• 20200514_161958

    Rough Gods.   Orphan Wisdom    Nights of Grief and Mystery

    Eugene Gendlin    Focusing

    i went there,  to look for understanding.   After a Lot,   what finally stood.   the word Betrayal.   FeltSense.   Strong and Sure.   If i were to     quit     it would be a betrayal.    of what?    

    Back again,  always circle back and around,   always  and back to that paraphrase from Clarissa Pinkola Estes,   Women Who Run With The Wolves….

    Stand         and face what you know.

    those words have held me for Years.   Through so much.   To turn,  walk away,  now…would be betrayal.   i will continue to understand all that would be betrayed,  to sift through and find the small stones that shine.   But immediately,  i think,  and this might change,  i think i would be Betraying this Hill and what it offers.   I would be betraying the Love between the person of Emrie and i.   The "contract" between me,  Jenny and Alyssia.    The contract between me and the Goats.    So,  ok.

    contract…Caroline  Myss

    and the basket on the opposite bench said….look.   i did and pieces came together.   The Land of the Rough Gods.

     

     

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    20200512_154631

    this is the large drawer in the kitchen.  2 ft by i guess maybe 15 inches or so give or take.   It was the junk drawer.   Little things.  Very small nails,  small srewdriver combo thing,  plumbers tape,  other tapes,   masking scotch etc.  Hose washers,  stuff we don't know what they are but don't want to throw out,   and on and on.  A few months ago or more,  it fell apart.   The front weighing at least 5 lbs and attached to the flimsey arrangements in first pic.   Why is a question would any one in their right mind create that?,  but…why ask,  too.   It's all apart and i can't figure out how to put it together again.  Its sat on the bed in that back room.  it takes up an enormous space….there, where it actually IS and also in my mind.   So i spent a CHUnK of time today trying to fit it together,  the wood glue ready in case of success,  but not.  Next weekend i'll give it to Jenny's man,  ask him to see if he can find a way and if not,  will just throw it out and live with the gaping hole.   Otherwise,  i worked at trying to Order that back room.  There are 4 gallon pails of paint  that shouldn't sit outside during cold times,   2 50 bags of combo grain and alfalfa pellets,  one 50 lb of just alfalfa pellets,  a 50lb   of dog food,  a 30lb bag of cat food and a 10lb bag of meal worms that only weighs 10 lbs but is huge.     There are BOOKs and then….there is CLOTH.  a lot of CLOTH.  So much CLOTH.   Last Friday it was 90 degrees,  a preview of what it's like in this tin house in Summer.  Today it was 63 and will remain in 60's till friday when it will go back to the 70's.   Now's the time to  get things as orderly as possible back there before the onset of Fire Season.  Getting things orderly means consolidating.  Again,  paring down.  What can go?  

    and it rained off an on.  This does NOT happen in May.  It rained off and on.  as it will for the next few days.   I watched and in what seemed to be a sunny break,  leashed up Tay and let Caroline and the little ones out.   This needs to happen Every Day from now on until something resolves.   Tay  and i hang around,  Caroline wanders the little ones WHIZ .  And as also needs to happen,  the Doe s returned and there it continued,  them expressing themselves to Caroline by pushing,  smelling,  head butting and it was her and Celia again…who has never before made an effort to Challenge,  but sure is now….i watched closely who just ignored it all,  who intervened and how they intervened,  the combinations….then it started to rain again.  Back to the drawer.  All the while the Diaries Cloth lie there,  folded so Green Tara was there…watching.  waiting.   I watched her watch and wait.

    and i collaged one of the little books that Acey had sent me …to send in response to a Mother's Day letter that my son's daughter Giana in Colorado,  age 6 ,  had written to me   addressed to Goat Gramma on the envelope….

    so the heads up is about all the above.   This blog was created as a place to   keep track of my Cloth Making.  In the beginning,  to keep track of the work i was learning to do from Jude.   Because Cloth is always about Life,  there has always been some of that.  And that's good.   But for a while now,   i have become uncomfortable by the lack of substance.   What i'm feeling is a classic example of the Buddhist Teaching of Dukkha.   You can google it,  it will be worth your while,  but the Wikipedia description is " suffering,  un happiness, pain, unsatisfactoriness,  or painfulness of mundane life.  It is the first of the Four Noble Truths and is one of the three marks of existence.    John Blofeld  described it most commonly as …..dissatisfaction.   

    i do not want to blog about this.   have this time and space become this.

    so…we'll see.  But it might be time for a sabbatical.   Taking space in an ether that is overflowing with Stuff,   offering up nothing that is really useful to me or anyone else,   offering my opinions and FeltSense of the overarching grief of How ITs ALL Going,  that too…

    so i don't know.   I really don't know.

     

     

     

  • 20200511_125501

    i NEED to begin a small cloth.    like,  NEED to.   looking in the folder of old drawings….this one…made me laugh and also is how it is Now,  Here,       lizards coming and going     there are so MANY this year.  They're everywhere,  their coming and going almost simultaneous.  In the Trees…running along branches high up,  on the Forest floor skittering,  in the Gardens running.  hiding.   More than ever before since i've been here.   The other day when i went to feed,   i was mutually  caught by surprise by a probably 8 inch BODY…tail i don't know,  was curved  S shape  on the alfalfa bale.    Don't see these big ones so much…they're  Secretive.  The little ones don't care.   Lizards for me are messengers.   What is the message then,  this spring/summer?   

     

     


    20200511_114827

    then,  this.     I like it.   maybe it's   small cloth?    May  2016.   I was still in New Mex.  

  • 20200509_191553

    it's like all the "holidays" of Amerika,  all the ones you grew up with.   Even if somewhere in your early 20's you decide in your heart that they are designed for mass consumerism…..still…..it's  _______Day.   So i woke as i do somewhere between 4 and 5 oclock and decided to celebrate by not jumping out of bed,  but just lying there a while,  till i really didn't want to anymore.   That took about 10 minutes.     I then visited blogs,  looked to see what might be happening at Spirit Cloth,  read the news and cruised through NPR Weekendedition.   i did the usual Goat, Chicken,  Dog and Cat thing and then came in and just sat.   I wanted to see what would happen if i just        sat          with no agenda for next.     In a place like this,  things are crammed everywhere…hopefully out of sight.   Because i was sitting,  leaning back for a change,  i had a good view of under this Everything table.   There was the fold up barstool against the wall.  Emrie's little but not little booster seat that she hasn't used in months.  2 pairs of  very used wool socks and an assorted array of things that had just fallen down there.  I found Emries pink ball.  She will be thrilled.   What followed was kind of epic.  Jenny had brought me a squirt bottle of Lysol All Purpose cleaner yesterday.  I hauled everything out from under the table,  took the booster seat and the bar stool over to that place where the table i don't like because it's not wood is,  where there's the water spigot and left them there to wash.   Swept under said table,  all manner of debris,  mostly shreds of goat feed and dog hair.   Since paper towel is still hard to come by,  i got a pile of the cheap paper napkins that Alyssia had found me and went to work.   Spraying and scrubbing with the napkins,  on my knees,  i washed the floor.  i used a tool that's for clay sculpting to run along all the "baseboards".     I thought about how since i can do laundry at Alyssia's now,  i actually can go back to using rags for such things.   Then i read a LONG article Jenny had linked me about copper deficiency in Goats.   How the pic of Nogal is relevant here…the hairless eartips.   These deep thoughts weren't  in keeping with my plan, so…i decided to re read it tomorrow.

    Middle day.   I sat with the 30 Day Collage pages that Acey brought us some months back and just let self drift with them…i want to write on the blank pages.   It's time.  Will stitch the pages together.  Write.  It  is as if they were prologue to these recent days.

    the day went along from there,  disappearing fast and some phone calls and wishes and Goats and Gardens  and i'm sitting here again,  thinking about it all.   looking down at the CLEAN EMPTY space under this table.   Happiness.   Happy Mother's day to you,  grace.   May you be Safe.   May you be healthy.   May you be Happy.    May you live with Ease (in the circumstance in which you find yourself)   Love to mySelf,  to Sharon Salzberg,  to all of YOU,  to Every THING.  Love and Love.  and may we go in Peace.  May we be kind to Mothers,  the first of which is our Earth.

     

  • 20200508_113948

    pomegranate

     


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    summer Grasses already

  • 20200508_080936

    "in the biodiverse  Omo River Valley,  in the Southwest of Ethiopia,  a Kara man collects blooms of desert rose. "  May  2020 edition of National Geographic

     


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    i sit with these photographs.   I think of Acey,  collecting Violets.   What is this man collecting the blossoms FOR?   i am sure.  Something akin to Acey and the Violets.   But we are here.  He is there.  and akin  has  a long stretch of meaning.

    so when i post things,  that refer to my frame of mind,   my frame of mind is not so much at all derived from our concerns here in this country of Amerika.   Restaurants, gyms,  nail salons,  grocery stores.   but more about this Planet,  where life is very different than here in Northern California.   It's been this way…since i was a very young child…..those days in the attic with my grandfather's National Geos….those sunday school times when the missionaries would come and tell us about the heathen children that jesus suffered to come unto him….the flannel boards of that sunday school

    how the Diaries Cloth is like my OWN flannel board of Truths

    so,  please.  Don't take it all as some kind of weighty sadness that is new and in need of fixing.   It's an OLD love of humanity that is lifelong.   An OLD LOVE of how people live in lives so alien to the one i grew up in,  live in now.   Their Beauty and Dignity and Brilliance that i recognized   and so much honor from a sense of  something i was just born with.  

    i cannot look long enough at this photograph.   The sense that this desert rose is an ancient Plant Being.   That he traveled,  on foot.   What might he be saying to Her as he collects some blossoms?   How is it,  when he turns to walk Back.  The Plant,  again alone in this landscape.   Blooming.

     

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    its been hanging here for some time now.  i pass it often and stop…look,  wonder,  remember.

     


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    what year was that?   

    when Jude started talking recently about large cloth,   i decided.   Since then things have unfolded that i couldn't have imagined.   It's really quite amazing that this time of 2020 is when the Other Side begins.   the side of Now.    RIGHT now,  lately,  i've been somewhere in some kind of limbo.   a combination of things,  not just the Virus.  It's about the increased need of Goat Herding,  Talkie's concerns.   My frame of mind about this world and my beloved Earth.  the Garden,  being Spring and planting,  caring for  the newly born  seedlings there.   and things like how the Hydrangea is going to bloom,  how Sunny Ray is beginning to show signs of Old Buck.    But a lot is some internal landscape i seem to be standing on/in…..i haven't been able to imagine how to begin any small Cloth,  any story….i seem to be storyless.   I look at the baskets upon baskets of cloth,  and don't go further.  I look away.   Many of the cloths i made  have a figure…a woman….her form and posture,  gesture,  telling the Cloths story.  I looked here.   I t's the Eye.  with the exception of that one figure of the third pic.   That is a Key.   

    i washed the table that i don't love because it's not wood,  Over There beyond where Sunny the truck is parked,  on top of the rise above campsite B.   Where Emrie's sprinkler is during the hot days.  Where we sit when it's too hot inside and too much SUN just out side.   We walk over there.  All her plasticware is windblown,  i collected some and will take a bowl or pot over to wash them in.  Keep them in.   Washed the table.   Took down the Cloth from the Looking Line and carried it over.  Looked once more at THEN and turned it.   it's a good place to stitch the Tree down,   the Green Tara from Patty.   That will begin things,  those stitching downs.   it's what i have Heart for right now.   It's a whole space of not knowing of having no idea.  I wonder what will happen?

     

  • 20200505_105707

    just this.    One small thing.   A seed.   Planting its Self.   Growing.   Being.    Just this.   Enough.   

  • 20200306_134706

    half in,  half out.   Out this morning,  In this afternoon evening.   This is going to be for a few days,  at least.   I think it's as Mo suggests.  She's gone broody.   But i am trying to be uhhhh,   objective.      She moved her nest site from the Feed House where her egg was collected daily.   To that secret place in Nogal's calf hutch  where the eggs multiplied,  uncollected.   I'm thinking it tripped off a thing in her of her Deep Chicken ness.   Instinct.   a nest FULL.   she felt the impulse to stay.  To sit.  To become silent and secretive to protect.    I didn't go in there today.  Did not  collect any egg that might be there.  Only because the day was already FULL of doing and i was just done with doing.   So when i went down to give Buck Feed,  i could see her…sitting.

    Maybe it's not anthropomorphic….maybe she really does.  Want.   to make more of herSelf.     Maybe she's tired of being the only chicken.

    ?

    I think of all this.   For me,  being SelFish,   i don't know if i can love much more.   I am to the brim.   We talk about how it's not necessary to love any additional chickens.  that we can just say….chickens….and not name them,  claim them.   that would take work on my part.   not to love.

    Fire Season comes.   the necessity to evacuate sentient  SENTIENT beings here.   More chickens….?   if there is only so much time,   and loading Goats takes that time and then there are

    chicken S

    not just Talkie?

    I think.