windthread

 

maybe i am beginning to understand?   a simple word…we use every day and in so many ways,  like priority mail.  ordinary.

but

priority.

Jenny had appeared,  surprisingly,  to work on Jack Flash's Evacuation Trap.   on a Tuesday.   She took a vacation day.   I'll take a pic of it sometime.    but before she arrived,  i had gotten to that word…priority.  i just showed up,  lower case,  plain font in my brain….but….priority.   Maybe that's all.   maybe that's all it is.  and maybe this is how it  Comes,  when it finally does Come…the Result of What You Have Been Trying To Do.   just quiet and lower case.     

the pics:   i was going to feed and saw that one large trunk of an Oak had fallen in this last rain and went to see and saw,  but this too.   There is a standing trunk…i think maybe 80 ft?  and you maybe can see….all up the trunk are little….LITTLE twigs of leaves,  All Up It….no branches,  but these little twigs of leaves??????????????   i looked all around,  on it's mother Root and its the only one like this.  I walked some ways away and still,  the only one i see like this.   

so she is here ,  Jenny,  and i take her there…show her.   She focuses on the downed part that squashes the fence.    I try to get her to talk with me about the strange growth and it doesn't work so we go along.  And here's where YOU ALL come in.  

YOU 

are who i talk to.   

so we finish the Trap pen for Jack Flash and try it out by me bringing down tortilla chips to lure him and it works…he is lured and if there is an Evacuation this time around,  it might make all the difference in the world.  All The Difference In The World.

she has another vacation day tomorrow and we will repeat for Nogal.

but my mind stays with that Oak.  and Emrie comes around noon.  Jenny is gone.  I tell Emrie about the Oak and she wants to see.  We go.   Look.  We,  together,  look again at all trees around.  None like this.   We Wonder.    What is this tree thinking????

and i think.   Because of her.   about Priorities.   How LIFE Takes Time.   it takes a LOT of Wondering.  Which Takes Time.  And we went on,  to check out Jack's Trap Pen and talk about it,  how it will work,  and we talked about what she can remember of the last Evacuation…she was 2 going on 3.   I watch her face as she searches in her Brain for memories and finds some…like dreams but they are there  and we go On,  along to B Garden to give water and i didn't go yesterday because of that RAIn and some of the squash plants were NEEDING,  but ok and we shared the watering alternating with other odd things and more Wondering and Noticing and JOY at TEN tomatoes and a Jalapeno and she said

it's been a long day since i was here.

i like being here.           As she sat.  Taking a break.  on the plastic adirondack chair with the mouldy old little bamboo pan flute she found in one of the tubs.   I said i'd get us a new,  better  flute and she said…ok,  for you.  I'll play this one.   We'll play together.

and she said again

i like being here in this garden.

 

and when i was doing the evening feed,  i thought about how the prayer/chant to Achalanatha Bodhisattva that Jan up in Redding Ca gave me from her sangha,  how the 13 repetitions take time.   How all winter i don't.  But now,  with the drying of the Grasses,  i go back to it.   I sing it at Jack Flash's gate in the mornings.   And it takes time.   Noticing the Oak with different thoughts takes time.  Living in the presence of Emrie takes time.  and all that Time,    changes

priorities.