i made more branches. Skipped around on the computer, reading, to Democracy Now, mostly, but then News threads. I tried, but couldn't watch the actual inauguration. I looked at pics of airplanes filled with women on their Way…that was the best of it. I felt something that i have no word for. I searched inside myself all day but could find no word for it. Part of that might be that i seem to have a cold, but that's almost an aside, a kind of Of Course thing. just this vague pervasive feeling of sickness.
I watched how the Threads move, back and forth around. How i'd planned to make the Killer Hot Mango Chutney but ended up making my mother's spagetti instead, in this family called Gramma Lassie's Spagetti, Lassie a shortening of her name, Vlasta, which means mother country in Moravian or Czech, my mother, who i could never come close to, my mother, conceived by an immigrant and born in Nebraska by that immigrant mother who did not speak English. This spagetti recipe i'm sure from maybe Good HouseKeeping Magazine or Woman's Day in the 50's, of Campbells Tomato Soup and bacon, the daring ingredient being mushrooms that were considered a delicacy in my childhood home and only there because Ed, the egg man also grew them in some shed.
I am so uhhhh, softened maybe. Softened to the point of mush. I think of the children of the 7 Generations, those born and those yet to be born. and i want to lie flat on this Earth and hold on for dear life. For them, but also for me, the Goats. Tay. The plant people. Tazmeena the old cat, the insects wintering over in their secret places, the Lizards in their deep underrock homes, the bull snake, all the birds who fiercely wake everyday and place their naked feet on branches….o
i am so to the point of mush.
as i stitched the branches, i thought…the "name" of this cloth is Heart of a Tree. Heart of a Tree.
and then late in the day, there is a Question from Acey in the comments yesterday and i felt it like how it might feel to have that cardiac defibrillator applied to my mush. She asks:
"What, exactly, has to be "made okay" about the drawing element? are you talking about something compositional, styalistic, some type of inner narrator who has a rule the drawing element is breaking, or is it something else entirely?"
this question brought me to where i AM. Here. doing what i do. For whatever reason.
i felt the question as enlivening, energizing.
i don't know i have an answer but i love asking self the question and going there to wonder exactly what i DO mean?
i think some of all those things. composition, style, rules. I have no cloth background except Jude. Spirit Cloth. Spirit Cloth is my world. I don't go other places on the internet, except for like Judy Martin which is another world entirely, or Saskia's world which is closer to me but still ….not the drawing. Maybe there are others Out There that draw and stitch, one next to the other???? I don't know. So mostly it's a matter of not having a Niche? not having Others who are like me? How we like to feel like we have Clan?
So i am loving this question because it is company for me in what i'm doing, a question can be really great Company. I want what i make to be congruent. to be Coherent, maybe is a better word. I want the images of the Cloth to Flow. to be a pleasing flow, eye and heart, and in this flow, to tell some story that is universal enough that anyone who looks can feel it.
so i'll come back to this tomorrow. Tonight i am a little sick and also decided that on inauguration day it might be ok to have a glass of wine at 4 oclock. which sets the tone.
Thank you Acey.
windthread 
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