windthread

March 25th issue of The Nation,  in my post office box.

Greta Thunberg.  16 years old.  Her presentations at the UN and Davos on UTube.  

Greta Thunberg rode the train for 32 hours from Sweden to Davos.  There,  as she had at the United Nations,  she addressed the Powers That Be.  She addressed all of us.  She said  " Adults keep saying,  We owe it to the young people to give them hope.  But i don't want your hope….I want you to act as you would in a crisis,  I want you to act as if the house is on fire.  Because it is."

it's a kind of evolutional   shift?????  the children Standing?   …..  because their lives depend on it.

 

 

these were not here last spring,  my first spring.  Or…if they were,  not like this.  There are clusters of plants throughout the crazy growing grass and clover at Campsite A.    I look at them,  their small community clusters

I am so HAPPY about the immediate response to need,  to hope,  to someone finding herself  NEEDing  to just Go

the community that we have become over time…how so truly Great is this????    How LUCKY we are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE AND LOVE AND LOVE

it was November 8, 2018,  the Camp Fire that decimated  the town of Paradise, completely.  Severely damaged the nearby towns of   Concow and Magalia.   The fire that came just a few miles from this Hill.   You might remember that Suzie Yonts  commented on the blog while i was evacuated with the Goats and Talkie to the Gridley Fairgrounds.    She had fled.  Just her.  Just her cat.  Suzie is a weaver.   They made it out and ended up near Davis, CA where she stayed alternately with family and friends.    There were a couple of emails between us,  and in one of the first exchanges i said something about how,  in imagining mySelf in the same circumstance,  which is impossible, really,  i might  be comforted by some scraps of cloth.  Needle and thread.  I asked about her weaving and told her how Jude had taught Us to make a very simple box loom.  Her response was that there was just nothing IN her in the moment.  Nothing.  a few emails.  and then one last week.  She has a place of her own.  No longer on someone's couch or in someone's spare room.  She has a place.  She said that in feeling like she has a place,  she thought to hang something on one of the walls.  Go get a nail…..but,  there are no nails anymore.  She,  like so many,  thousands of others, had lost everything.   No plate or fork.  Pot or pan.  No nails.  no hammer.  Nothing.  

zero

all these taken for granted things…dishes,  cook ware,  sheets,  pillowcase,  underwear,  cat litter box,  toothbrush,  washcloth, towel,  forks and spoons,  a paring knife.  Everything.  She slowly finds these day to day necessities for living.  But that she just in these last days,  feels the Weaving self,  still there.

So….i am wondering.  There are Weavers who read here i think.  Surely someone has a tapestry loom that is lying fallow?

How can we get one to her?   Everything will be different,  but a loom would rock her into a new life.  Not the same.  Not the one she loved.  But one she can come to love as time goes.  

Can We do this?  It's a Big Ask,  but i think We can.  I hope we can?

 

 

the Live Oak on this Hill.  Many.  and many have multiple trunks.  this one is in the old Doe Goat Forest…in this pic you see 5.  There's actually 6.  I don't know anything about how this occurs.  So far,  i find no information.  But it IS.  and i will continue to look.  I want to find some universal object that i can use to be able to show the size of these trees.  I've never seen anything like them before.  An average lifespan is 200 years.

 

looking up.

I feel extremely grateful and also amazed that i get to live this last part of my life here.  Who would've guessed.  Coming from a childhood in the midwest on a creek.  Spending my middle years in a desert world.  then,  coming here.  

What am i trying to talk about now?   how to talk about it.  It may be off putting.  So be it.  Hopefully i'll find words that will tell the truth of what i am experiencing.  How the Now of my life is so rooted in that childhood at the Michigan creek.  How there has been a pulse,  a thread that held over all the years..

Nature.  We talk about Nature.  it's a word that's like sky.   How we talk about sky….that blue stuff overhead,  but sky is so much.  Sky is the Whole of what holds this Planet,  sky is deep,  heavy,  strong science.  And deep heavy strong Sacred.  Science and Sacred being Same.  "nature",  Same.

I want to learn how to talk about the beingness of things.  Or i don't want to continue here at all.  

Each person who comes here can take or leave any of it,  it doesn't matter to me at all.  What matters is if i keep telling the story of how i experience life in my most genuine way,  out of the Felt Sense of All of It.  

it was when i was in my early 30's that i sat,  holding a stone,  listening.  I try to remember what came of that,  something specific,  and i can't.   It was during the time when i was being flooded with so much that was new to me and so much from

"out there",  All the New Age  glow.  So,  i don't know,  but my guess it was a lot from my own Ego,  maybe the stones did their best with who they had holding them?    But i remember the very quiet sense of the holding.  Their form in the palm of my hand.  The feeling of connectedness.  I do remember that.  

And then things went along and i let a lot of that go.  Because life experience made "believing" hard.   Always,  i loved them,  wherever i was,  stones were there,  showing themselves.  But i didn't ask anymore.  

Here i am.  so many years later, old,    remembering some things,  like how many Native Peoples say that stones were the First People.

i held this stone today and was quiet.  Just quiet.  Sitting.  silent.  the coolness in my palm,  the face

and this is what i came away with.  

"the place here is very old.  It is from the Beginning.  Think of it this way.  Think of it not as it appears to you now,  but as it has always been.  Before anything you know.  Many of your kind have been born and have died here.  Lives lived amidst and upon this earth of here.  Stay in that way of learning.  Go as deeply and as often as you are able to.  The thousands of years.  Before this moment of you.  This is enough.  You will learn how to live."

i wondered when First Peoples are thought to have lived here,  and know that this is a question with no real answer.  The Native people will say they have always been here.  i wondered when this earth here began to be the earth that i see now.  Not knowing how to research those answers quickly,  and quickly is how we like it now,  i messaged my friend Bill back in N. Mex….the Geologist.  He tells me that common knowledge has it that the first native people lived here about 16,000 years ago.  That at the end of the last Ice Age,  the climate and sea level began to be like modern times.  10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

16,000.  12,000.  10,000.  This is where the stone tells me to go.  immediately,  there is a perspective,  yes?

 

 

 

language.  inter~species,  inter~being.   

on the road down from here at C,  on and along the way to A,  stones have become familiar.  It's easy,  this time of year because Rain washes them clean and their beingness is so apparent.  I recognize them.   Kind of nod and go along.

The other day,  when clearing growing space at the top of the Wall Garden,  behind the top wood that is the highest point of the retaining structure,  maybe almost 3 ft of good soil from the creation of the structure of it.  and this is where we will grow the vine plants…squashes, watermelon.   Maybe some gourds even.  I am sitting,  scooting forward little by little,  clearing the thick grass that has taken hold over the winter.  I don't love doing this so much…these thick grasses,  like crab grasses are so fierce and strong and green.  If we could be happy eating them instead of squash,  they would be already ready.   But i pull them out and feed them to the Goats who are not allowed in.  So there is earth,  all moist with Rain and i scoot along on my butt,  pulling,  loosening earth from roots and just There….looking at me….the stone above…that stone face….right in the middle of it all.  I sat, a long time,  just regarding this stone person.    And then i went on,  some way beyond  until it was time to go back up for the day and i stood and walked back and went directly to where the face waited…not having to look for It  at all.  It was waiting.  Holding the stone in my hand,  i went through the wire gate place and turned to tie it shut as i do everytime.  Day after day.   And  looking down to pick up the rope that ties the wire fencing,   there….this second stone.  I've never seen it there before.  I see other stones that i know,  but not this one.  Pick it up.  How it looks like the Energy Lines that run through a forest,  through the sky of the forest,  down into the earth of the forest…energy lines.  Vital and woven.

so these.  I have them here on the Altar.  Listening.  At some point will return them to their place i found them,  or….if it seems to be "right",  to a Garden Altar at B.  I don't know.  Don't know yet what they have to Tell.

 

Language  heard with ears or Other Wise  8 x 10 inches   $75

The Mark we leave   14 x 7 inches   $75   Taken

 

 

the little lizard….  

The Birthing   21 x 7 inches   $125

 

Home    14 x 17 inches   $125    Spoken for.  Taken

 

ADDENDUM,  Monday,  3-25-2019

i'll leave this here,  one more day.   Hopefully at some point,  figuring out how to place Cloths on the SideBar,  but i don't know how, yet.

To say,  Paypal seems to be functioning again.

These Cloths help me remain a viable part of the needs of this Hill.  

Home and The Mark we Leave have been taken.  Gratitude.  and Love.

this one might need to be here for a while.    

i woke at about 3 am.  Raining,  the sound on the metal roof of each raindrop.  I was facing the window and looked out,  where i am positioned to see the tops of the close trees and then into the "sky".  I lay there,  looking.   i don't know how long but the raindrops i noticed had stopped and there was a clearing of "sky" and Stars appeared.  You might remember how i've said i can't look at the stars here.  How they are so close.  I've said i have always had a thing about looking at the night sky,  stars,  i can't,  for too long,  only moments and then i have to turn away.   How it's some kind of frightening.  

in New Mex,  sometimes in the heat of summer i would sit on the hood of the truck,  leaning back on the windshield and look at the sky,  and it would be ok,  because i could connect it to the line of the Horizon,  the Rim.  But not for long that way, either.

last night,  laying there,  looking,  first at the close trees wet with rain and soft with night,  i FELT them.  and looking up when the stars appeared,  i realized that it's not the vastness of the cosmos that is frightening for me,  but it is really the intensity of the Love that is overwhelming.  It's the intensity of the Love…in me.  My love.  It's My Love that is frightening for me.

 

and i realize that somehow,  living Life with her is helping me be able to look at Stars.  

sometimes when i can't  "place" myself,  when i am finding the Ground too shakey,  to littered with words and confusion,  as in this present state of the world and i say world,  because the Planet herself is solid and steadfast and same,  but the world that is playing out upon Her is a mess….so in these times.  In these times,  i often find myself with a pencil.  And just touch it to paper and go.  No thought.  just go.  and almost always,  it begins with an eye.  a human eye.  and almost always a woman's face will form around that eye,  because i guess it's what i am.  and often there will be a member of one of the other Peoples.  Bird,  Goat, Lizard,  dog, one of the Plant people.  It seems to take care of something,  ease something.   and i thought more about that this morning,  what it does and i guess what it does is allow me to SEE a feeling.   To give form,  visual form,  to a Feeling.  And this frees some angst…..to See it.  See it on the blank page.   I don't know how it works on this blog,  enlarging this, above,  but with the phone,  which is the camera,  i can enlarge just so much and i spent time with that today,  enlarging the lines,  the deposit of graphite on the paper and how just so incredibly satisfying that is…the total Beauty of it…mark on paper…particles from the pencil making line,  mark.

and then,  as if in direct response to me,  i see notice of the most recent podcast of Future Primitive,  Joanna Harcourt-Smith and go there to see.    I love her,  Ms. Joanna…old lover of Timothy Leary,  now,  old woman in Santa Fe N Mex,  so kind and soft and loving , full of humor and CURIOUS,  so devoid of ego she often feels like a newborn baby to me

and this podcast,  interviewing one Julie J. Morley,  whose research focus is Interspecies  intersubjectivity,  i listen to the interview and as if a gift of Grace,  i find a place i can Go,  a place that is speaking to what i know i need,  like air.  Like water.  An environmental  educator, author and speaker on complexity,  consciousness, ecology and interspecies creativity.  An alive woman,  living somewhere in California,  teaching children,  listening, learning,  Telling.  Kin.

sacredfutures.com,  Morley's blog.  Ok.  So i say thank you to the pencil,  to the marks that gave this image of woman and bird speaking,  calling,  the response to that.  

things are still possible.  and i'll put my energy there,  stand there.

her hand.  just four fingers curved,  the thumb, holding.   

about making our Mark…  i moved the volunteer Storks Bill up.  From A,  transplanted at the rim of the B dye garden bed.  To loosen her from her place at A,  i dug deep with a shovel,  to make entry into the earth.  but then my hand went in and felt its way around the roots,  softly,  Care Full y  loosening.  Then two hands lifted.    To leave a mark,  there is Intention of Spirit and Heart,  and to do the work of it,  hands.  So,  hand.

and after all this,  coming in,  i saw that there was a post….Artisun.blogspot.com  Debra price agums at Whitney High School.  And lo and behold,  a portrait by her alumni,  Sarah Oh  who now is in art school,  i think in New York.  Sarah Oh,  whose pinch pot i was so lucky to purchase,  that pinchpot that i took with Us when we evacuated to Gridley last year,  pinch pot.  Created by hand.  and today there is a painting of Sarah's.  A young woman leans into a

goat

How could this BE?!,  but yes,  a Goat!  and in her hand,  a pair of scissors.  How the hand is,  in the portrait,  holding the scissors