windthread

there's an article in the local newspaper telling the story of a young woman,  25 and her mother,  66.   The  daughter fled the fire.  Her mother refused to go,  said there was time enough.   and died in it.  There is a large photograph on the front page of her,  the daughter,  her fingers holding a baggie of papers or photographs,  one of many in a plastic container of such things.

the story of this was written in a matter of fact spare manner.  raw.  told of  a relationship of mother and daughter that would be not unfamiliar to many.   i read it,  hearing Voice,  like those radio stories i listened to this weekend.  Voices,  telling.  Hers,  her mother's.   

It's painfully beauty full.  It's painfully horrible,  for the daughter….who had yet reached the age when she could stand up to her mother,  a mother who maintained her alpha position.  They would have come to a different balance in years just some ahead,  but not yet.  And the daughter is left behind.  Alone.  The title of the article is   I Want My Mother Back.

this time of year, when families come together, when so much is at the table.   To be sure to TRY to let it all go,  all of the contentiousness no matter how legitimate,  and to just say….Even Though.  Even Though,  i love you anyway.  I love you anyway.  I will love you anyway,  forever,  whether i want to or not,  whether you want it or not.  And whether it fixes anything or not,  no matter the response.  At least you said it.  

Asking     6 x 7 in    $45

Grace and Magic    9 x 16    $70

Stand and Face What you know      13 x 24     $130

Celebrate    8 x 11     $55

Until i learn how to post them in the Shop on the sidebar,  this will do.   For details of each,  please email.   Love,

one of the two Collard Trees.   All that remains of things i personally bought,  or planted.   

when i was down to the Wall Garden,  having walked through Campsite B,  onto the road,  down,  i thought.  Goats followed along,  Puppy bounded ahead,  Tay after her.  It's wet.  The road,  Carefree Way is wet.  Water pools.   I can hear the soft song of a few tree frogs.

Because Julian has been sick,  and because of difficulties in my daughter's world,   i have had 3 days alone.    Over the course of this last year,  this is unusual.  I have become accustomed to not being alone anymore.  Because of who they are,  that make me not alone,  i have taken this in.   But to be alone.   

and what i have done is look for the sound of human voice.  On radio.  I'd forgotten radio.  I listened to This American Life and followed that thread to a pod cast called   Invisiblia.    "Unforseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions.  Invisibilia…Latin for invisible things…fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently"  I listened to the pod cast…."What Do You Let In"

and as i finish Cloths and walk that walk down to the Wall Garden and feed Buck Goats and speak to Talkie and pet Puppy,  the day to day players in the life i live now,   this came:

I know i think too much.  I always have.  I was born that way.

This question:   How do i know you know me?   What makes me think you WANT to know me?

Why are either of those things important to me?

Solstice is soon.  and then,  my only real holiday,  well maybe now,  two of them,  Puppy Day too,  but New Year's Eve,  New Year's Eve….what am i thinking?   Who am I?   What do i think about this space here,  Windthread?

it was just moist in the morning,  till about noon and i walked again.  Still looking for those two little Ferns and spend time with this rock.  how it's cracked.   It's a large rock.  granite.  i wish i'd taken a closer photograph of the crack line.  I'll do that tomorrow maybe.

and then the rain begain.  RAIN.  the kind i remember from when i came last year.  Heavy RAIN.  constant.  it hasn't stopped.  Today is the day that all evacuation orders are lifted for Paradise and surrounding towns. The first day.  People can come and go.   

I thought about the concept of Grace.  How it is unasked for.  We might ask for Mercy.  but Grace  Comes as a surprise.    How the word    bestow  often is associated with Grace and how it's a concept most often associated with god.   god bestows Grace.  Or some other powerful authority.  The courts, maybe.  but that's more, Mercy.  

i thought a lot about those days in the Gridley Overflow Field.   How i read that some people came to that field after i left and remain.    Most of the more rudimentary tent camps have been cleared.  People for the most part i guess are "somewhere".  Shelters still.  There is an adopt a family program and many travel trailers have been donated.   It's supposed to be clear or at least partly sunny for the rest of the week.  In the low 50's.  Nice.  I can spend time at the Wall Garden.  Alyssia and i can shore up the Buck tents.   The things On Going between the RAIN days.  

finishing the 5 crows,  i realized that i'd not finished invisible stitching the body of this Cloth.  Did that and also realized that the figure needs to be more defined.  I don't want her to be,  but  this is not  "real life",  but a Cloth.  She needs to be more defined.  So…ok.  maybe tomorrow.  Depends what the light is like.

i wish this could be scratch and sniff.   It was a misty,  sometimes foggy day.  Slight rainfall off and on and i found self wandering,  looking for those two little ferns i saw the other day.  Could not find.  But there is such Energy,  you can feel the earth vibrating with it's  wet work and the fragrance of it….oh,  eeeeeeeeee,  

Manzanita.  Will bring some more small cuttings tomorrow,  for the dye jar.  Before i used dry ones.  This time,   when they are energized.

the back of one…sometimes they grow all forward.  I don't know why.  Here,  she looks naked.

On Being.  Conversation with Pauline Boss about   Ambiguous Loss.  I fell asleep last night loving those two words but woke in the middle of the night thinking….Ambiguous Unknowing.    She says that with ambiguous loss,  there is no possibility of closure or resolution and that's ok.  To learn how to live with it,  be with it.   And i am wondering if i found a way to make a world of ambiguous unknowing  to  allow for  my own joy?  Hoping tonight will bring more information.  

don't know if this will work.  Typepad is having trouble this eve.  so…maybe or maybe not.

it's dinnertime and as we eat,  we talk.  I am still here with this being and we are talking about how we watched Utubes and read about Snails.  How Julian had brought home some snails from his old Montesori School garden.  How Alyssia had loved them so much.  How i won't let anything here be "kept".  Feelings of Julian about that but we go along and remember how we know that snails can change gender if they  feel the need.  and thought about going to read that again,  but he changed the subject to something he'd read yesterday.  His homework entails reading an hour a day,  after school….and he'd finished his book and so got a National Geographic out of the drawer to finish off the time.  He found it again and wanted Alyssia to read it aloud, which she did.

"Crustacean assignation  Patricia Edmonds

To a lobster couple,  this is normal sex:  For days the female squirts urine into the den of her desired mate.  (not unlike Goats, we note)  Beguiled by the scent,  he lets her move in.  Foreplay…stroking each other with antennae and with feet covered in taste receptors….lasts several days.

Once she's convinced that he'll protect her,  the female disrobes,  slowly shedding both her hard shell and the pouch where she had banked sperm from a prior mate.  Molting leaves her in a perilously soft new shell,  so he stands guard for the half hour it takes to harden.  Then,  supported by his claw legs,  he suspends himself above her and lifts her to face him, cradling her in his legs.  Her new shell has a new sperm pouch,  he thrusts a packet of sperm into it using appendages called gonopods.  The deed is done.

As soon as one mate leaves,  the male will welcome another.  The female,  meanwhile,  will use the sperm packet to fertilize thousands of eggs,  which she'll carry under her tail for about a year until the larvae hatch.  (a YEAR!)

it goes on.

But climate change is threatening this babymaking process, says Diane Cowan,  founder of the Lobster Conservancy.  When water is warm,  lobsters put their energy into growing.  When it's cold, winter water temperatures in the 30's Farenheit…they put their energy into making eggs and sperm.  Cowan says if climate changes shorten that cold period,  they'll produce fewer gametes.  And if it's steadily too warm,  they just won't produce.  No eggs…No sperm.  No lobsters."

THIS is how to learn about things.  At the kitchen table.  During dinner.   Our Hill Snail.  Lobsters.   For this,  i am deeply grateful.

how Beauty Full  hir body is.  So soft,  so undefined.  So unafraid.

First Puppy Day.   I love this pic a lot.  It's representative of so much.  Of who the 3 of us are,  me,  my daughter Jenny,   her daughter Alyssis is/are.   I was wanting to say a lot.  But it's late now and i'm out of steam.   Alyssia had an appointment at the VA in Sacramento at 3:oo.  She would have been back by 6.  There were 2 crashes on the freeway.  It was 8 when she made it back.   Emrie and i had gone through an issue of National Geographic almost 5 times.  I would have gone through a few issues,  but Emrie likes to repeat pages.  To see again.   It was heroic,  her patience about wanting her mother.  When it got dark.  Especially then.  At one point she had me put on her shoes and she did the kissing goodbye,  hand to mouth and away,  hand to mouth and away,  standing by the door.  But there was no mother.  a couple times she murmered MaMa  but then went on,  back to the same pics of the National Geographic,  back to her turtle toy,  the building blocks and she kept it together until the headlights appeared outside.  Mama.  Julian had slept.   He's 9.

i read a lot more today about the people who are working with their newfound homelessness from the Fire.  About animals that are still showing up.  almost a month later.  How that's slow in any kind momentary resolve.  Stuff goes.  Slow.  Slower than snails.

We go.  How best we can,  with the circumstances we have.  We are brilliant and heroic.  We live such complex lives with such Grace and determination.

this day,  one year ago,  we were on our Way.  There was sadness and fear.  There was a kind of numb blankness.  We were approaching the place,  Merced (mercy),  California,  where the fate of a kitten would intertwine with ours.  Puppy.  So,  it's kind of a holiday.  That we might yearly celebrate and maybe we will call it Puppy Day.  Because it had to do with courage and blind faith all around.  Just hoping for the Best,  but who could know.  We were just going.

and there is Joy here.  Nothing at all as i might have imagined.

  This Place,  nothing at all as i had imagined .    This life,  not at all what i had imagined it might be.   

and it continues this way.  Beyond what i imagined.  so,  the Eve of Puppy Day.