windthread

it would   "help"  if i knew ahead of time what a Cloth might want.  But  its never that way.  I find out as i go.

 

 

i find out that this Cloth would like things to be attached just by threads.    How do i shred the muslin?   Cut it.  pull it with a strong needle maybe…pull through its weave.  Nothing is part of any thing right now,  but Near.  close.  How do i uh,   depict that?

Storms out There.  Coming from the East and coming from the West.  There could have been a collision but they have taken turns….forward, wait,  forward, wait.  Lightning.  Thunder.  a Sky Dance

 

 

i don't know much about this yet.  i just knew today that i have to pull myself away from Deb Lacativa's cloths….had to go back to the muslin.  It's almost like i have forgotten so much.   OR maybe so much is just not present in this span of time called   Waiting.    Waiting.  i'd like to not be waiting.  But i am.   so what i'd like and what i am is a between place.

according to CalFire,  the Wall Fire is 65% contained.  It is expected that Saturday,  all roads will be open.

Emrie is head down and engaged.   the OB expects she will be born next week.  Alyssia's birthday is the 21st.  She will be 29 years on the planet.  Julian has 2 more weeks in New Jersey with his Father.  Today he and his great grandma there took the bus to visit her brother and sister,  there's a pic on Facebook.   Destiny,  well….Destiny is like me.  Waiting.

the Whatever that Is Happening with the doe Goats continues.  Today was day 3.  So i imagined it might be settled.  But instead,  all the initial commotion has shifted to New Commotion.  There are shifting alliances.  Today,  and some from late yesterday,  Caroline has aligned with Lucky Star.  Because of the WhatEver It Is,  for the first time,  Just Going is putting in her two cents and rearing up at Celia and Karma.  Celia stays close to her mother, Lucky Star.  Onday and Ginger are totally staying OUT of it all,  and pretty much, Cinderella.  It's OOna calling the shots.  But at the evening feed,  it was all set aside for a while and everyone ate in relative Quiet.

i talked to across the road neighbor Margie and yes…that mother cat had lived under her house but the pit bull pups had killed a litter of kittens a while back.  ok.  I rarely see the mother.  Haven't in a few days at all.  The 3 kittens remain and run when i come around the corner but all the water and dry food is gone.  and they watch me thorough the slats of the pallet wood there.  Still no resolution about what to do about them.

I DID make Deb G's Zucchini Butter and it IS Grand.  ate it by the spoonful and the later on some ciabatta rolls,  broiled with Asiago cheese,  then tomato and thin slices of onion.

 

 

this is a piece of Deb Lacativa's damask.   It came in some that i'd bought quite a long time ago.  I have passed it by,  many times.  Too pink.  Too pastel.  too……

Right now,  i LOVE it.  I could stand and look at it all day long.  Then get up and do it again.  and well, i have.  Done just that.  

 

and the rust marked one.  Together.   How they

compliment

each other.  or, as my daughter used to say when she was little…"theirchothers".

how there is just no need to ADD anything….that they stand,  perfect,  as is.  Each.  And also together.

and if i stitched the Goat/Crow/Toad cloth  ….to…  the "soft morning sky" cloth…how it would take something From the softmorningsky cloth…some would be Covered and i don't want it covered.

and i thought about how this has come up a few times lately.  How i wish that the cloths i make would be for holding.  Like maybe just laid up against the back of a chair or something and just there,  and taken in the hands now and then.  more that,  than on a wall…because then they could be their Both Sides.   their complete selves.

 

this is the way Wendy's children are with Cloths.  They take them up or down and hold them….they WORK with the cloths this way.  The cloths work with them this way.  it's an exchange,  a conversation,  a giving and a receiving,  often without words,  but Exchange.   a flow,  back and forth of some kind of language that is so full of beauty and is so life giving…each to each.

                                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A correction.  It wasn't Linda who talked of the Unforseen,  it was Beth.  on 7-5-2017 post.

 

this is one of many photographs that a local photographer took.  I study it.  more than the more dramatic ones of the inferno.  This is how the Dragon eats.  Underbrush.  Many of the trees on the Hill have seen fire before.  Someone said 15 years ago.  Might be true.  But for sure,  many of the older trees.   To understand Fire.   If we are fortunate enough to slide under this,  this time.  There is so much to learn.  Fire is a force of nature in mountains and foothills of those mountains.   to Learn.

it's all about Learning.  isn't that something?  all about Learning.  Almost like not leaving food  around for bears.  Not leaving food around for the Dragon.  We talked about this.  About NOT being into "Clearing" the Hill.  We can't.   it would be against what the Hill means to us.   but we can become very quiet and thoughtfull about clearing the downed wood,  the underbrush.   The underbrush,  this is work for the Goats

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Addendum

in the morning,  i will make Deb G's Zuchinni Butter.  I am all into this.  Zuchinni Butter.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~Addendum 2

sitting here,  watching the curtain flutter with the oscillation of the fan,  watching this screen,  finding Vicky there,  responding to that

 

 

 

 

Ok.  ok then.  a flag.  ok.

 

i went to work and came home to read on Facebook,  i clicked in quick,  on facebook

"according to the new map,  the fire claimed our little piece of paradise last night.  we cannot get there to see the damage.  so we don't know the extent.  but i am not optimistic."   Jenny's Facebook.

then…there was a phone message from Alyssia.

it's good.  it's just as it was.  there is nothing.  no smoke,  no fire.  it's just as it was and is.

I call Alyssia.  She went there.  she muscled her way through the road closed zone…her,  8 + months pregnant and they let her go through and what she found was that 

everything was just as it always was.  Nothing changed.  For as far as she could see,  no smoke even.  She gathered all the gas cans all the keroscene cans and took them in her vehicle…away from her  retaining wall that they had worked so hard to create.  It was all she could think to do.

so…in this moment here,  6 something oclock,  my time,  5 something oclock their time,  there is Reprieve.  The Dragon went elsewhere.  

the fire is 35% contained.  Dependent on so much.

later a long conversation with Jenny.  My daughter.  who has never been Easy.  and i suppose i too,  have never been easy for her.  We are who we are.   so the conversation…meandering and weaving and we try to find ourselves in it all and it weaves and i say to her that i have believed so many things and i have loved so many things and i know that she had found so many of those things sticking in her craw over her young adult times,  but we aren't there any more.  We are HERE.  Now.  and it is FUNNY and my eyebrows fly up because at the end of this long and so heart felt conversation she says…."  i just think its Karma".    "i think it's just Karma."

 

oh and eeeee.

things can change,  like the WIND,  but for now,  we have this space of SAFE.  to learn from.

 

 

the other day,  and i haven't gotten back that far yet,  Linda of Summertimes commented about how i used to say….barring the Unforseen….a lot.  Then,  something changed and the Unforseen just became how it is.  Just became the new now.  And i liked that a lot and still,  want to get back to it,  and to Thank her for bring that up.

 

and for today,  at least,  the Toad can have his flag.   

There are several Fires in California,  like maybe 300.  It's how it is in California in the summers.  Right now there is a fire called the Wall Fire.   Began burning Friday night and into Saturday and into today.  This morning it was 7 miles from The Hill.  They went to see what they could find out but were turned back with little information.  The area was closed off.  Evacuated.  

so anything else i can say here is just my imagination and speculation.  Fire does what it will.  almost like an Entity.  I think today of it as like a Dragon.  Hungry.  Unpredictable.

so there is not much use in saying anything more.  Me or YOU.  What it is will be what it is.  And we don't know that right now.  So…today the Toad can have its flag.  

after the day of not going.

 

13 x 17  Mostly Deb Lacativa but small pieces of commercial in Here and then the Path…that blouse from young days.  The back,  Lace Lady's plant marked linen.  The Glennis moon.  

there did remain the folded bottom to create a pocket for keeping…maybe some artifacts of Here?

it's in the Shop, maybe spoken for.

 

a fragment of Sky and a soft piece  of Sun.  a Crow,  Goat,  Toad.  at the bottom, a stream.  There will be a fish.  I keep seeing the toad holding a flag.  I am resisting.  We'll see how that goes.  Maybe the Toad needs a flag.

 

 

the "signs".  coming from different directions.  

i decided today that i didn't have to do   A N Y   T H I N G.  I've never done this before.  Ever.  I fed Tay and Tazmeena and the Goats.  I checked the feral family's water.  I came in and finished my tea and lay down on the couch futon and fell asleep again.  i dreamed but didn't remember,  didn't care.  This is all happening by  approx 9 am.  I woke originally at 6 am.  By 9:30 am i'd slept twice.  Washed dishes from all the cooking yesterday and cleared the kitchen counters.  Thought about Stuff.   Went Out and looked at the inconvenient truth of the 1/2 ton of Alfalfa and decided that i would switch Form of my days…would go Out when Sun approached the Rim…do the WORK then.  It was hot already.  For whatever reason (there are some)  i don't have so much Heart for the heat right now.

similar things X 2.   So i slept 4 times today.  20 minutes each,  give or take.  Dreaming,  not remembering and in between i saw Tina Turner on Utube chanting the Peace Mantra with children and then followed the sidebar to her doing Proud Mary Live in 1986,  i think,  and then followed that to her and Ike Turner doing Proud Mary i think in 1971 and then her and Beyonce,  to gether and then her and Mick Jagger.  Followed by 20 min. of sleep with dreaming but not remembering the dreaming…

it all feeling like Groping for Something.  this uneasy Groping for something

and then i went to Kaizenjourney.blogspot.com and she said

What Art Can Be Used For

and there was a very small and elegant photograph of i think daisys near water…near a stream

and these words

"when the thread is thinnest…when we sense the tragedy of endings…when life and grace is threatened by deafness and ugliness…when tenderness is bullied….when fences of enclosure overshadow the last scrap of commons…then,  which is now,  comes a ferocity on the side of life,  to protect,  to cherish and to envoice what cannot speak in human language."

Jay Griffiths

from Myth and Moor

so i go to Myth and Moor and see this is from an interview with Sharon Blackie in Earthling Mag,  March 2012

and i think how so so Beauty FULL it is that we are weaving our own Indra's Net…holding each other

and i think how daughter told me 2 days ago that there were FISH.  FISH in the canal down at the bottom of the Hill.  They thought there were no fish.  But suddenly there were minnows.  and when i talked to her yesterday,  she told me.  That when sitting silently when the Solar salesman was there,  sitting silently in a camping chair,  her eyes closed, (because she was exhausted and needing to sleep) (she works nights)   telling me that she heard MANY birds.  But they are not SEEN because they are UP in the canopy of Trees…  She had said before that she see s   few birds.  And she said there was a CROW.

so after all day,  of such Adriftness,  I thought…..Yes.  Live like a Crow.  How they ride the thermals.  How they recognize humanity,  INTENT.  How they recognize Intent,  yet Continue.  Learning.  Doing what is necessary,  but then maintaining Their Own.

i looked at this today.  I just like it.

 

 

and i forgot.  I need this here. 

Naomi Klein said….5 steps:

1.  Know what's coming
2.  get outside of your home and defy the bans
3.  know your history
4.  follow the $
5.  Advance a bold counter plan  

Crows would understand this.  perfectly.  

 

 

today is my son's birth day.  Same as the Dalai Lama's.  But he is on vacation trout fishing,  fly fishing,  in Creed Colorado.  So this day was spent with long.  long.  conversations with the female children i have spawned.  both of them.  one on the heels of the other.

the first was with Alyssia and we talked about specifics of getting Electric run on that Hill,  preferably Solar but being told it will cost $20,000.  and well…no point here,  the details,  but the conversation drifted to how difficult it is to create a really very Simple Life,  and how willing we might be to understand what simple might mean.  and somehow the Naomi Klein book came into it and she said maybe its time Gramz…you might like  Parable of the Sowers.  She is a voracious reader.

 

i don't much like science fiction.  I tried reading Dune and read some,  because it was the thing to do,  but i didn't like it.  it's Scarey.  i don't like scarey or violent.  The closest i have gotten to dystopian is the movie The Postman with Kevin Kostner and then  Blade Runner.  For whatever reason,  they were ok and i could watch them.  But Alyssia is right.  Today,  this president of this United States is "over There,  with the rest of the world,  or a part of it and he is saying things that are unbelievable to me.

and things that will CHANGE things.

Those cats,  under the house.  For them,  it is already a dystopian world.  Always has been.  The bummer is that i have named them,  without trying,  without thought, really.   Leona,  Wheat and Spider.   the mother,  Rainbow.

What a mess,  that.

and i forgot to say,  which was part of the whole point…when they were there,  on that Hill,  yesterday,   there was a

Crow

 

 

all stitched down,  stitched Into,  stitched Together

 

i imagine some other things but then…i don't want them.  This.  This is Enough.  There is Here.

There is There.

There is the free and open and clear space in between.  Just a path.

 

this article in the Nation, July 3/10…  an excerpt from Naomi Klein's new book….

No Is Not Enough:  Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

"A great many people,  myself included, have understandably used the word  "shock"  to describe Donald Trump's election and the first months of his presidency.  Though he breaks the mold in some ways,  Trump's tactics do follow a script,  one familiar from other countries that have had rapid changes imposed under the cover of crisis.  In this first week in office, for example, Trump signed a tsunami of executive orders that had people reeling,  madly trying to keep up.  Since then,  he's never allowed the atmosphere of chaos and crisis to let up.

But as i've reflected on the word "shock" while writing No Is Not Enough,  I started to question its accuracy in this context.  A state of shock is produced when a story is ruptured,  when we have no idea what's going on.  But in so many ways, Trump is not a rupture at all,  but rather the culmination…the logical end point… of a great many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time.  That greed is good.  That the market rules.  That money is what matters in life.  That white men are better than the rest.  That the natural world is there for us to pillage.  That the vulnerable deserve their fate, and the 1 percent deserve their golden towers.  That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protecting.  That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after our own.  That there is no alternative to any of this.

Given these stories are,  for many of us,  part of the very air we breathe,  Trump really shouldn't come as a shock.  A billionaire president who boasts he can grab women by their genitals while calling Mexicans "rapists" and jeering at the disabled is the logical expression of a culture that grants indecent levels of impunity to the ultrarich,  that is consumed with winner take all competition,  that is grounded in dominance based logic at every level.  We should have been expecting him.  And indeed,  many of those most directly touched by the underbelly of Western racism and misogyny have been expecting him for a long time.

So maybe the emotion beneath what some have been calling "shock" is really, more accurately,  horror.  Specifically,  the horror of recognition that we feel when we read effective dystopian fiction or watch good dystopian films.  All stories of this genre take current trends and follow them to their obvious conclusion…and then use that conclusion to hold up a mirror and ask:  Do you like what you see?  Do you really want to continue down this road?  These nightmare futures are horrifying precisely because they're not shocking…not a break with our underlying stories, but their fulfillment.  I've come to believe that we should see America's first nuclear-armed reality-TV president in a similar fashion:  as dystopian fiction come to life.  Trump is a mirror,  held up not only to the United States but to the world.  If we don't like what we see…and throngs of us clearly do not…then it is clear what we need to do.

We have to question not only Trump but the stories and systems that ineluctably produced  him.  It's not enough to superficially challenge him as an individual,  foul and alarmingly ignorant though he may be.  We have to confront the deep-seated trends that rewarded him and exalted him until he became the most powerful person in the world.  The values that have been sold to us through reality TV,  get rich quick books,  billionaire saviors,  philanthrocapitalists.  The same values that have been playing out in destroyed safety nets, exploding prison numbers, normalized rape culture, democracy-destroying trade deals,  rising seas,  and privatized disaster response.

At the same time,  perhaps it's OK…healthy even…for us to be just a little bit shocked by Trump.  Here's why:  Those stories that produced him were always contested.  There were always other stories,  ones that insisted that money is not all that's valuable,  and that all of our fates are intertwined with one another and with the health of the rest of the natural world.  The forces Trump represents have always had to suppress those other, older and self-evidently true stories, so that theirs could dominate against so much intuition and evidence.

The persistence of these other stories should remind us that,  while Trump is the logical culmination of the current neoliberal system,  the current neoliberal system is not the only logical culmination of the human story.  Which is why part of our work now,  a key part…is not just resistance,  not just saying no.  We have to do that,  of course.  But we also need to fiercely protect some space to dream and plan for a better world.  This isn't an indulgence.  It's an essential part of how we defeat Trumpism."