windthread

you wouldn't.  you wouldn't think that something this simple could take so long,  would take all afternoon.  It did.   It's not quite right, still.   Post and lintel.   That piece of desert driftwood always reaching, always touching the Sky.   I found it in an arroyo i used to walk in Arizona.  There was a lot before that and a lot after that,  and i remembered it today as i made such slow stitches….getting up often to stand and look at the Thing Itself through the screen door.  A few times going out to touch it.

Nothing ever really starts in any one place,  there's always so much that came before,  but i didn't let myself go there.  I began remembering when i left Michigan.  I needed to find the Bottom Line,  the Basic Equation  and i needed to be able to articulate that to my kids and hopefully give them a different life that grew from that hoped for bottom line.   

The Basic Equation:    a Good Life  =   _____________

So from Michigan to Oregon, to my long long friend Jane's where i imagined i would build a yurt on her back 40.  Lure the kids.   Right about then her husband decided to get a divorce.  So….

I bought the Airstream and hauled it to the top of a mountain not far away,  made my living making those dolls.  Farmer/Artists Market.   and a couple there told me about their land in Arizona.  They intended to NEVER go back to it,  I could live there however i wanted to.  I went.  Closer to New Mexico.   I lived there i don't really know how long.  I would call Jenny from the laundromat in Snowflake, Arizona.  It was painful.   I sat a lot on the roof of one of the homes on that land,  there were 3,  and every morning watch the coyotes run rabbit.   During the day,  there was NO sound except the creak of a windmill somewhere in the distance.  I walked.  I grieved and sat and longed for the kids but i'd made some kind of Stand and i couldn't turn my back on it.   After time,  Jenny asked,  in one of those Laundromat conversations,  if i could come back.  She'd had a second child and needed me to help so she could go to college classes.   I went back.  Lasted about a year and left again.  Nothing was different.   This time came directly to New Mexico.   Not long after,  she came with the kids.  Years later she left with the kids,  back to Michigan.    Then she came back.  Then she left again.  

So much.

All along,  that piece of wood has pointed.  Different places,  same Sky.    and really,  as i write this,  maybe that's what it   "says"….  Different places,  same Sky.

and now we all,  me,  Jenny, her kids,  have accumulated a lot of living,  a lot of understanding about bottom lines each in our own ways.  Maybe now we are Ready.  Maybe things take a lot of time to unfold.