this morning….at day break….

 

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this was in that copper hanging basket under all the scraps in the bottom tier.  I didn't know that.

not even forgotten,  just didn't know it was there,  and really, didn't know it still existed,  and really, had forgotten making it,  and only remembered when it appeared up from the scraps.

 

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around 20 something years ago.  When i first came here.  I would plant the seeds.  Grow the gourds, wait for them to dry.  Soak the skin off them,  rub them clean,  dry them again and cut them.  Remove the seeds for next time.    Paint them with oils and ink.  The bottoms were bowls,  the inverted tops…like this one,  hanging vases.  And other ways.

Looking at this….FELT SENSE.  about that Angstfull Urge.  About making the thing that can't exist.

 

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three of these scraps,  Deb Lacativa's hand.  I come back to stand and look for what i am wanting to see.

 

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this year's fallen Oriole nest

 

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the collaboration.  Tay's work….chewing off the broken sides of a large basket and leaving the bottom intact as a shield.  My small scrap weaving.  Mo's pouch.  Together they tell such stories.

 

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inside Mo's pouch is a folded paper tied with a Red Thread.  I've never opened it yet.

 

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Making the Thing that can't exist. 

Because it's not ….a…..thing.  It is ManyThings,  it is the Experience of the ManyThings,  together and separately and together again,  in the taking of how much ever time that takes,  how many days or years.    Noticing how it all is a changing fluid thing,  and this is something of that thing of Diorama.

Diorama….maybe the Thing that can't exist is the Diorama that is my life,   and maybe it's something to do with having always been in a uhhh,  a place of Waiting.  Always Waiting until something has happened,  waiting for the space to open up,  open out….but i was Waiting.  

Looking back,  i have always been waiting.  Maybe that's just part of life. Maybe it IS life.   Wait till you are no longer a child,  till you grow up,  till you have children,   till those children grow up,  till you find a place to live and then other places to live,  to make a living so you Can live,  and the details of that,  to wait till a mistake is resolved by waiting for that person i was married to to finish his life,  waiting for the old cowboy to finish his,  waiting for the kids to find land,  waiting for that land to begin to create It's story,  waiting.    

and maybe now,  i have lived long enough to be able to arrive at a place of no waiting?  A place of IS.

i can finally be where i am.  which of course,  i always could have,  but i was waiting.  And maybe waiting is necessary.  Maybe,  as Alyssia sometimes says…."it's all just developmentally correct, Gramz".  

 

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Alyssia wants Solar.  She is afraid of it too.  Hooking into the grid,  there's always More.   But she really wants her children to grow up with the understanding of Some.  of Some that's shared.  of Enough,  but the Enough being dependent on being mindful of the needs of others.  She wants them to understand Enough and Sharing.  Emrie will be born into solar.

I might come back later.  It's just after noon now,  but i wanted to get all the pics here while i can.  This internet gets slow and sometimes impossible later in the day.  I need this here,  so i can not lose it,  can re think it and see if it's true.

LATER…6:30 p.m.  Storms rolling through,  one on the heels of the other.  I leave this machine off.  So maybe i can't keep going with this,  but i love it and am energized by it.  So if not this eve,  then tomorrow.

LATER ii.   i  went out,  with Tay,  her on her long leash,  into the last round of Storm so far,  Great Wind and Thunder,  some rain.  She is afraid of storms.   We walked…she pulled and was excited,  we stopped at Margie's across the road where the two little pit bull boys spend the weekend,  and they were all beside themselves to be nose to nose.    Because of the Lightning,  we didn't go far,  but on the way back,  i let go of the leash to give her practice at staying close.  She did.  We need this for the trip.

LATER iii

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the Storm knocked her.  I gave her a stick and some strong Cloth

 

 

 

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30 responses to “how a life takes a lifetime to happen”

  1. Joy Avatar
    Joy

    The Waiting Game… I noticed that for myself a few months ago. I always feel like I’m waiting on something. Like you said, waiting for this, waiting for that. Then you realize that you’ve waited your life away. My mother always wanted to re-arrange her furniture in the living room–my dad wouldn’t let her. Such a small thing, but he wouldn’t let her–she was waiting for his life to pass so she could have freedom. Sadly, she died first. I need to stop waiting and just ‘do’, or like you said, ‘is’. Thanks for bringing this up Grace.

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  2. Mo Crow Avatar

    when I was younger I felt like I had all the Time in the world to make my dreams then when I nearly died on the operating table for throat cancer I realized very deeply that I have been given just a little more time and am working hard to realize as many of the dreams I can ever since…

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  3. grace Avatar

    it’s a complex thing. A lot of the waiting is necessary…
    you can’t live a Whole life all at once…needs to be
    done as it goes. and i think we DO
    do many things while waiting
    but still…i think it’s really a good thing to look closely
    at….to get honest about, at least inside ourselves.
    and i think it is “developmental”…being 71….it’s time now.
    It’s all ok now. I can CLAIM it. and i’m very interested in how it’ll go.
    o….your mother….just to have rearranged the furniture…
    o…eee…your mother.
    i’d be interested in any and all thoughts about how you might
    do things…i think we grow our own selves by sharing
    experiences with others…sharing is a big “school”

    Like

  4. Els Avatar

    All those different containers … lots of them !
    … not only “waiting” … “going” too 😉
    (ha : slowly going !!! does thát sound familiar !)

    Like

  5. beth Avatar

    You’ve triggered an anxiousness in me that I need to look at more closely… Waiting… And the meanwhile…

    Like

  6. dee Avatar

    there’s something unshakably human about acting as tho we have time, time, time. Just read about this in ‘Tools of Titans’ and one person’s help with this was to do an actuarial accounting and then put a count down of days on his computer… Your musings prompted me to go ahead and get an actuarial accounting (88 years) and I input it into a countdown app — now to figure out how to make that readily visible.
    Do you think if you WEREN’T waiting, you could make that unknowable thing? Or do you think it truly cannot be made?

    Like

  7. joanne Avatar
    joanne

    I had a dream–a vision—of myself on the ground facing up. I was also above looking down at my body on the ground. And as I lifted up and up, I kept saying “I thought I had more time”.
    So, now–even cleaning the car, I do it as if it was the last time.

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  8. grace Avatar

    i think of that, Mo….knowing that you live from that experience.
    When i watch how you work, i think of that and how it Carrys you.

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  9. grace Avatar

    sometimes the meanwhile is just exactly what needs to happen.
    but when there is something Strong that is speaking…..

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  10. grace Avatar

    dee….
    it’s not a thing…i understand that now…it’s not a thing,
    the unknowable that can’t exist,
    THANK YOU for helping me see how i can be more clear,
    Love,

    Like

  11. grace Avatar

    This is Beauty FULL, this vision…..you are Lucky.

    Like

  12. jude Avatar

    someone once said to me… we live, we wait to die. i am trying to remember who that was. some part of my life are a blur.

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  13. grace Avatar

    i think this is the POINT….
    that it’s not at all
    about dying…of course, there is dying. Somewhere i read once that Death is the Ornament of Life.
    but this is so much not about dying, but about LIVING and
    celebrating the Living, each of us in our own particular and
    singular way
    o…eee…so much here…. i understand that i wasn’t at all
    clear…i’ll keep going, trying to get there….
    thank you for helping me clarify

    Like

  14. Tina Avatar
    Tina

    Grace you have given so many of us sooooo much to think about. Your pictures of things are out of this world amaaaazing.Love Mo’s pouch even more that you never opened it. Your lost and found gourd taking you back to your beginning in the desert. I think Grace that you live in Wonderland… no matter where you may be or even when.

    Like

  15. Mo Crow Avatar

    and re gourds, I had a fling with them in 2006, they were such wily things to work with! they have their own ideas about what’s allowed to be done to their skin and let you know!

    Like

  16. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    In her Introduction to “the Tibetan Book of the Dead” Francesca Freemantle states that the entire book should be read backwards as instructions for living.
    When I was 8 or 9 I remember lying on my bed in the attic on more than one occasion, staring out through ruffled diaphanous pink curtains at the sky trying to imagine “Infinity”. I never could. Similar childhood moments like that when I’d try to see the world without me in it. Equally unsuccessful.
    Time, I soon realized is elastic; stretches and shrinks like Alice did when she ate the mushrooms. Consciousness is like that to start as well. I became acquainted with death early on first of pets, then of a young cousin in a horrible accident, then Grandpa, then a young grade school chum who had leukemia and was my best ever friend, and finally of course my father so unexpectedly there was no preparation that could have accommodated it. That was a BIG deal, changed everything. I was ten. I often thought of death then every once in a while and then I’d forget. I’d been doing that for decades before yoga and Buddhism and Zen gave me practices to work with. I’ve always had a dream of a real family, real home where I absolutely belong and am integral to it exclusively – until those practices implanted the notion that home is never outside me. Still one wants a bit of land and a tribe and a place by the hearth…but maybe the horizons have to be larger….maybe that longing so particular is metaphor for the way it is on our little planet for human beings…we are looking for our place (as Mary Oliver says)in the order of things (misquoting but you know it “Wild Geese”). I’m still practicing, no longer trying to imagine my own absence or “infinity”.
    You have always been at home in your way and it will be so on the hill as well but the WAITING and ANTICIPATING is like water torture. How I love you and your candid sharing.

    Like

  17. ² Avatar
    ²

    Oooo yes sharing IS a big thing , indeed we grow our own self by sharing experiences with others , so THANK you people from over the ocean for doïng this on windthread , the thread of sharing . greet you all

    Like

  18. Hazel Avatar

    Not waiting but Being, how wonderful that is.
    I am in love with watching you go through this process of going, but even more – how you are Being in the moments of the process. K’s mom used to say “transition is a place”.
    Am attempting yet another weeding of this house, and you come to mind often.
    & the nest with your threads… more to love.

    Like

  19. Linda Avatar

    Margaret always said “we are here to build a soul”
    I, too, have been waiting. I waited to end work. That was such a thing for me. Now I think… I hope I have enough time to do all the things I want to do.
    Waiting instead of being..

    Like

  20. ali Avatar
    ali

    So very much here to ponder on, so many Soul-full things, and such a profound idea to engage with. As you know Grace, my man is ill with a disease that has made him extremely disabled and will eventually kill him. His life is confined to his bed and chair and mine to the house and caring. I can very much identify with the thought that my life has for very long been about waiting, but I have known that I don’t want to be waiting for him to die, so I have to find a way to live well in this small space. Since I met him he has always lived in the moment more than anyone else I’ve known, and I am so grateful for the learning I’ve had in this situation, which is not anything to do with the accepted wisdom of the world. I’m finding comfort in re-listening to Caroline Myss’s cd on Sacred Contracts. I don’t mean to make any of it sound easy. Love to you and thanks

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  21. ² Avatar
    ²

    you say it well , the soul has nothing to do with waiting , the desire is the waiter of the personality indeed it is by the learning in the situation we live in ,to chance the way of looking at things to accept ……. and so on ….. you all know the words who can follow
    love to all , thanks for your trying

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  22. grace Avatar

    maria…i think it’s critical in this world…sharing
    our common selves

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  23. grace Avatar

    sometimes things are more than oneTogether

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  24. grace Avatar

    living inside Wonder….i want to do that more

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  25. grace Avatar

    i’m thinking more about all this, and really, am
    well….i don’t know yet, enough to actually say…

    Like

  26. grace Avatar

    the world is really FULL of stuff to love, isn’t it.

    Like

  27. grace Avatar

    am so much thinking of this thing we call
    Waiting…

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  28. grace Avatar

    so much in your life right now and yes….Sacred Contracts…
    the contract, Sacred work, requires
    surrender, doesn’t it.
    surrender/waiting these…to think more about, how waiting
    can be surrender to our life’s Work…..
    i need to find that CD again…thank you for bringing it
    into this time and space…
    Love to you

    Like

  29. Dakotah Avatar

    A beautiful, discarded nest… 🙂

    Like

  30. grace Avatar

    wind knocks them down. Sometimes not, and if not
    the Orioles will reinforce them and use them again.

    Like

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