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what is Story?

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in New Mexico,  the Spade Foot Toads.  They live.  Underground.  The  whole year.  Until monsoon.  Which has been maybe July give or take.  Now,  who knows.   They live underground and Wait.  Somehow so perfectly "evolved".   I think about that word, evolved….what has their evolvement brought….them,  the planet?  

but when the monsoon rains would come,  and the Lightning strikes,  3 days in a row,  there would be a Great Chorus of Song from them,  homely bleating sounds,  LOUD and continuous,  startling dogs and livestock all night long  and then,  in the sideroad puddles of water,  eggs.    I waded in this water,  carefully,  bare foot.  and yes.  there would be eggs from the mating,   from the calling.  If fortune served,  the sideroad puddles would last the short time till tadpoles formed when birds would come to gobble so many up,  but some were not eaten and grew legs and left the mud of the puddles to crawl to an underground world to grow and ….wait.  And it would happen again.  This pattern.  Pattern.  Patterns.  Design.

i don't know anything and never will know anything about why this has come to be.  It's reason and purpose.  Maybe just for Beauty?  Maybe just Because it Could?  Maybe because the GodThing  had a Thought?,  and followed through?  I don't know.

So,  this scrap of cloth.  I got it from of all places,  Walmart in Socorro, New Mexico.  It and a few yards of another piece i call the diamond with a dot.  They are cotton.  Cheap.  On the dollar a yard table.  From China.  I love them.

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8 responses to “what is Story?”

  1. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Among the many definitions of the word story is “evolution of something.” I will forever look at this black and white scrap of cloth and know of spade foot toads; how from an egg they come, sing in the rain and just are… See when I came to New Mexico, I had never heard of them. You told me about them and you showed me, in person, as well as here, how this cloth,speaks their story. Now whenever I spot a scrap of this cloth, I smile, spade foot toad memories…in a scrap of a cloth, a story unfolds from the beginning, life cycle. With the rain that the Hill gets, do you have spade foot toads? I thought they were only in this part of the world so now the question becomes, how will this spade foot toad scrap tell me a story of the Hill, a place that probably does not have them but just maybe, because of “evolution” has their cousins…?

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  2. Liz A Avatar
    Liz A

    I do love the diamond with a dot cloth … it rests in your Underlying Order cloth … and I lift my morning coffee to see, yet again, the diamond and dot on the hand-thrown mug that I got shortly before finding you and Jude and the Kindred Spirits.
    I tell this here to commemorate how so much story can come from a tiny scrap of cloth on the dollar table at Walmart. How we tell each other these stories, again and again … a cycle that repeats for no other reason than because it brings joy … and that is reason enough

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  3. jude Avatar
    jude

    love brings story forth…

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  4. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    love how you pare to the essence, to the bare bones of the story

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  5. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    it will continue to tell the story of night song and mating, eggs in still pools of water, the glorious transformation from egg to tadpole, then to legged ones that enter the earth to live and then bring the whole of the Miracle to life again. Toad eggs. Any toad. But…
    for you and i, always the deep love of the homely Spade Foot. Their monsoon ritual that tells us that some things for the Earth are still ok.

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  6. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i love that we are here, right with each other, to tell, to listen again and again…how i love hearing you talk of the diamond with a dot

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  7. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    it does. so much.

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  8. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i love those words…bare bones of story

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