we'll jump to the chase:

F
you can see where i have cut the base cloth and wanted to WEAVE in the strips.  well, i did that and it was NOT right.  I WANTED to weave in the strips but it was ….interrupted.   so.  pulled them OUT.   Now What?

What i am needing to make here is a cloth called  "Luring Crows".  that's the only thing for sure.  a cloth called   "Luring Crows".   but i can't do it so far.

so in a day that really was a very good day because the buck pen got  work done on it so if there is snow and freezing rain, they have an option…..whether they in their own thinking Choose to take advantage of that option or not???????   It IS there.  and i can know i have done the best I can.  They were very polite and accomodating during the rennovation today.  i think it was because there was Bill, who i work for, but who is somehow karmically related, him…..a male person?  and also the whirring of electrical tools.  a sawzall and electric drill.   Whatever, they maintained their distance and didn't snort and spit and push and mouth my hazmat outfit as they do when i am alone with them.  i spent small moments now and then just petting Sunny Ray who responded with  Love and tenderness.  Gideon was manly as was Tenzen.  Buckwheat kept great distance from all the Unfamiliar.  but in the end,  if it rains freezing drops,  if it snows sleet,  they have a place that will be dry and has bedding straw, large enough for all of them if Their own Rules allow it.  i have done my best.

and then,  i plopped the skins from a pomegranate in the copper pot.  i gave the second one to my neighbor asking that she give me the skin.

002f
that's it for now about this.

Nothing is pretty in this moment.  Everything feels very Ify and Unknown and partly because it's January and partly because it IS ify and unknown.

I am dreaming more vividly than usual.  and usual is bad enough.  i dreamed 2 nights ago about the old house on Spring St.  in Ann Arbor Michigan…that old stone basement there and the repetitive dream back yard that i don't know but is often attached to the Spring St house in the dreams.  and there were people and they had dogs and i won't go into those details but it ended with realizing that their dogs had somehow gotten in and were chasing the goats and running down next to me was one of the goats and i saw her eye..left eye and she was terrified and had that "look" that goats get  and i felt her head and it was wet and warm and i thought it was blood, but it actually wasn't, it was just dog spit and mud…she was ok…but i saw her eye and i saw her mouth, how they pant, and what has stuck with me about this dream is that i know that i would do ANYTHING.  ANYTHING for these goats.

 

 

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31 responses to “Nothing…..is “pretty” right now”

  1. Jacky Avatar

    Sounds like you are feeling unsettled Grace…maybe the beginning of a New Year. Maybe the cold and dark? I hope there’s more light and warmth soon for you and your goats.
    Love your copper pot. I wish my copper pot was small enough to put on my stove (but it’s huge and has no handles…not sure how to use it yet).
    Do you have anything else in the dye bath other than pomegranate skin? And, do you simmer it for a while and add cloth then let it cool? Hope you dont mind me asking you questions…
    Good luck with luring crows. I love that name and how your cloths seem to spring from your environment.
    Jacky xox

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  2. kaite Avatar
    kaite

    i know EXACTLY how you feel!

    Like

  3. Mo Crow Avatar

    Back in 2004 a girlfriend was advised by her astrologer to wear black and take cheese and mustard seed to the park by the sea where the crows lived as a ritual to honour & feed the crows. She invited me along and it added magic through ritual to her life as an academic and it was the beginning of my friendship with the crows. We see them every day, they fly straight over our house from their roost in the tallest tree a block away but I never feed them unless they are injured and need to be taken to the vet.
    Your goats are getting the very best care you can give, you have such great heart Grace!
    And I really love the beginning to your cloth, it looks like a high up crow’s eye view flying over a green valley…

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  4. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Hang the Luring Crows cloth outside from one of your tree limbs. Let it dance in the wind with the green strips of the possible weave dangling from the edges. Let it feel the crisp of the air, get wet by the cold of rain and snow. Meld the cloth to the elements and let it fly as the crows do… You will know when it is time to bring it in and begin again.

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  5. jude Avatar

    Ify could be What ify…
    Anything, I wonder what exactly that is sometimes, it is very big.
    You will love the pomegranate and copper. Sometimes I get green. But mostly a lovely ochre.
    Luring. Luring uncertainty maybe.

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  6. patricia Avatar

    hi grace. found myself missing your posts and then there you were–here you are. love marti’s suggestion — sometimes think that’s what i should do with myself! ha.

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  7. saskia Avatar

    hi, just to let you know I dropped by….

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  8. grace Forrest Avatar

    unsettled. ?. … maybe that’s one of the words for it,
    but it’s January. it’s the COLD. how everything takes
    so much longer, or can’t be done at all. how the skin
    at the edges of some of my fingernails is cracking and
    HURTS because of fooling around with water out there. how it’s been a concerted Effort to keep the Goats water clean
    and thawed, taking half a day off and on because of
    needing to haul 10 gal. bucket of hot water out.
    January. 25 more days.
    and maybe that’s the part that is really the most non
    pretty, is looking at myself and knowing that all these
    reactions and feelings are SO SO DUMB. that if i could
    just Stop the thoughts and do what needs to be done, it
    would be easier. but i can’t hang on to that for more
    than a minute. so, repeat: 25 more days.
    the dye pot…not yet. later i hope to consult India’s
    books. and no…i don’t simmer it. i won’t use up the
    stove’s propane with dyeing. i just leave the pot on the
    wood stove so the temperature vascillates a lot over
    days. i don’t mind the questions at all except that my
    answers probably aren’t as useful as other peoples.
    yup. luring crows. it’s already better.
    love to you, Jacky…

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  9. grace Forrest Avatar

    i know you do. and i can’t help but think it’s some
    kind of karmic work, karmic obligation, to learn to
    love in this way.

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  10. grace Forrest Avatar

    so beautifully put…”it added magic through ritual to her life as an academic” That thought has great meaning for
    me now. Thank you.
    and thank you for seeing a high up view of a valley, last night to me it looked like nothing at all.
    love,

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  11. grace Forrest Avatar

    what a beautiful story you tell….but…already it’s
    happening. and i am very into it.

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  12. grace Forrest Avatar

    Anything
    I don’t know, but it was important to say that. to put that word there, Twice., the blog being Witness.
    and maybe it’s just a kind of Willingness to meet whatEver…a kind of not knowing anything at all about what will occur, about how i will, or, even If i can (as in am able), do what is needed??? having no experience to go on.
    So…back to Willingness. another W word.
    to just be Willing to do Anything, having no idea what Anything might be

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  13. grace Forrest Avatar

    and luring. yes, the thought/word surprised me. but
    it came, very sure of itself.

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar

    do with self…yes!, really. me too. but in warmer
    weather. will be over to your “house” later today.
    xoxo

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  15. grace Forrest Avatar

    thank you…it’s good to be told….

    Like

  16. mimmin dove Avatar
    mimmin dove

    Ooh I can just picture that goat’s terror from your description of your dream, that Eye, so vivid and disturbing. If you have a bad dream that recurs, try to think of it just before you go to sleep and you are much less likely to dream of it.
    Glad cloth is happier now or else you might need a ‘luring cloth’ cloth x

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  17. Vicky Avatar

    i too have a soft spot for crows. i have been keeping an eye on my pair, and keeping the h-bird feeder filled for that pair too. funny…just noticed i called the crows ‘mine’…
    cloth…haven’t been able to touch it for months….being a full time grandmother is energy making ….and taking. i will watch you and yours for my viewing pleasure!

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  18. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    When you post, i am transported to the place and your spirit in it. the piece is begun and will continue, as you will I suspect. Night terrors are familiar to me too, though I seldom dream. i did, however dream a bit early this morning, having spent most of the night wakened by the thoughtless chatter, high heels on cell phones up and down the marble stairs, and door slamming of young cannibals now living in my building and most evident on Friday and Saturday nights…the dream was a snow scene, like the one witnessed in the finale of Huston’s film of the James Joyce (from The Writers Almanac–“James Joyce’s famous short story “The Dead” is set at a party for the Feast of the Epiphany. The story ends: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Joyce also gave us a secular meaning of “epiphany,” using the word to mean the “revelation of the whatness of a thing,” the moment when “the soul of the commonest object […] seems to us radiant.” http://youtu.be/z6FGIaWaQxA)—in my dream the shadow in the graveyard was my mother, and behind her shadows of long gone Aunts. I was influenced no doubt by the reviewing and by the words at the end of the story which I had just reread. So I woke from the haze and stumbled about awhile thinking of them, of Joyce and soon, after reading your post, of you and the goats. It is a terrible thing this loving–the bittersweet of it.

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  19. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    I messed up the link above so here it is clean
    http://youtu.be/z6FGIaWaQxA

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  20. Deb G Avatar

    I love the care you give the goats… I need to start dyeing again soon. I don’t have a copper pot, but I do have some copper pipe I’m going to place in another container to see if I can get the same results.

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  21. grace Forrest Avatar

    they aren’t “bad” dreams. in them, i am never afraid.
    but they are INTENSE dreams of such odd situations often.
    like i took a 20 minute nap this afternoon and in it,
    was riding a bicycle through a very large city, like
    Detroit, here…i don’t know what is a very large City in
    Scotland, but anyway, i had an almost flat tire and
    the “story” of the dream was how was i going to figure out
    how to put air in it????? i was asking all manner of
    people, stopping and asking, where there would be some
    air for this tire and i needed to get “home”
    so, like that. kind of Problem Solving dreams maybe?

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  22. grace Forrest Avatar

    Vicky…the crows probably refer to you as “Ours”.
    that feels good. that while you do what you need to do,
    you will visit here. again…i said earlier, i would
    do ANYTHING. here you are with these little girls, saying
    the same. Bless you.

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  23. grace Forrest Avatar

    I LOVE THIS COMMENT.
    EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    and i am reading this last sentence…a terrible thing
    this loving and i think how i often have thought that
    my whole life was just a huge lesson in KINDS OF LOVING.
    so…of course…here it is another way…
    that’s a line to some song…here it is another way…
    with the kind of loving ominous quality,
    oh, love to you

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  24. grace Forrest Avatar

    once again i have to say so much depends on the quality
    of our individual WATER.
    and the goats care….oh Wha. when i have hacked out
    the ice and pulled it out in chunks and flung those
    chunks and then filled the tub with clear water, how
    they stand and watch so intently and when the tub is
    full, come and drink. drink these long long swallows
    of water…”slaking” their thirst and i just want to
    give them that Pleasure, even though a few alfalfa
    stems floating is really ok to….i want to watch
    them swallow, their necks and then how they stand away
    and look up. Maybe i am going Crazy.

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  25. grace Forrest Avatar

    i know you know about this. because i know how
    chickens drink, how they dip their beaks and draw
    the water in, then point their beaks skyward to swallow,
    before dipping again.
    things drinking, swallowing, is such an incredible gesture

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  26. Nancy Avatar

    Your writing always pulls me in. Today, in the car, we saw hundreds of crows moving together above our heads. More and more kept joining into the end of the line…it stretched on forever. Probably more than 100 crows. Then, instantly, the all began to turn, on a dime and head back the way they’d come from. I’ve never seen anything like this with crows. It looked like the videos of the starlings. But this was crows, right over my town. Right over my head. It was something.
    Can’t wait to see the cloth, now that the luring has begun 🙂
    I just tonight finished ‘Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. You may enjoy it, especially the paring down of personal belongings, the problem solving that need to take place and the looking inner and outward. Some of what she writes, reminds me of the way you often see things.

    I too am an active dreamer. Wake up tired from all I’ve done while asleep 🙂 And I too can relate to the sore fingers, as I’ve got one of those cracks on my thumb from bleaching little tables & chairs and diaper changing tables…washing many little hands. Winter can be hard that way 🙂

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  27. grace Forrest Avatar

    oh!, all this is Great!…that you know/have seen this,
    how they gather. i had the most wonderful explanation of this once and i don’t know what became of it, but they
    gather to exchange information…like the Native Peoples
    PowWows, this twice yearly for crows…HOW LUCKY to have
    witnessed!!!
    and that you know about these cracks on the fingers…
    how they cannot be avoided but also are hard.
    and dreams…WHY???????? i wonder. but they ARE that
    way. every every time i sleep.
    MUCH LOVE, nancy…..

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  28. Nancy Avatar

    Much love to you too Grace xoxo
    PS Neosporin helps in the cracks 🙂

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  29. linda Avatar

    i know it’s silly. but i feel that way about my dog. he is such a lovable creature. when i feed him sometimes i am struck by how it is to love an animal that you are taking full responsibility for.
    i read a head and you said how hard it is to leave a project. i am off to work this morning. i have stared at a piece i have going and can’t find a way for it to go forward. it is just there but no spirit to it. so i hate leaving it and want to stare some more. i feel like i just had so much time off and now going to work is when the inspiration comes.
    uggggg.
    i hate the cold..
    will think of you today

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  30. linda Avatar

    i keep commenting and then coming back to find they are not here.
    is my words going to the ether?
    hope not..
    i am here

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  31. grace Forrest Avatar

    linda…i think? they are here? about your dog and
    having to leave for work just as you begin to connect
    with the inspiration????? that was yesterday?????
    yes…were there more?
    let me know….

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