windthread

came home yesterday from refinishing two rocking chairs and flopped down to take the nap.  Woke and suddenly i wanted chocolate milk.  Always have syrup around,  don't want it often,  but when i do,  i DO.  I knew the milk was on the brink.  I'd used it for macaroni and cheese and it was still ok,  but leaning away from ok and i stirred up a glass anyway and took a long drink.  Wasn't sure,  so took another drink,  and NO.  No longer ok.  and as the hours went till dark,  i felt sicker and sicker.  It would have been great to just throw up.  But i don't do that.  So,  dear body lived with it.  Today am pretty much ok.  I look forward to tomorrow.

 

and i understood today that i NEED stitching.  Even if just simple.  Small.  I need it.

 

Until i get a specific date,  or,  Until i get word that it's Hopefull thinking,  this will be the last Cloth finished here.  It's in the Shop.

 

the Sky cloth is very hard to let go of.  In exchange with Deb Lacativa,  it was almost a fluke.  She has no more.  Maybe Never,  will have more,  anything like it.  It's so so excellently what Sky can be.  and so…hard to let go.  But/And,  it is also what the Kite needed.  So…ok.  Letting things Fly.

Finishing today,  i had many memories of when i lived in the faux Airstream.  When i had Alyssia and Jeff….5 and 4 yrs in that faux Airstream,  what life was like then.  How we lived.  It was very Beauty Full,  all those memories.  they  feed the Going now.

tires  groceries  cleaning Tubs and buckets.

Someone who was one of Bill's graduate students,  long since,  wants to drive.  Possibilities abound.

slo mo.  I'm not sure what to do "next".  Dark comes so soon.

O K.  Last week of November.  ie: monday or tuesday after thanksgiving?  No DAY yet,

but time Frame.  Last week of November.  

If there can be enough Drivers amassed,  we will ALL go straight through.   We will arrive together.  Which to me, means me and my herd.  of Which i am part.  The ultimate Best.  That i can be there when they all  Set Foot.  I can call them out,  with that milking bucket with pellets rattling,  be the Thing they know,  the thing familiar,  in a foreign land.  This is my Hope.

In this moment,  dusk,  it's become Real.  We are going.  ok.  and more ok.  I am wide eyed.

 

this is Funny.  I don't quite know how to feel about it.  

You know,  cause i've said,  i had/have feelings of taking self out of the "marketplace",  finally,  about letting my last  "Work Aways" go,  and there being the feeling of being unemployable after all these years from  15 years old…..since i am now old.  and the feeling of maybe have jumped the gun cause i'm still here,  still needing fire wood, etc.  but then the contradiction of wanting TIME to put ClothMaking FIRST…

anyway

and i am stitching away…that Kantha and phone rings and it's Jean who i worked for maybe 10 years ago and quit abruptly because she left me a note saying to please be sure to get the kleenex under the bed and i thought….NO….pick up your own used kleenex and left a note to that affect…never going back…any way,  Jean,  who said she had heard through the grapevine that i was working freelance and putting Gardens to sleep…and would i have time?  and i said i don't know,  maybe,  and she said please call her if i can,  and i said that when i finish Bill's furniture redo,  and she became GIDDY,  saying you would do that too?  and i said, sure,  why not?  It's easy and she said she was  " THRILLED"  at the thought…

so…hmmmm.  

 

Who am I?   What

am I"

 

 

a lot of stitching that doesn't  "show".  And then,  began Kantha.  Why?  (as Mrs. Volfie asks)

i wondered too,  but as it happened,  i thought….to try to hold it together,  even tho it's confused…to try to hold it together.  yes.  ok.

and this was two days "straight" of stitching…a first.  I thought of Judy Martin.   And i got a lot of stitching done and it made me feel GOOD,  but also,  i realized that i NEED to get UP and MOVE.  Just sitting curved over a Cloth doesn't feel healthy to my body.  I need to MOVE.  To stretch my legs and back.  So some kind of Balance, again.  I'll begin looking at that tomorrow.  This evening,  after feeding and giving water,  I ran with Tay.  Threw her ball and then tried to beat her to it, which of course i couldn't,  but it felt good.  She was ecstatic.  I think about when there is life on that Hill.  All this will take care of itself.  But till then,  

 

so to clarify.  Yesterday,  when i said   "the background of unknowing, of confusion".  I was referring to the larger world,  the world of society that we live in.   The one in which there is so much unknowing, confusion, betrayal, dishonesty,  anger,  violence….a tangle of those things,  that present to us daily in the news.    That is the ground cloth here…the tangle,  the confusion.  Atop that,  is the piece of SKY.  Deb Lacativa.  you recognize her cloth now,  i'm sure.  None else like it and as the plain soft muslin of earth beneath it,  nothing here about tangle or confusion.  Both,  one Cloth.  

 

On Being     Ellen Langer,  the Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness….most recent episode. I listened while i drank the morning tea(s)..(3).  and it brought to mind an old tool i'd forgotten.  The thing of And and But.

How often, to ourselves in our own mind and also out loud to others,  we present something and then use the word But and continue with something else.  How the word But creates a dichotomy….stops things up short…closes a door….creates a divide.   And in the practice that i thought up,  i catch myself everytime i use that word but and instead, replace it with AND.

there is a very significant difference.  In this Cloth,  it's clear.  

I could think…there is all the tangle of confusion heartbreak  that is the undercurrent to the days of this life in 2017 BUT  i can find Joy

or

I can exchange the word But for the word AND.  Which then would be inclusive

There is all the tangle of confusion and heartbreak that is the undercurrent to the days and i can  find  Joy.  Is the difference subtle or not?   But    acknowledges dichotomy.  Separation.

And  is inclusive.  It is ALSO.    Equal.

so…(Jude)….here it is.  Lesson of early November…. What began as laying a small rectangular piece of the folded edge of something Deb sent…a body became.   The angle of that led to the face.  I'd thought it would be a small cloth but the face said that there needed to be Sky above.  Enough to indicate vastness.  This changed everything.  Nothing worked anymore….needed more Earth if there was more Sky.  ok.  then that Kite appeared.  NEVER IMAGINED.  but there it was.  ok again.  

How great is this?  that Cloth gives so much.

 

the joy of stitching the Tail of the kite with Deb's Dirty Thread

 

i'm on a mission to try to get Fatter.  Peanutbutter cookies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth   Sky   Cloth   Thread

all we need.

Her earth arm tethers her,  her Night arm reaches   The cloth and the thread…just to the side.  Scraps of themselves for something else.  Just this much on the background of Unknowing,  of Confusion.  This Time.  So in this moment,  This.  In some future moment, who knows what?  Right now…..Enough.  Perfect.  Just….enough.

 

my first freelance work day.  Same house.  different feel.  Today i sanded and oiled the front patio table.  It's round.  has an umbrella.  Quite large.  I did the underneath too.  Umbrella is out for the season.  It was nice.  It was also Work,  so,  what's the difference?  Looking at that.

The really great thing is that i can keep doing my laundry there.  But today when i tried to pull my bottom sheet out of the washer,  it ripped!….i was struck in the heart!  I love this sheet.  All my sheets i get from the Thrift Shop.  someone in town buys theses expensive sheets and then for whatever reason,  they end up at the Thrift Shop.  They are that thick almost rough cotton weave.  I LOVE them.  the feeling of them.  and this one,  a fitted bottom isn't worn soft…i'm thinking it had gotten caught on the hinge of the fold up camp cot i sleep on now since getting rid of the two giant futon mattresses because i thought i was moving….

Sheet is at least a Queen size and i fold it in half on the little cot and still it drapes loose.  Anyway….

 

i thought i'd seam it together,  but then wasn't sure so i went to UTube…mending sheets and who showed up?,  but Mrs. Volfie!  Oh Yay!  My Goddess for everything!  Her page  Our Half Acre Homestead,  this video….Darn That Sheet.  You can go see her.  In it she has a really great new hairdo.   She's in Canada.  I Love her like i love my sheet.  She tells me to do things and then say "WHY?" and tells me why.  Something about that.

 

i was going to patch it.  But she advised not.  A top sheet,  ok.  But a bottom sheet, not. Darn.  Like you would a sock.  So i began.  and i used some of Deb Lacativa's dirty thread as a gesture to the sheet,  of love and wanting to be forever.  I'll keep going tomorrow.

 

all you need is some scraps.  some threads.  From them,  you can make Wonder.  Magic.

made Sopaipillas.  Every single one of them puffed.

 

they are little pockets.  You put what ever you have inside.  I'd made beans yesterday.

 

who would have guessed?????   A Kite.   She's flying a Kite!   ?????  !!!!!

and continuing the thought of yesterday,  i think it was yesterday,  about how it is to come to live Inside Your Own Life.   and i think,  what does that mean?,  it means living INSIDE your own life,  not fragmented…not partly in your own life and partly in the life outside your life.  Going back and forth,  that  constant shift.  We need to do that to   "make a living".  To be able to get a Place on the Planet,  get what we need.  But then…there comes the day when we've gotten all we need, really,

I'd like to go back to Rosalie Sorrals words…about her mother,  getting her first Social Security check.  I'll need to rummage through all the packed books,  the banker's boxes to find that.  Maybe i will,  maybe i won't.  But i think of it.  What Social Security brings…often the most bare minimum,  but enough to make beans and sopas.  To have days that belong to you,  days you belong to.  Things that i would have "put off",  just because there was no will,  things i would put off,  i now find come with an easy motion.  Change the Goat water AGAIN,  take the empty dog food bag out the gate to the car and fill it with half the 50 lb bag of food, haul it in.  Go to Mike and Thelma's to get their 2 bags of newspapers for fire starter.  Make Sopas.  Beans.  Give Water and Look at Stars.  

So much,  we Take for Granted.