windthread

tomato seeds

 

The Tower.   Mushroom.   Herbcrafters Tarot.  " a tree crashes in a dark wood into a bed of brown, gold and green leaves.  A large decaying piece of the trunk is covered with mushrooms.   When the wood is touched,  it gives way,  crumbling to dust.  Light shines through the forest and hits the log,  illuminating the vibrant colors of the mushrooms"     "Write about the tragedy you are facing,  bury the writing beneath a decaying mushroom log."

To remember.   This card was chosen,  face up,  with intention of some sort.  All the Major Arcana spread and all equally available.   Which "called"….which had magnetism?    There was no question.   

So….no tragedy.   Even initially,  when i thought it was referencing the condition of the World here in this America,  which has yet to reach a point of what that word brings….tragedy…..we move toward it but are not there yet.      So.   To then realize that this card refers to some personal sense.  And again.   not tragedy,   but  a lost kind of sadness,   that thing Buddhists call duhkha.   To look there then,   in understanding the draw to this Card.     

I woke in the night to wide awake wondering what i had written.   Go look…..??????????????    What?   

and i gave up and went back to lie down and breathe self back to sleep.   This morning i woke to look again.   is this bullshit or real?    What's going on here?   But it's real.   Dissolution rather than crash.   i'm ready to be done with it.   I thought about what i know about Art and the making of Art and my lifelong pull to that.   I wanted to arrive at some resolution.   So  i thought about those i KNOW who are artists.   Jude.   Mo.   Judy Martin.    What stands out?    What stands out is their Devotion.   Every day is about their Art.   Every Day.    So i sat with that a long time.  Looking.   and saw that i have Never given that kind of devotion.  I am a sometimes person.  So i sat with that.   I am a sometimes person.      All this is nothing new.  But it's time for that Tower to fall.  That imagined Achievement to dissolve.   Go.   to become just the love of doing.  For nothing in particular.

today a world of  Maybes opens.  All moving in a flow of Equal Value.    Maybe i will sew something.  Maybe i will draw a leaf.   Maybe i will tend  a Garden.  Maybe I will walk with Goats.   Maybe i will cook.   There are zillion maybes.

i cooked.   Alyssia has found  Imperfect Foods.com.    it's like a strange CSA.   She has excess and brings it to me.  Cauliflower.  I cooked Aloo Gobi Matar.   I don't have all the individual spices so had to fake it,  which took time.  But i faked it and it was FINE and it was just so much OK.   and i was

happy.

and then,

i sewed.   I sewed this small cloth.   an old linen with just a harem cloth backing.   a cloth for just Holding.    And it was very much Enough and Fine and Good.   As the whole day was.    very much Enough and Fine and Good.   A sense of FREEDOM from self imposed Expectations,   Demands about how i should live.   Self imposed.  Am done with that.   Free.

this image won't make much sense but needs to be here for the purpose of Journaling.   It is of ONE of the MANY,  it turns out,  the MANY Chaparral Whitethorns.    Like MANY.   Which were Invisible up to the last days.  There,   So much There,   but unseen.   And their relation to a Plant form that we have wondered about.  Over and Over.   That we have called the Eeyores.  That we have wondered over….What WERE they before they became an Eeyore?   It was all in Plain Sight.   But we didn't see.  Till the last few days.   Now….Everywhere.   Ask a Plant…receive an answer.   Simple as that.

 

So.   This now.   Liz,   i 'mgoingtoTexas version 2.0.blogspot.com ,   set it in motion.   Marti with her heart and interest,  got it moving.   Acey was there,  already.  And we have the Herbcrafter's Tarot.   Tarot was the last thing i was imagining to be in my days.   So long since i spent time with Tarot.    Acey's post of  2/25   Plant Geek Eyes.   

following Acey's suggestion,   i chose 3 from the Major Arcana.   The Tower.    it speaks of sudden change and i was not able to connect.   There is CHANGE.  profound Change,  but sudden?,  no….      and i related  it to the Change in the World as i know it,  and it does,  but also today became more intimate  and yes,  sudden.   I woke this morning  realizing that Everything is different and i wanted to understand how.   Everything about how i had imagined my Life.   Its trajectory,  it's possible accomplishments…..different.   NOT as i had long held on to.   Facing that.   Asking.  Wanting to know.

 

i have long held the DEEP hope that i had something to achieve.   As a Maker.   As a writer of words.  Something to ACHIEVE.

i do not.   This card,  the Tower,  speaks to that.  Directly and plainly.      I spent the day with thoughts about this and went off to the store down at the corner.   Coming back,  i began walking up the Road and to my left saw the flutter of movement.   A butterfly.   The same kind of butterfly i saw twice on the walk down the canal road to get Sunny the Truck.  The same butterfly that was sitting at the topmost tip of a dry stem,  a single dry stem,  along and close down to the canal creek.    

and i realized that what i would want most now would be to document this.   In that book that Acey gave me.   Where first there would be the Miners lettuce,   then the  Chaparral Whitethorn and it's other form,  the Eeyore brush.   I would want to say:

in the first few days of March.   You can expect,  along the close edge of the canal creek,   a black butterfly with brilliant gold trim sitting on the top tip of a single dried stem of __________ (i still don't know that…what it is that it sits on,  exclusively) (i will need to continue to watch,  to learn what Plant it is.  this will take TIME.)

so….my Tower,  my life long Tower of wanting to be 

and Artist

a Writer

has fallen.   Exactly how these huge trees fall here.   Almost silently.   They just fall.  And begin again.   

there's a small community of these,   wildflowers blooming.   We figured out   "what"  they were last year and i don't remember.  I worked down there today,  at the Wall Garden and off and on went over to study them close,  squatting,  leaning in.     They just grow in the gravel.   Of their own accord.   Appearing.  For Themselves.

 

and STILL.    This.  Not ready to leave it/them.   They are giving some Thing,   that isn't someThing with any words.   SomeThing different than that.   Today, again.   I just look and take them in.   Nod.   Yes is the feeling.

got a call from Ernie at Lakeside Diesel.    "Old Yeller" is ready.   Tay and i set out walking the canal road.   See these two Manzanitas.   BeautyFULL….so much.

 

this part of the Hill would be covered in 12 to 18 inch grasses.   Flash tinder for Fire if it came nearby.   The Goats cris cross and graze it down.   This is an incredible blessing.   There would be no other way it could be done.

Sunny is Back.   Master Cylinder.   I asked if maybe it would be wise to just replace clutch?  No he said.   Maybe someday,  but not for a long time.   He is such a fine human being.

 

i go back and forth,  this Wall Cloth,  it gets pushed together some,  acquiring a Drape…and this allowed these to relax into Each Other.    I thought today how looking at cloth….loving it,   is equal to Making something of it.   Just loving it for what it is.  Is good enough.   

the Fig and the Pomegranate….leafing.   Also….the grape vines that might have not made it…DID.   Leaves today.  Leaves.

we looked.  more.   looking for Rings that might tell a story.   What we saw ,   rings?,    but with only a hair between,  if that?  How slow.    How slow did this tree grow?   What conditions ?   How could this be?   these branches and trunks.   A hundred years?

 

this is how i felt.   This is how i felt on my Inside at the end of this day.   Like this.

this is understandable.   It was old (?)   or   diseased?   but it fell  with the weight of it's wetness during Winter Rain.   Easy to see that all its interior was already transitioning by decomposition.   Wind broke it.

 

but then….this.   These Oaks have multiple trunks rising from the same Earth Body.   This is how Oaks are here.   With this one,  two of the trunks remain and appear totally viable.  Two had broken off at the base of Earth.   

 

they appear to be healthy.  The wood is solid and hard.   But they broke off.    We stand.  Over and over,  there,   asking aloud the same questions over and over,   going over and over what we "know",  about why trees fall and we are left Wondering.   Maybe that's how it will always be.   Jenny wanted to clear the path.   They had fallen on our best path from B down to A….across the Goat Path there.   She and her man worked.    quietly.   She has feelings about all this.   Her love for this Hill is more than i might ever know.   It's fluid tho,  i am finding out.   She is Fluid,  i am finding out.   We learn even tho we don't know what we are learning.   Earth is Love

it's too long a story.   It was harrowing.   No clutch on the way UP and DOWN and then over.   Last Saturday.   But more than that kind of harrowing,   the high anxiety i put self through  the following Sun  Mon  and Tues  over dreading asking the mechanic down at the corner,   the truly GREAT mechanic down at the corner who only wants to work on diesel and who said NO to working on the Honda Car?    Who DID work on Sunny last year…remember?  And since,  Sunny has run like new.   1983 just like New.   until last Saturday.   I knew,  of course,  there was only one course of action and that that course of action was a REQUIREMENT.  period.   I had to ask him and if he said no,  then…no.  and i would have to figure something else out.   No wiggle room with any of this.   So i went.  Wednesday and stood in front of his counter that is so high i almost don't see over and stood,  waiting for him to come through the door from the actual shop.   i asked.  he said    Get her here and we'll look.  i asked for a towing referral.  he gave it.

LOOOOOOOOOOOng story short.   He came.   His tow truck was enormous.  I said i didn't think it would work.  He said lets go look.  We walked up.   He somehow got the gear into neutral and coasted backward down the hill.   Loaded and delivered.   An incredibly good natured young man with a cud of sunflower seeds in his cheek.   We wait now.   Sunny is there tonight,  with all the giant shiny diesels.   Blessed Be 

I really WANT.   really WANT   these two old vehicles,   this truck and the 1986 honda car to      LAST.   As long as me.  Me and them.  Just Some more years.   

 

 

this is the pic i lost.   see below

this would be next…it's flowering now,  there is a very subtle powdery  fragrance like you might imagine in a victorian lady's budoir.   The flowering clusters are round.   The flowers themselves at first look simple…how they have looked to me the first year,  last year and this year up until today

 

standing at the distance that i normally stand from this bush/shrub,  the flowers are just small balls…like on the snowball bush back in Michigan.   Not any more.  There is what i might call the primary flower and then these wonder Full  Dr.Seuss flipper petals that make them quite exotic,  more like a  million of tiny orchids.   So….these were what i had in mind at the beginning of the day of searching to identify.  To name.   But as the search went on and on to just more searching,  i learned more ….of the obvious….i needed to know about the leaves…their positioning,  their texture,  smooth or rough edged.  and then the form of the wooded  part,  the brush tree itself and specifically, the bark.

 

so i ran back down for the third time and was Amazed and what i had not seen.   LOOK at this!   Double click for sure…How Elegant.   and the lower,  older trunks..there are several to this one shrub,  even more so.  Typepad only allows me 5 pics.  I looked at a LOT of images Google found for me and finally,  at the near end of the day thought to find the copy of 

John Muir Laws    The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Nevada   that i'd gotten last year.   Which is not the Go To that i'd dreamed it would be…but then you can only fit so much in one book.  But Ta Da……

I SOMEHOW LOST A PIC HERE.   WILL see if i can add it back when i finish …what a BUMMER

 

I think this is IT.     and I laughed…look at his illustration of the bloom clusters!   Duh.   but that little close up image,  with the fippers….and i ran down a 4th time,  and yes…old stems make sharp spines.  So i think we have a Chaparral Whitethorn.  OR at least Something in the ceanothus family.  There was no note of the great and facinating form of the trunks….i would think for sure that would be noted?????   

 

 

 

this is the Beauty Full bristol notebook that Acey sent during the 30 Days.   the image here is just a little nothing that i did to test the Inktense pencils at that time.   Am looking at it as maybe for the preliminary drawings.  OR,  if she likes it,  maybe a book instead of a big picture?   

ok…will go see if i can retrieve that pic.   

 

they begin as heart shaped.   There are hundreds.   The Goats do not eat them.

 

each cluster is attached to the earth by a kind of filament stem root

 

 

 

as time goes they begin to resemble lily pads.   She calls them the lily pad plant.

 

some develop a secondary small leaf under multiple blossoms.

Miner's lettuce.   Claytonia perfoliata       100 grams,  a modest salad,   contains a third of the daily requirement of Vit C,  22% Vit A and 10%  iron.   They are native here.   Self perpetuating.    Interesting again….Goats do not eat them.  so…i would assume too that deer would not.   January through February so far.  in Profusian.

i can choose.   Every day.   How i see and experience my life.   Many nuances from pragmatic to totally SURReAL.   All are valid.  All carry Truth.  Choose.   Choosing.

i sat here,  in this small house space last night a longtime.   For a while,  a dog barked in the distance,  repetatively.   Which means a dog tied or confined.   A dog sensing but unable to Find Out.   and i thought about sensing and finding out.   about choosing.    

and the dark became deeper.   I slid into the Surreal.   Where AM i?   How did i get here?  Where is Here?   What is that on the wall in front of me that i call Evolution?   What is Making?,  like,  really?   i got out the collage images of Acey's  30 days.  Looked.  I thought about the woven cloth OutSide,  hanging from trees from the early days of Jude.   I thought about the exchanges with Jenny that began when she was pushed,   finally,  from my body  FROM MY BODY,  this 40 something old human being that i MADE…inside myself,   then

pushed her out.

I read.  Over and over all the comments left here and was so grateful for them.   How reading them opened  different ways of seeing  

And i want to say THANK YOU,   from deep in my Heart for all of them.   Want to say how they validate the Purpose and USE of blogging to me,   how we come to know Each Other and have a Sense of the Other's lives and can

WEIGH IN

with so many eyes and hearts.  And how it is for ALL of Us.   All of Us.

Alyssia was here this eve and commented that in phone with Jenny,  that she said how Good a Day Sunday was.

This is Big.  Big enough so it blurs the lines.  That mark degrees from pragmatic to surreal.

Thank YOU