing some little home improvement project….
    little being the key word
    and suddenly seeing a trillion other GLARING flaws….

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  25. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Robyn, rest easy, it happens to the best of us. I once had a very good friend and she and her husband were a couple of the very very few I allowed to watch my young son. Which they did, many times. A few years after moving from that town, I discovered that He was NOT who he said he was. In fact Nothing about him was real. He was in the witness protection because he had testified against some of his former partners in crime. His name and occupation were not his own. It gets far too complicated for a small comments box, but it involved drugs and crime and young girls and things that would never be OK with me, especially to leave my young boy with them. Boy, talk about trust!

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  26. jude Avatar
    jude

    yes i did that with the hearts, remember. what did i call that? oh ha!

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  27. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    What about a more substantial tree…..couldn’t a tree (even if there isn’t one yet in the yard)…..couldn’t a substantial tree with roots and spreading branches hold (“keep”), or embrace (gather) all the elements within it’s domain? It occurs to me the artist herself is that tree, and she knows what only she knows.

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  28. ali Avatar
    ali

    after reading the title of your post, I’m smiling–ear-to-ear– on this smoggy, grimy-aired Beijing morning. looking out over the concrete high-rises into the murky, dust storm-like grit one feels a bit stoned–in every possible sense of the word. busy–your cloth? I think not at all–I see more–more stones skipping along, more grass, your lizards running hither thither, maybe even a large lizard encompassing the entire cloth, maybe the stones, grasses, flowers, birds, moons, butterflies are a big lizard’s scales, waiting to be held by the outline of said creature…maybe I’m stoned, seeing things?

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  29. Valerianna Avatar
    Valerianna

    Oh, yes, that INCREDIBLE tree… I love that. What did you see about it?

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  30. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i only looked.
    the day was really bizarre…like in BIZARRE. ENORMOUS
    straight line wind, sand sailing through the house…yes,
    inside. things sailing through the air outside and banging around. all the neighbors beer cans came here.
    it was CRAZY, but also fascinating. i spent a lot of
    time just watching it…watching how everything would
    suddenly change directions. i am very used to WIND as
    Weather. but this was something else. i had read some
    thing about Solar Flair and i can nod to that. it was very different.
    so i just tried to see about lizards.
    tomorrow will be quiet and i will look more at the tree.

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  31. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    the tree maybe. it’s there, just hard to see.

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  32. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i love the LARGE lizard you can envision. i think it’s
    from all those DRAGONS undulating about for the New Year?
    “they say” that things just rise up from the Place where
    our feet are ….Dieties, Ways of Being…to inform us on how to live in each Place……..
    i, over time, acquired the ability to just See that way.
    Be that way. stoned, as a natural state. it’s nice.
    but i also have such fond memories of the 60’s.
    and again…thank you for thinking about me, my cloth
    way over there in China. i just LOVE that……..

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  33. ali Avatar
    ali

    lizards and dragons–dragon lizards? I love seeing your work, reading your thoughts, and viewing your place/space from time to time–

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  34. Valerianna Avatar
    Valerianna

    I just looked at the weather report here, and just as I did so, and was reading about how we were going to be getting showers with high gusting winds, it started. Scary winds, like the kind you are having. Supposedly ours will be brief, along with the rain shower, but I can hear harmonics in the forest. When I hear that, the winds are STRONG.
    When I lived in Greece, the rooftiles were held on with stones. Every once in a while when there were very high winds, the stones AND the tiles would come crashing from the roof.
    I think beer cans might be less lethal. But sand blowing through the house? Yikes!!

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  35. Robyn Ayaz Avatar
    Robyn Ayaz

    Thanks Nancy and Grace, you are comforting and once the shock has worn off and I have stitched it in, maybe it will improve – you see, it was my sister!

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  36. Robyn Ayaz Avatar
    Robyn Ayaz

    Grace, this has been a great post! Your poor old dogs; to us it sounds mischievous but after a few repeats it can get a bit old. We have a cat, Rosie ((a boy, long story) and he hates the wind and thunder. He is the most vocal cat I have ever known – he starts with a meow which blows out to a wail and then a full throated howl. I threaten to make him into gloves on a routine basis! Can you imagine the wind and then this animal screeching at the same time – aaah! Cuts right into the brain!Your cloth is true, maybe more in the spaces between but basically it is true and real, in my humble opinion.

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  37. Janet Avatar
    Janet

    Hi Grace! Wow – you’ve come a long way – the cloth is looking amazing. I like the circle effect created by the grasses and the birds. Stones on the bottom would complete that feeling – looks like you are enjoying setting them down there. Really like all the different areas that draw you in, but still, I feel they are uniting into a whole. Loving the hand dyed cloths too.

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  38. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Ohhhh…hang in there.

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  39. deb taylor Avatar
    deb taylor

    I am intrigued and entertained here

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  40. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    well…having had an experience that i had never imagined
    could have possibly EVER occur in my life, when i felt
    betrayed beyond all betrayal, what it has left me with is
    that i just always was who i said i was. before it,
    through it, and after it.
    i think that’s all any of us can be. i hope that the
    sting of it eases for you soon. it will just take time
    to sort through. i think the hardest part when it’s
    someone you love, is that sense of there being nothing
    reliable…suddenly Everything comes into question.
    my heart is with you. love,

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  41. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    i am better and better with
    “weather”
    picturing what is happening outside my little metal box
    as connected with the planet….that “my” Wind is the
    same entity as encircles the Whole…in those images of
    the Earth with swirls on it’s round surface…
    just is.
    sand in the house is because there are so many cracks
    everywhere. partly my choice of those old windows i
    wanted so much in the ROOM and also that door that daughter,granddaughter and i built that needs it’s custom frame really. so…it’s choice in a way.

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  42. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    like on the tip of my tongue…
    it’s on the tip of my mind, yes…i remember….

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  43. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    oh your boy Rosie.
    the little dogs were not really ever my choice. they
    are left over from the now deceased husband. but what
    do you DO with animals that have claimed their home
    with you?

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  44. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    Janet…thank you
    i love the hand dye too. so much wanting the weather to
    warm so i can get all those pots going again…

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  45. grace Forrest Maestas Avatar
    grace Forrest Maestas

    deb t. THANKS!!!! for looking. it’s been going on for
    a long time…this Diaries Cloth. it is from Jude’s
    Magic Diaries classes. this is the second of two…has
    been continuing for almost a year.

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  46. Joan Avatar
    Joan

    Grace, I just love your cloth–the colors, the movement, the thick and thin, bright and muted–the way you’ve put it all together! You have a wonderful eye. Too busy, no, not at all. This cloth feels sacred to me–a statement about life in the big sense.

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  47. Robyn Ayaz Avatar
    Robyn Ayaz

    Thank you dear Grace.

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  48. Robyn Ayaz Avatar
    Robyn Ayaz

    Aaaah!

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