windthread

here.   Wanting to stay here. Again.  I'd put these three together like this late last eve.  It had been a long day with many feelings.  When i went to the Baggie of Things,  to the Folders,   the light was dim.   I chose.   3.      Without almost not looking.

And this morning,  as i saw them,   saw what i'd written,   and then went to read the Prompt:   a few pieces that keep catching your eye but have no direct or even tangential relationship to prompt of the days…Do that.   Just because.

 still.   These three.    i don't tire of looking at them.  I might want to look at them for Days.   How they chose themselves.  Placed themselves.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

at Michelle's advice…this arrived and i looked but it's been uh,   busy,  so it didn't register.   But what's wrong  with this photo?

and i began reading   

the cover shows the stupa at the Barre Center for Buddhist  studies;   hornets have built a nest right above the head of the Buddha statue.

Prompt:  tell a 3 piece story of who you are in relation to the sacred directions…above   below within   .  just 3 elements.

Above is porous,    takes  In   all that presents      Within holds it all long enough to find any love    Below is the fertile field in which DOING is seeded and born and takes hold.   Above the mind     Within the heart   Below the Doing on this Earth.

a place you love.  Send a Valentine.

from when i was 21,   the first place i lived with earth,   Garden.  A tomato plant and zinnias.   There after,  everyplace.  Garden,  my longest lover except Earth herself,  and Earth gave me Garden.  

prompt:  an open treasure box of  experiences/creative devotion/whimsey

Alyssia had an appointment.   They arrived at about 10 a  and  Julian just kept sleeping.  Emrie and i had A DAY….it's been a couple weeks since she's been here for a chunk of time and she has changed so much already.  Her imaginative play has BLOOMED,   her ability to include me in the imaginative scenarios become honed and intentionally deliberate.   We needed to clear the bed in that back room so when it was her nap time we could ask Julian to move there and while clearing,  brought out the tool box of pencils and tool things that was new to her.  What is depicted above is about a third of it along with the tried and True from her half of the Altar.   Everything you see here came into play,  all according to her sense of them.  It's hard to give words to it because it was totally experiential and of the moment.  I never did understand what the Darner that Michele sent meant to her but it was very involved in it all.   Things from the toy basket that she hasn't looked at in weeks were brought out,  towers were built with blocks.   It all wove back and forth for hours until she was rubbing her eyes and we moved Julian,  who chose not to go to the back room that we had cleared for him,  but to the bench at the Everything table,  his legs and feet over to the Old Cowboy's mother's chair.   Nap time.   I lay down with Emrie when she does for her nap until she falls asleep.  Then get up and most often spend time just looking at the Scene.   Imprinting it in my mind.   Transient times never to be repeated.

an open treasure box of experience/creative devotion/whimsey

when she got back,  we fed the Goats and then walked.   Emrie carried her FisherPrice telephone and the work goggles that she calls the FireMan Glasses.   Went down to the Goat trail above A and over to the Round Swing.   Swang a long time.   Many mushrooms growing and i am working up the courage to trust the identification enough to EAT some.   There was the lower leg of some being….from maybe the knee.   We studied it.   Decided it might be of a wild turkey?   But WHAT might have taken it down?   We searched for the rest but found nothing.  it will remain a mystery.  We let Emrie choose the path back.  This Way she would say.   Come This Way and we would follow her.  

 

the prompt:  what will you usher in to begin to rectify the damage incurred by the agent of destruction you have banished?

i tried to avoid the prompt's easy direction from yesterday.  coming up with something genuine,  but small and personal.  I didn't want to go ……there…..because it's complicated in my mind.  Way too complicated for a collage by an old woman in a travel trailer in the woods.   would open up a thing that is a fetid place to this old woman.   But here it is again and i guess i just go there and say what i think is true and right even if awkwardly and insufficiently stated.   

If  THAT  one is gotten rid of,   it is only the beginning  at best,  of a whole new  wide open expanse of where we might go at this moment in time.  He is simply the standard bearer of the almost or The half of the population or voting population of this country.   If he becomes Gone,   then what?     What we face is still the cascading destruction of the planet which is our Life.  The reality is that WE have been at cause.   For YEARS.   Because of what we WANT and because of what we feel we should  HAVE.  And when i say WE,  i speak for my Kind.  Lets just call us european anglos.   or   white people.   There are flaws in this statement and Alyssia points them out when we get into the subject.  But i'll stick with  my  premise.    white people and whitish people like what they have.  They want to keep it.  And they now want to keep it for their children if they have the wherewithall to notice that things seem to be going South.    Their children.   But what of All the Children?  the bee children,  the tree children,  the fungal children,  on and on   all of humanity who have lived  purposefully and sincerely all over the globe.   

What about Everybody?    Every Thing…thing being all living things?   What about it?    All living things have allowed our lives to evolve.  We haven't noticed.   Cared to notice.   

I go to that beauty Full interview on Future Primitive with Daniel Christian Wahl that i was fortunate enough to find,  just in time.   So much is there.  But for the moment,  he says that  Because we designed this….this kind of life….we can RE design it.  

but what we need to do is           REALLY LOOK.   we need to SEE what is.   SEE who we are.   SEE what that means in the larger causal context of a living planet.   

 

 

we have to ask questions.  We have to ask questions we have not thought we needed to ask before.  We need to Listen.

We need to LOOK and try to SEE.    We need to open to Who and What might have answers that will allow life to continue.  It's not about how many windmills it will take.   It's about Love.  Love of all of Life.  ALL of Life because we need it.   We need to learn to KNOW that.  It's All ONE.   

All our Relations

what do you need to Bannish?   Get rid of it.  Now.

Procrastination.

  It's never the end of the world.  Stuff does get done.  Eventually.  But what it does is cause a constant drain,  leaking out,  of Energy that wants other use.  Good use.  Purpose~fully….maybe even Joyfully.

After feeding self breakfast,  i thought about what to do….it's Raining,  so that helped…just Inside possibilities and i wanted to work with the prompt but this was sitting next to me on this bench and i really need to get back there and try again but i thought,  i'll read later  but later comes and goes and it would be tomorrow in a minute and i just need to DO this…get it DONE.  

so…procrastination.  it's not gotten rid of,  it's a life long habit,  but i did it today.   and spent time feeling the feeling of doing it today,   and maybe the collage would be an image of what it might be like if there wasn't such a tangle to drag along behind me.

 

 

 

Prompt:  Consider the center of it all as that relates to you and your life/the world you've made around it.   Focus:  our body's coiled  energy  ….  what we are carried by when we breathe deeply and keep still.   What does that center look and feel like?

My meditation Practice.

i used the Payne's Grey Inktense Pencil and wet it a lot,  pressed down the rumpled tissue while still wet.  I like what  happened.  Will do this more as a Ground.    Be sure to enlarge the dark image.

 

 

this broccoli plant is two years old.  wintering over again,  in the spring she will become Three years.  I should take a pic of her whole self,  she more almost vine like,  dangling over the side of the wall and sprawling.   The florets ARE broccoli.  This years leaves are tough.  She flourishes.   Whatever she chooses to do,  she can.  We will let her die of old age. (if that ever happens).

 

and again,   the Glorious Collard Tree.  

I NEEDED to be OutSide today.  I hauled buckets of manure/feedscrap down to A.  I counted and need only 6 more buckets.  Or 7.   After the drizzly/rainy week it was a Beauty FULL golden day of sun,  and 52 degrees.   The Goats helped by supervising the shoveling,  inspecting the buckets and accompanying me down and up the long road.   I thought how lucky i am.  How many in this world get to walk with a herd of Goats?   And a chicken.   Before going back up,  i sat at the picnic table there.  After a while a tree frog began speaking…..the usual  sound,  but inbetween some different kind of speech,  little single syllable chirp sounds….i stared into the weeding debris.  It couldn't have been further than a foot away from my boots.  I watched for any movement.  None.  Only the sound.   sitting there, somewhere  hidden,  speaking.   

Before i went out i lit a stick of Nag Champa.   Satya Sai Baba.  From Mirran's gift shop on the Plaza in Socorro.   There's only one left.  I'll keep the box for collage,  i smile.  I came back and this house smelled like my house,  like my house, which ever one,  has smelled for over 50 years.  I've been saving these last sticks.  Why wait.  Smiling again.  

 

Prompt:  something literal and mundane that's central to your life.  How could you exalt this in a way that expresses its internalized value to you.

My Signature.    Literal.  Mundane.  and i wrote it on !!!!!!….the inside of a billing envelope from my credit card company!!!  which i'd begun to tear up until it clicked….Hey,  grace….this is wonder Full….for collage!!!!!!!     But my signature.   Yesterday a MVD day and toward the end i had to sign here and date,  sign here and date and i forget exactly how she indicated that she was eyeing the lower case g….but she was and she caught herself,  her head went a little sideways and her eyebrows flashed up and down it was all so subtle and instantaneous…the old woman with all the name changes,  with no way to prove physical address,   and to top it all off a lower case g

it was hopefully the final day of having to account to formal authorities for what i'd done over the years,  account for decisions i'd made during 50 years plus.   To just stand there and admit.     I think that's it.   sort of.   she surprised me by saying ok now you can go over there and take the written test.   eeeee…..i hadn't factored that in.   It's been over a month since i reviewed the 2019 California Driver Handbook.  I'd been there again for 2 and a half hours,  Tay out in the parking lot in the car with expired plates.   I didn't know what the legal percentage of alcohol in the blood can be.  I didn't know who gets ticketed for  passengers without seatbelts if they are minors .  Stuff like that.   I flunked.  I said to the guy who gave the the bad news… I haven't gotten a ticket since i was 19 years old.  Have never been in an accident.  He said…That doesn't matter.   but at least it's now on me,  grace,  with the lower case g.

Prompt.   build yourself an appropriate protective talisman,  lucky charm,  or kitchen witch/guardian totem for your real~life garden,  private interior realm,  or a special corner of your home.

For inspiration consider what would best represent the vibe and themes that have emerged from the first half of our challenge's time/focus commitment.

Early in the still dark i read.   I drink tea and begin marking time on the clock because i need to be gone from here today.  But i got the flash light and got Tree Woman out of the drawer.     I sit,  holding Her.   This image,  from a large page of Natl Geo maybe 40 years ago?   Back in Michigan.   No…only maybe 35.   She has migrated over the years from inside books,  dictionary, folders,  drawing notebooks,  boxes of paper, books of family photographs.   She's moved and moved.  Been lost so many times and found as many.  There was never a fear She would be Gone,  it was just a matter of time till She showed up again.  A lot of times i looked but couldn't find Her.   Eventually,  i decided that it was somehow purposeful.   I'd always find her when i really needed her.   The large photograph was telling of a man in some country in the Continent of Africa,  i don't remember,  who had built a platform high in a tree that looked like a nest.  I can't remember why he did that.   But this small part of that photograph was STUNNING to me….incidental to the story of the photographer,  really,  not even a part of it.   But i have had her so long and with all the handling by me and by her Places she's been,  the paper is worn thin and fragile.  I found her most recently in that tub of paper things,  down at Campsite B.   The tub with the damp wrapping tissue.

it was She that came instantly to mind with :  what would best represent the vibe and themes that have emerged from the first half of our challenge's time/focus commitment.  I don't have anymore words for this right now.   But when i finally made it back home,  i got her and i got the scrap baggie and began going through.   i thought i wouldn't be able to focus at all,  but i could and did and got this far.   To glue her down.   To glue her down is ummmm,   is  ___________[something].   No word.

But i look at her here among the other pages so far and i think of that term KeepSake that Acey gave….KeepSake.  KeepSafe.

Maybe She doesn't need to get lost anymore.   Maybe i have arrived at a place where i can keep her safe and she can keep me safe.   ?  We are both old and thin from the wear and tear of time passing.   Both of us will be compost in not too long.  But in the meantime,  we have work to do.