maybe it had to do with having needed to be so "in the world/of the world" all week?   But being back with this Cloth was an experience today.

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All day i stitched.  My mind wandered at first from thing to thing i "knew",  like thinking about how i have arranged for a very Fine buckling from Deanna to Kelly.  How yesterday Kelly talked long on the phone about how they have defined their goals for the Micro Ag Loan they are asking for.  How they will move soon to the 20 acres she owns in San Marcial.  How she told her Dream for that land.  That Barbara and Magic,  the Goats from here would free range under the watchful eyes of Gardian Livestock Dogs.  How she has a very wide and deep arroyo whose rim would be planted with fruit trees,  the rest of the land near the homestead planted with Lavender….she will learn to Keep Bees.  I thought of this.  I thought of Jude's Small Journey's post about Illustrative…Conceptual….what is Conceptual?  Is Judy Martin's work Conceptual?  I really don't know what Conceptual is.  Mind wandered in this back and forth.  Then mind went to how the Old Cowboy is waiting to die, really.  I have told him over and over that maybe he should not just wait because it might well be a long long time.  There's no way to know,  but i thought about all the things i think about dying because he is interested in it.  And it would be good if i try to know some about what i think.  All the while i am stitching these hills and depressions in this piece of cloth,  looking so long and so closely at the subtle variations of it,  thinking where i might put those invisible baste clusters and what DO they mean to me and really…

I got lost.  But didn't know it.  But suddenly something Called me into the moment and i had an extremely uhhhh,  disorienting few moments.  It was an altered state,  even a dissociative state.  When i stopped the needle and set it to rest,  well….hmmmm,  this is hard to tell,  but i really didn't know uhhh,  Anything.  I didn't know any thing to THINK.  I was  just  floating free.  Mind just

Floating,  unattached to anything….and i realized that i had no idea what i'd been thinking for the last while…how long i don't know…but there was no sense of it.  And i began looking around,  groping for some sense of grounding and everything looked equally as well, equal…nothing really of any more importance than anything else.  And it was disconcerting and i wondered what had happened,  and i began to do small things to "see if i could do them",  i wasn't sure.  Wasn't sure i could.  I  checked the email.  Put the roast vegetables into a bowl and into the fridge.  I fed the dogs.  Looked out all the windows,  looked at where i'll put the seedling tray tomorrow on the shelf…made self think of the process of that.  Everything seemed Functional.  But i still wasn't sure.  So i went Out Side

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yes.  the Sky was there.  The Rim.  and yes.  i knew how to download the pics in Picasa.  OK.  yes.

Things hadn't changed.  I pet Tay and Chinche and went out to feed the Goats.  Stuff was the same.  I hooked up the yard hose and watered the raised beds,  dug in a little, and it was good.  OK.

But that sense of disorientation remains.  This Cloth is about that.  It's called Transmigration.  It's to help me understand that period of "time",  that "space" between the last exhale of this form before an Inhale of another.  This is what i am looking for.  And i found it.  In buddhist terms,  Tibetan buddhist,  it's called Bardo.  And the important thing is to be ready to let go.  To Fly Free as we so glibbly say.  Fly Free,  we say.  But it's a liminal state,  with a quality of ambiguity or dis orientation.  We have to let go.  We have to Fly Free.  

Whether someone believes in successive  "lives" or if they believe in going to Heaven or if they don't believe in anything at all,  no matter.  There is the moment of Letting Go.  Of setting yourself asail.  Of all that is familiar.  All you know that you know to the complete unknown.

So…

It has been a really really GREAT DAY.

 

 

 

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20 responses to “altered state”

  1. Liz Avatar

    Yes it has been … and now even better for knowing yours was a good one, too

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  2. grace Avatar

    ahhhhhh. crepes! something HARD to fly free of

    Like

  3. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    There is a booming bass thudding rap somewhere within my walls as I type. Someone somewhere near is ‘partying’. It’s not above or below or right next door, but it is a presence I would do without if I could, fly free from, consign to elsewhere. Your thoughts today were whirling from pillar to post and hither and yon while your stitches, those intricate stitches, were grounding you at the tips of your fingers until you got lost in that dissociation. Going outside was the best thing. how fortunate to have such an outside to go to, and critters to care for and tomorrows to plan for. My own day disappeared in the smallest tasks and many naps until my friend phoned that she landed safely back home. All’s well.

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  4. Mo Crow Avatar

    beautiful journey!

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  5. Dana Avatar

    Whoa Grace! How amazing to have this bardo experience! To float free. Thank you for sharing…I know it must be hard to articulate. Your cloth is taking on a feeling of rotation, like a pinwheel or a spiral, which I think is appropriate for Transmigration.

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  6. jude Avatar

    we are often trained not to do the fly free thing. i think it is good practice.

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  7. grace Forrest Avatar

    yes. I thought of this from you today, Sunday, as i moved through the day. How things can be so easily touched by things that are foreign to our own sense by proximity and i thought that is why i will give whatever it takes to keep that land next to me FREE. if i can.
    i remembered when across the road there was Sharon who her man friend Simon brought from Arizona and how she would play her truck radio/tape thing so LOUD, the Conway Twitty tape, be drunk and it would get stuck, the blip, over and over and i thought i might go crazy but she set the trailer on fire one night and it was OVER. And i have asked that guy who owns that land to PLEASE don’t do that again So far so good.

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  8. grace Forrest Avatar

    it was different. Not something like a meditation, but something
    Out of the Blue and uhhhhh, well, of ItSelf
    was frightening in it’s way

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  9. grace Forrest Avatar

    the fly free thing is of it’s own accord. There is no control,
    it is
    free
    of it’s own accord
    It is. It is very good Practice cause it’s how it will go, whether we think it’s good practice or not.

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  10. grace Forrest Avatar

    this
    there it is again
    can apply
    over and
    over

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  11. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    fly free is different than fall free and spin free. Just sayin’.

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  12. Mo Crow Avatar

    I tried to cross the River Styx consciously during a 5 hour surgery, figuring it was a good opportunity to make the attempt under controlled atmosphere conditions but the boatman would’t take me. So I try to embrace every second of this extra time… to fly into the unknown of death consciously is one of my long held goals.

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  13. judy martin Avatar

    What a thing….that you think of this as extra time. I didn’t know.

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  14. judy martin Avatar

    Wish I could write like you, Grace. I understand every word.
    xx

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  15. grace Avatar

    and for this, i have so so much Respect and Love…this sense
    of extra time, and how she lives it

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  16. grace Avatar

    i wish i could Create like you do, I understand every stitch.

    Like

  17. Wendy Watson Avatar

    What a wonderful feeling . . . to fly free. As I sit on a sand dune facing the sea, with the sun on one cheek and the wind and the other I can only imagine what it must be like to be out of Time.

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  18. grace Avatar

    hello, Wendy Watson….
    yes. to fly free.
    to have the sea. What that might BE!, to have the sea on a cheek…
    like here, a desert…
    but i do some, a little about the sea….i remember it enough to smell it

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