windthread

i never count this as a large cloth…i guess it really is….it's pieces of denim stitched together that was the futon couch cover in that other life in new mexico.    Here,  it's the cover for the couch bed that never gets folded up as a couch because it's been Emrie's napping place since i've been here.   It could be folded up now…she no longer takes a nap,  but,  but when she comes she likes to climb up and lay there,  pulling Lace Lady's crocheted web over her.   it's her Comfort place.  AND,  who would ever sit…Way OverThere…we all squash up here at the Table.   Anyway…some of the seams are ify and some of the old denim is a little thread bare.   There was a significant split and i reinforced the seam but it would not last too long,  so in these odd days,  i finally made a patch.   There will be kantha all across.  now,  just begun,  but Holding.

 

Saturday,  when Jenny was here,  before we went on The Walk,  we were sitting in the Kidding House Corridor and above us in the highest Pine was a hawk.   It called repetitively  and we talked about all we'd researched,  how they won't claim as prey things over a percentage of their own  weight and that the bucklings are now about 10 lbs….too big,  so no worry,  but that hawk remained overhead,  watching.   And as the day drifted into going,   we made jokes about Talkie,  who had quit laying eggs some time ago and has become pretty snotty…aggressive,  how she was maybe deciding to become a Rooster,  we can get pretty crude.  That eve,  Talkie didn't come for her meal worms that had been the highlight of her day.   Then Sunday,  and i didn't see her all day at all.  In the evening,  at Meal Worm time,  i walked all over calling her.   Not a single sound.  Nothing.   Dusk came and no Talkie climbing up into her perch in the Morning Tree.   No Talkie.   This morning.  No Talkie and i felt her HUGE ABSENCE here.  How much a Presence she has/had.   There was such a Vacant Feeling…………….i gave into the sense that that Hawk had taken her.   Thought how i'd heard nothing shrill of her voice,  so it would have been fast and immediate,  the taking.   I felt a vast emptiness for this strange and unusual single chicken.   

When i was taking feed to Sunny Ray and Jack,   very SUDDenLY and FAST,   Talkie appeared… running through Nogal's fence out to where i was,  i exclaimed and went immediately to fill her feeder with fresh food,  the one that's down there in the Chicken Palace….she attended all that  but then immediately disappeared again.  I looked all over and she was nowhere.

an hour or so later i decided to go search Nogal's forest again.   I'd done that twice,  some days ago,  looking for a nest,  for eggs.  This time i crawled in to Nogal's calf hutch,  his Rain House.  and Lo and Behold.  Way in the back.  15 eggs.

Agency.

Right before this,  way past the usual Meal Worm time,   i waked down there.  Carrying the bag,  which she knows by sight,  shaking it,  calling her name.   She was there.  In the calf hutch.  Sitting.  Not Budging.   Silent.

a chicken.   a chicken who makes decisions.   who,  in this moment,  has divorced her Self completely.   From this House,  from the Herd she has always been part of.    ?????????

so much to understand.

my daughter.  my first born.   We walked yesterday,  the Saturday Walk about as a whole Herd,  Caroline and the little ones.  I watched her.   In my mind,  i called up images of her as a newborn and then as Emrie's age now…almost 3.   I held those images as i watched this woman,  40 something years old.   Worked to connect them.  In my mind.

Deb G asked in comments if i'd listened to the On Being Podcast,  April 30  A Life Worthy of Our Breath with Ocean Vuong.  I had not,  but i did this morning.  It's thick….thick with Beauty and Meaning.   I came away with this quote.

"you have to articulate the world you want to live in first."

i sit with these words,  this thought.  Yes.  This is the Work for me now.  I need to do this.

so….ok.   lets look.    at  this Plant.    I have long liked saying  "plant people",   most often,  "grass people".    I need to change that.    To give them the identity of  "people" to me now is to demean them…..to reduce what they ARE  to something like myself.  Why would i do that?    

i have no idea what this Plant is…OR is called.   Identified as     by human beings.      What the name it might have been assigned by human beings might be.    All i know is that it has grown,  two seasons now at the top edge of the B Garden.   And i recognized it as being different.    And this season around,  because it has continued to grow there,  it is showing me more of itself,  and i am seeing it.    It's unlike anyother plant i know.   Totally.   It has EVOLVED.   to be what we see here.  Over maybe countless iterations?   I don't know.  I cannot know.  But it's stunning in its  form,  its complex but spare elegance.   

if it were asked:   If it came to this…..Which life form should be spared?   and there would be a pic of me…..next a pic of this Plant.   i would choose the Plant.   I would.

 

 

"In a field of concerns,  this is probably my greatest one:  that we will not take this thing to heart deeply enough to become the generation to proceed otherwise."

Stephen Jenkinson  Interview with Mattias Olsson,  Corona Crisis Campfire Stories.

go to Orphan Wisdom.com

If you possibly can,    Face It.    ….go.   Listen.   Stay through it.   Let it enter into you.    What is the result of all this that has befallen us….?    What is it that we want most?   To resume shopping?   Today i wanted Tahini.     Almost all of us here were there during the 60's and 70's .   We had dreams.   And then we forgot and just shopped for Tahini.  How much does this EARTH matter?   How much do the 7 generations matter?   How much do insect populations matter?   How much,  how much.   or

do we need to go to the grocery store,  as always,   in our lifetimes.   Get our tahini.     Our favorite wine.

i like the metaphor.   Rough Gods.   i think it is not metaphor,  but words that give us a sense of what is at stake.   

and scroll  down…the Tramore Invocation…  or just type it in.   Orphan Wisdom.  Tramore Invocation.

 

 

this is my BEST Button.  larger than a silver dollar

 

even then.  a Goat eye

 

the two strips….for buttons and button holes,  down the front.  Kantha.  My first.  From Jude.  I'd bought some of her Work and studied it…saw how it was done.

stitched these pieces….one from YOU,  Michelle,  on the private inside of the button hole side.   I liked that they were not visible to anyone else.

 

 

and so.   Today.   

i never much wore it.  Wanted to "save" it.  not ruin it by day to day use,  by uhhhhh,  Life.  my Life,  how i live it.  But today it all felt different.   What am i saving it FOR?   My life is how it is and has become even more so as it goes on.   If there are tears and stains,  then…so be it.  i'll mend.    And this Cloth…which i'd said was about death i think?  it is…in that all things that Live arise from the Life and then Death of all that comes before.  Nothing that is alive can be alive except for the death before it.

and in these days now,  this thread of thought has great Importance to me.   i think this Cloth gets stitched…kantha'd to the shirt.    A good way to begin the still dark hours of the mornings as they arise.

and when i was looking for the housedress,  i did find this….a morning shirt.  It's linen.  Big.  I like wearing Big.  It's from that same period of time…the beginnings of Jude's Online classes when i was just so ecstatic to find self stitching little raggy pieces of cloth to something.   I looked long at it today,  searching for the FEELING when i was sewing here and i realized it was the naivety,  the not knowing anything,  the just following impulse and the joy of watching things happen.

so this.   I tried too long,  too much time spent,  to upload 5 pics.  Typepad would not allow it.  But i also didn't want to sacrifice any of them.

So now,  go to the next post,  please.

 

 

the post from two days ago….about the small Holding Cloth.   It could have easily been the last post.   I thought about it.  i left it there an extra day.   Seeing how it felt.    It's Good.   it would be a good last post.   It  says everything i have to say,  really.  The Cloth is everything i have to wish a cloth could be.   it's totally enough.   Some day it might be the last post.   but…today came.

This is a cloth copy of  one of the incredibly Wonder Full Cloths that Patty makes.   I see them as the same as the tibetan thangkas.   you can see them   Listen to the Road,   roadlistening.blogspot.com   This particular one,  Green Tara.   April 13.   in an exchange with her i asked if i might have a copy of the Tara she used and Lo and Behold,  she sent this print of her entire Cloth,  more than i'd imagined and Perfect.   It is on the upper right corner of the Other Side of the Magic Diaries Cloth,  the side of Now.   it represents for me all the sisterhood of cloth makers that we Are…How i was able,  through this blog to bring everyone with me.   New Mexico……California……Then…….Now.   The strong Thread…how strong that Thread is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

so…it's there.   At the upper right.   The Tree is in place.

Ready.   I wait now for Jude.

on the wall.   across the "room"  from where i sit at the table which is the Everything Table.   this walnut dyed big Cloth of pieces.  That is the looking cloth.  

this one has been there for a couple months at least.

 

there is that Eye.   The Eye of Place.   What looks back at me as i look at this Earth here,  as i looked at the Earth everywhere i have found myself living.   And then…well,  i guess      shapes of color of movement of form of Maybe of Who knows  made of the smallest scraps of cloth just fluttering,  how it is,  that all of the whatever of Place just flutters….you have to be still,  day unto day to see        And then wonder       And then be ok with not knowing

 

it is a piece of very old,  worn,  linen…almost not there anymore and stitched with those flutterings, the eye,  to a piece of harem cloth.   it has no weight at all.    

I need to keep it just like this.   just this.   no backing,  no border,  no nothing more.    It's a Holding Cloth.  The only thing about it that has any weight is the small form of a new seedling at the bottom that was added maybe a week ago?,   but added  and grounds it somehow even tho it cannot be grounded.

when i take it off the Looking Cloth and hold it in my hands,  and look upon it,          there is nothing more in my mind.  All the mess of things of this world simply dissolves without effort…just is gone.   I only have this thin cloth,  the shapes and colors.  That's it.    Until i put it down.    Two distinct and competely different  "places".   The place of the Cloth   and the place of this world.   That's all i can say about it,   but i wish i could say more,  but there isn't any more.  Just this.

i wrote a LONG post last eve that just disappeared.  So i went to bed.    Here i am again.  but now,  it's Yesterday already.  The immediacy is gone.  History.

was the Saturday walk about.   Jenny,  her man,  me, Tay, Puppy and the Herd.   i can now say,  the Herd because Caroline and the two little ones became that.   There was some snottiness towards them,  first from Grace who i call Wendy and then some focused for a while from Karma.   They had to stand their ground,  which they did.   We sat in the shade of a Scrub Oak,  there in the meadow and all of a sudden,  after about a half hour,  someone began Going and they all left.   Caroline and the bucklings.  Gone.  Off on the trail above Campsite A.   We sat a little,  waiting,  but no…they were not coming back so we left too.   And met up with them around the Feed House.   There they were….a Herd that included two little ones.   Claiming their Place.  

and then,  it was time.   They got banded.  if you want to,  you can look on utube for ways to castrate buckling goats.  None of which are pleasant.  Jenny walked off to the Curry House after asking for the bands which look like orange cherrios.   Her man and i stood there…one of us would have to be the Holder.   He said…i think you will do better than me and i said NO…YOU and he went.   I owe him.   

last eve they lay under the bench,  all small and quiet.   This morning Black was up and about although carefully.   Minion still under the bench.   I went out a few times during the day…still quiet,  tho they did stand and walk around some.  This evening feed,  all appetites back.  All voices back.  They were at the end of their corridor  with Caroline and trotted to greet me.  Ate with usual pushiness.   Minion actually head butting Caroline.

we banded quite a few babies,  Jenny and i.   But there was not the attachment to them that there  is to Black and Minion so i don't remember all how it went.  We just did it and over time,  it was memory.   Not this in between.   They are OK.  All the stuff Goats need  to be done,  has  been been done.  Disbudding.  Castrating.   From now on out,   All Will be Well.  Stuff's OK.

Jenny's son,  Jeff,  Alyssia's brother.   my grandson.    Fate's father and now also the father of Brinley,  2 months younger than Emrie.  in Sacramento.   

The first spring i was here,  brought for Jenny's Mother's Day gift.   Hydrangea.    When it arrived,  that week end,  our eyebrows went up…Hydrangea,  an exotic,   none of  us had ever had a Hydrangea.   But here it was on the Hill.  Probably from Home Depot.   It was planted twice,  twice foiled by the Goats who alternately ate it and pulled it up by it's roots.   Was replanted and then finally placed in a landscape pot where it grew and shriveled,  grew and shriveled while waiting for someone,  anyone,  to say where to try to plant it again.  

Last fall i thought….enough.   it looked done in.   i planted it near the road gate at B,   quiet ,  for a while but then….Just Going…..slowly,  leaf by leaf  until now…..that bud cluster.   Maybe this Mother's Day?   There is nothing known to say about these kinds of things.   Just to marvel and watch as it all unfolds.   Life.   Life loves Life.   Loves.