windthread

one week from today my brother,  7 years younger than i,  will arrive with his youngest son.   

From Minnesota.  Wish i still had the atlas for that…..where the train will wander,  before bringing them to  Albuquerque.  They will be here some days then go off to Arizona to visit his longstanding friend and then return a few days before heading back by train to Minnesota.  Travel.  Seems it's in the Wind.  I think about my brother and in my head he is maybe 20 or at most 30.   When he was trouble.  Riding his motorcycle from Minnesota to Michigan.  He's an old man now.  Funny,  that.    Not trouble anymore.  Brother.  My brother.   hmmmmm.  His youngest son who doesn't believe he has a sister.

waiting for Word from this Cloth

and i've started the uhhh,  what?…..i've started the routine,  i guess that's good enough a word.  I very quietly put some Pellets in the stainless  steel milk bucket.  Just a very small amount.  Not like in the past,  when,  before that Great SNOW STORM of 2015,  when they were accustomed to a bucket of pellets for a snack around 3 oclock…because they HAD been bred or milking Goats…when they were accustomed to that but the almost 2 ft of snow made it impossible,  so we broke the habit….

but it's interesting that they haven't forgotton.  The sight of me coming out the door of the Room with that bucket is still imprinted in their minds.  More than anything,  Goats love food.  Foodies.  Goats are Foodies.   So to get ready to convince them that getting in to the trailer is a good thing,  i do this.  Small amounts.  like small.  but enough to give them that EDGE of wanting.  I am trying too,  to bring Onday to the position of Lead Goat.  Since Snow Bunny is gone,  no one has taken this position and it's an important position for a goatherd to rely on.  But no one has.  I don't know why.  I guess,  because there isn't a NEED?  Don't know.  Tonight when i called them for the evening feed,  it was Karma that came first.  All it takes is one of them to come first and the rest follow.  Tonight Karma….who is somewhere in the middle realm of the Order….????

and i'm also working with the buck goats and pellets.  Sunny Ray is very changed since his stay at Jan's to breed her does.  He is stand offish and wary…runs.  No longer the baby stinky boy he was when he left here.  He was there past one year.  And pretty much left without human contact.  Before he left he was looking for it.  Easy to brush and love.  But he came back a proven buck.  Different.  He and his friend Jack Flash, play at running away.  It's not fear,  but a kind of playfulness but still will be less easy to load them for the Trip.  So them too.  i take the stainless steel bucket that makes the rattle sound with the pellets and offer them to them by hand.  Sunny Ray came and accepted that.  Jack Flash came and sniffed.  He doesn't know pellets.  He is a wether from Jan.  But he watched Sunny Ray gobble them up.  In a few days, he will come for them too.

then over to TenZen and Nogal.  Tenzen was easy…he remembers.  Nogal not so easy,  but he will be.  Just takes some days.    And i don't want it to become something they Expect.  But rather something that falls like the Grace from Heaven…out of nowhere,  unexpected.  

so we move Forward.  Closer,  day by day.  and Still today,  the Red Chestnut holds.  The scale has shifted and i think more and more about how it will be when we all are There.  We are burning Karma and it smells like incense…