windthread

it wasn't that late.   but,   DARK.    batteries low.    and i wanted to keep going.    so….the headlamp.   i stitched the 7 of the spiral and still…wanted to keep going but i don't see color so well without natural light.  so couldn't identify who might be 8.

 

but then,  just here,  were these.  so i stitched them.   then,  sat.  holding them,  the two small things.   They are for No Reason.

 

and this morning,  could keep Going

i am here in First Light with thoughts,  with those final pages of the book,  again  and again and

with cloth all over the Table and  small scraps that i pick up and hold and am in the Company of and i stitched these two together just to see how it felt

i will keep trying to say it.  over and over.   until i can find the words that Tell how it is…..how as i do this 

quilt

i most love that each piece of cloth is here,  in its own unadorned way.   Just it.   no more,  no less.   and how i so love this,  to have them this way,   themSelves

and again,  i can't find a way to say this.   So…maybe another time.

AND

i want to say about the book….Earth Grief….          If  Things are weighing heavy on you already,    i would not necessarily start reading.   it is not ….   well….it's hard.   and when you get to the End,   it is just the beginning of the work,  this Earth Grief.

 

holding this scrap helps with the 

work.

the basket,  to my left here at the Table.   it's there.   somewhere.   under cloth.  a pile of it.

 

 

and in front of me,  across the Table and on the bed.   more piles of cloth.      I saw my Self ,   rustling around,   from pile to pile and remembered when we had ferrets when the kids were little.   We'd let them out  and they would rustle around,  finding things they liked and hurrying off back "home" to incorporate the new into the collections they kept in their tubular homes.  Which looked similar to this space,  which is my     living space.   

and so it was decided.   4 squares across  with a surrounding very generous border.    She agreed to be responsible for finding the right sheet for the back.   She liked,  very much that there would be a whole size fibonacci spiral.  

she likes it.

 

and as miracles go….my friend Sydney from New Mex had called last weekend.     the Difficult Weekend about that fallen Tree.  I didn't return the call.   She called again yesterday.   i answered and we talked,  as we do every 6 months to a year or so,  like it's just yesterday  and for most of that hour i didn't  "click"  on the fact that she and her wife are

Arboristas.   

Sydney's daughter,   Talulah,   just graduated from High School and we were talking about being mothers to 

women

in her case a very young one,  in mine,   50    but     Mothers….what might "work" and what not so much and how to feel about it all  when it doesn't   and i used the thing about the TREE as an example on my end  and she began talking about that….the Tree.

she said to send pics and she would show them to Sheila and they might be able to offer some advice as Jenny,  as she in her Determined Way goes forward   and the upshot in the end is that

maybe Sydney will fly here for a day ot two.   Look  at  "Jenny's Tree"  and advise.   This was Jenny's idea…to buy her a ticket,  set her up at a hotel…..to just LOOK  with her.   to listen to her say what she knows from all her research,  to offer thoughts.    to offer    Confidence   that it CAN be done.   and i realized how afraid Jenny is to do it,  but also how determined.   This is the Hill where she will spend the rest of her life.    Where maybe sooner than later she will build a home.   There will be other Trees that will fall as this time of drought continues.   Alyssia is her daughter.   Jenny is the Mother.   and Emrie watches it all.

 

 

 

/>

  the 80's.   Probably will stay that way for a while.   nights  lo  60's,   59.   Could stay that way on through October.   

Garden is energized.   Many blossoms on tomato plants,  squash and bell pepper.   the Most yet.   They may have time.  ???

All these i planted around March because i've always been "late",  so this time i wasn't.   Everything was seeming to go well.  And then got slow.  and  then the Heat.      Green Beans began all fine but then leaves took on a "bronze y quality"  and the vines became spindly and  though blossoms would form,  none came to fruition except for 2.   One bean last month.  One a week ago.   Miniature beans.  perfect in appearance.  crisp and delicious.  but,  miniature.    i should've put the pic of the last one.   I kind of quit looking.   But today….,     These.    4.  FOUR.   4 Beans!!!!!   and what this says to me is……if i can grow these 4 beans,  i can,  like  CAN   grow MANY.   Right?     And,   what if summer is like this next time around…..that HEAT in August and September…then,  what if i plant the beans in maybe July…?…..or late June  and they might now be at their height?   Or…?   All these thoughts.   I smile at Self.   I AM NOT a good gardener.   just AVID.    so i make notes and take heart that Who Knows?

Buhner signs off the book

In veriditas  veritas     The Gila Wilnerness,   March 2022

i go google veriditas    and Hildegard Von Bingen is there    sufi path of love   The Ecological Prophets   Hildegard of Bingen and …..then wants me to download,  but this is enough.  So i YouTube Hildegard   and listen to hortus deliciarum   while looking at images of dandelion       Hildegard Von Bingen,   Saint.   High Middle Ages.  Born 1098.  dies 1179.   Benedictine abbess and polymath.  active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary and as a medical writer and practitioner.  Considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history.    Here i am.  California,  America,   2022   listening to Her.   Think of this. grace, i say.     and finish up the 9 strip.   it's Pink because Jenny likes pink.

it matters.   whose edges touch whose.  and how.     Too soon to know much about that yet.   Need more.

                                                                                 ……………~………………….

all week i have been reading Earth Grief  the Journey into and through ecological loss     Stephen Harrod Buhner

He explains.   over and over.  many different ways.   to be sure we     understand.    i had  gotten to page 244.  Close to the end.  I wrote the date in the stenographers notepad this morning      and the words…   " through Earth Grief.  no reprieve"    .     i fed  Goats and then walk off,  into the trees.   In my mind i am saying….i have trusted you,  Stephen Harrod Buhner,  ever since i read Plant Intelligence   and the Imaginal Realm   into the dreaming of the Earth   2014.   i have trusted you and understand you to know things that extremely Few people know.    Please.   Please don't leave me standing here.   Please don't.

and then,  pg.  245.

"the truth is that we can no longer continue to think of ourselves as isolated consciousnesses on an inanimate,  insentient,  meaningless ball of resources hurtling around the sun.   That is not what this scenario in which we are embedded is ~ thinking  so is the great terrible error of reductionist science (which itself grew from the seed of a body/mind/spirit dissociation embedded within monotheistic beliefs).  

the scenario is in fact a living, breathing, interactive field of meaning possessing extremely complex,  inextricably inter~woven~with~each~other physical and non~physical attributes.   And while it really irritates rationalists,  scientific  reductionists,  and monotheists to say this,  among these attributes are consciousness,  intent,   and the capacity to communicate.   We are only one particular expression of a much larger penomenon.   There is no attribute we possess that the scenario from which we come does not also possess.    And because of this there is far more available to us here than rationalist dissociation or monotheistic either/or perspectives and dualities believe."

i breathe.    A living breathing interactive field  of meaning,   intent    and the capacity  (to me,  Will)  to communicate.  And then he goes on.   I have saved the last few pages for morning.   and i saw how i was given that experience the other day at Rite Aid.   How perfect an illustration to the 244 pages.   Its bright artificial light,  the wide  aisles,   the shelves upon shelves of all manner of things that are death dealing to this planet arranged in such a way to LURE.    The people at the pharmacy….us among them….all manner of humanity,  ages, shapes, conditions.     behind the glass ,  racks and racks of bags hanging with  "medicine".  How people waited their turn with       trust.   

All this.  only a beginning.

 

 

as Sun was setting….they came closer and closer.    and settled.   Turkey Vultures.  19 at least.  just next  to the Curry House.   2 evenings in a row.   Every day they are   "up there"  in the near distance,  circling.   But not   Here,   roosting.    so i read that they have begun the migration from these summer breeding grounds  to winter in South  and Central America.  They will  rise when  Sun warms their wings in the morning,  catch a thermal  and circle.  Slowly loosing altitude  to catch another and the process of circling and rising repeats.  In this way they commonly travel 200 miles a day,  up to 60 mph without ever flapping their wings.

they're Big.   avg. 2  1/2 ft with a 6ft wingspan.

this Earth.    What   Amazements have evolved.   They are not  "pretty" birds.   i wonder what a nest of little ones might look like.    How the mother would i guess feed them carrion.   

 

again, finishing in the dark.   pic  by Flash.     i look forward to seeing in the morning.    9 and 11  are light.  interested in how that works  in the company of the others. 

the Moon.   From Deb Lacativa's hand near the beginning of my time with Spirit Cloth.   the fabric,  from a dress.  Thrifted.   40 some years ago.    The dress,  too small to wear.     but i never could use it.      in this quilt,   these quilts,  it has found it's place.   

 

What if i did something like this?   Not necessarily with this particular set of rectangles,   but it could be.   ?   Just once?   on the one i make for Self?  

 

"you are Earth expressed into human form…."     Stephen Harrod Buhner    Earth Grief  the journey into and through ecological loss

Could not  "get through" last eve till   This morning about 11 a,   finally.   I thought about that…how bent i got because for two days i couldn't post photographs here.   Thought about how there are Wars,   Famine and Catastrophic Climate events and i am upset because i can't tap my way into Typepad.    

What follows is from  the online Chico State  Today.  Article by Andrew Staples   September 23,  2022.  Abbreviated and a little paraphrased:   "Ancestrial land in Butte County Canyon returned to Mechoopda Tribe.    93 acres along Butte Creek, more than a mile of creek frontage as well as habitat for many species of special status,  including the Western Pond Turtle and Yellow Legged Frog.   Butte Creek is critical salmon habitat and spawning grounds for the largest population of Central Valley Spring Run Chinook,  a state and federally threatened evolutionarily sigificant unit.    Ownership and management of the Butte Creek Ecological Preserve  (Chico State Enterprises)   has been returned to the Mechoopda Indian Tribe to manage, protect, restore and steward the land as it recovers from the Camp Fire of 2018. "    This restoration of the land was long in the making,  long before the Camp Fire.   The Mechoopda are First People.   

and i read this just the evening before i began this latest  square.    it  planted its  seed.    And  just this much.  The numbers are perfect.   7.      Five,   a scrap from Jude many years ago that i cut and put back together here….Salmon ladder…it has a small hole,   the ladder broken and fading.    Salmon  should not and do not need ladders.   1 ~ 4  Destruction of ancient Earth pattern and the  still ness after,  the survial of seed,   6….that number from The Count…All spirits Living and Dead….and then 7.   7  the plants rise again.    Seven.   it's really just enough.  Perfect.    Maybe when/if i make the quilt for my Self,  i'll stop at 7?  Or…think about where the next 5 take things……maybe the keeping going is what's needed?  Maybe 8 through 12 shelter  7?

 

 

 

this morning i suddenly thought i will get a tatoo for my birthday.     I looked up   tatoo on old skin.    maybe.   maybe i should just let it be a part of my morning ritual.   Rise,  pee,  set kettle on for tea,   write  Mycelium on my wrist?   

Do words work?