windthread

under the Old Apricot…the Toads soaking pond.

Tay sleeps inside everynight until somewhere around 2:00.  I hear her go out…the rattle of the dog door that she barely squeezes through.  She sleeps outside till morning.  In the wet cool earth.

 

creating this Place for herSelf,  she excavated this Dangle Thing that i'd forgotten about.  I washed it,  hung it.  This is only part of it.  the Light makes it hard to photograph.  I wondered….Take it? ,  as i wonder about Everything now,  and i think,  yes.  I'll give it to the kids.  They can decide how it might be.

 

which turned my eye to this,  that has been hanging here in place for so many years.  Just Hanging. First,  when it was a screened in porch and then when it became the ROOM that Jenny and i made.

 

 

 

i need to take it down and clean it.  It's covered with fly shit and cooking grease,  whatever and the threads are stiff.  Is today the day?…not…not yet.

 

my friend Jane,  from when i was 17 years old,  i talked to on the phone and she told me about  two Ravens who come to where she is in Alaska.  and i remembered this…the chapter of Raven and get into the book packed tub and find it and begin reading again….

he writes things that no one else could or should…even try to.  He rides the razors edge of almost too much,  but never falls…his mind takes us places

and this and that thing that hangs in the room….I want to make things that can't Exist….i am full,  like full of Urge to make things that can't exisit.   What do i do?  with that urge?

keep looking and you can find what you are looking for,  even tho you don't know what it is.

 

On the 19th,  Wake Robin,  velmabolyard.blogspot.com   at the very end,  she talked of a book called Nourishing Terrains,  the author,  Deborah Bird Rose.    I searched and found a Place that speaks the language that is in my heart that i have no words to say.  Words and Ways that i am hungry for to take with me to what's Next.   There is a lot,  from Deborah Bird Rose,  i've only begun but just this much right now…from her blog….Love at the Edge of Extinction:

"This blog is dedicated to life at the edge of extinction.  My life's purpose is to explore the entangled ethics of love, contingency and desire in the face of almost incomprehensible loss.  Social justice, ecological justice and human~animal relationships are a good part of it,  but the work goes further in wanting to help us to reconfigure our deep understanding of the world of life in this time of cascading loss."

The book…Nourishing Terrains is  "no longer available".  But there is so much else.  She and others have created an Environmental Humanities Online Course through UNSW,  Sydney Australia.

"The environmental humanities is a rapidly growing and evolving project.  We live within a rapidly changing biosphere, in the midst of dizzying cultural, political and ecological change.  It seems clear to most thinking people that time is running out for sustainable life on earth (as we know it)."

so this is a  "country" i can go to,  to learn what i need to learn to live There,  on that Hill,  with the born and the yet to be born.   the "entangled ethics of love" ….

 

she has a stripe~ed leg.  In solidarity with the young mantis.

 

she was there again,  just now….but grown,  twice as big,  and her leg and arm stripes so BeautyFull and i am Care Full as i approach to turn the water on.  We know each other today, tho,  so when i look to see if she is there,  she looks back and i put my hand there…a HUGE hand,  her tho twice as big,  so small but she walks onto my fingers and turns her eyes UP to mine…. and i lower her to an Iris Leaf.  After watering,  she's Back.  Back on the spigot handle….i touch her and she moves so i can turn off the water.

 

Part of me still wants to be feral.  Human Love is too hard.  Feral.  I could camouflage self in color of Earth,  leaf, bloom, rocks,  only my human eyes to betray me.  

But i have chosen.  Human.  ok.

 

Baskets said they can travel together

 

this morning,  before work,  i sit and look at pencils.  The brush is there,  that i cut to use with the Inktense.  It's painted red.  I don't like this so much and notice that a little of the paint is chipped.  I begin scratching at it and then get the jack knife and scrape,  then get some sand paper and sand.  Yes.  then,  taking the ink pen.  Black/White   Black/White.  Ahh.  Off to work.  Where behind Martha's Great Room Chair,  at the seam of the floor and wall,  i am vacuuming,  it's the end of the whole thing,  i'm almost done,  and almost so close to being Out of There,  but something moved and at first i thought it was a scorpion.  Really Really small.  So small,  and it scooted really fast and i bent down and it was the smallest lizard i have ever seen.  The size of a pencil line….its body,  its legs and tail just whispers of a line…TINY and i somehow manage to scoop it up and take it outside…it RUNS!!!!!!!!!!!

fast away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How things SPEAK…signal their beingness….

I was so close to finished,  not really paying any attention,  all that was left was on the other side of the wood stove, by the dog beds,  then under the loom.  Done.  I unplug the vacuum put it in the utility room and leave.  But that small small Being somehow Spoke….not so much to me,  but to my brain in a way,  to my brain that has retained an open line to Others.  I could say more about this but i'm tired and it's still hot and well….this enough to remember by.  I can't believe how small it was.

 

more

 

and i saw the string of beads that had fallen on the floor from when i took the calendar and the message stick off the wall for the moving of the futons bed…..looked at them here…

 

 

 

 

this one has its own Black and White from back when i grew and painted gourds.  I'd been thinking whether to take it or not.  It could go in the compost.

 

Going Out to give Water…the spigot

my hand moves but something says WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  says WAIT!!!!!!!!!!,  brain to brain,  mind to mind…which is it?  Brain?  Mind?  the Magic of both?,  Body and Spirit?

 

 

double click and look.  Right there at the middle.  Such a small being,  but such a HUGE energy,  to say STOP!….WAIT!

 

 

 

her Beauty FULL strip~ed  arms and legs…..

 

and in the middle of all this telling,  across the road neighbor Margie's granddaughter calls.  Do I have some oil?   Yes.  I have oil.  and i put it in a mason jar and walk across and go in and tell Margie…as i hold her close to my heart,  i tell her in her ear.  So i don't need to look at her face.  I tell her into her ear that i am leaving.  She cries…OH NO!  but i tell her that Travis,  the big guy,  will take care of the Lizards and the Toads and she laughs and says yes,  ok then.  She knows me.  It's been a long time,  lots of stuff under the bridge as neighbors.  And so.  On this day,  i finally tell Margie.

The messages make it ok.

the three large shallow scrap baskets….emptied into one of the deep baskets.    To see them,  naked, scrapless…to see their beauty.

 

 

in my next life…a basket maker.

 

and guess who this is????

FATE!

who loves Hats.  Fate.  How can it be?  but it IS.  Emrie's cousin.  His Father,  my grandson Jeff,  who was a late bloomer , and  almost didn't,    is BLOOMING!.  He is an Excellent and LOVING father and so Happy to be that.  He graduates from electrician's school next month.  Has his Journeyman's card.  A job lined up,   This son we see here.  It could not be more for them.  I am so proud of my daughter,  his mother,  for refusing to give up.  He blooms.  Happy Father's Day,  Jeff.

And my own son,  who father's  his daughter Giana with total and complete joy.  Like,  Joy.  He feels

Joy.

 

so…father's in my own experience,  not so much.  But fathers in this and this third generation,  WAY MORE than anything that could have been hoped,  or even imagined.

when Travis and Everett came to haul out the bedroom futons, etc,  i took off the Morning 
Wall the pics.  the Dalai Lama,  a buddha,    me and my kids,  Cynthia and her women in pussy hats…so they didn't get torn.  i tucked them in the Field Notes.  
But today i put them in this envelope.

 

Looked a lot at this

 

This is probably the last Cloth i'll make in New Mexico.  

Time now to do the Going things.  

 

 

over 100 degrees.  the hardware guy swore it was 104.  his phone said so.  Hotter tomorrow.  When it's over 100 it becomes uncomfortable.  No wind and the beloved oscillating fan oscillates and moves the heat from here to there.   Yesterday was probably the same and there was no wind.  Tay slept outside last night.   Once Sun goes over the rim it cools.  It's this metal house that holds the heat.   I woke after sleeping a couple hours and went outside to sit with her.  It was gentle and there was that sense that desert expresses so well of reprieve.  The Stars were breathtaking.  Really.  

i gave water long.  Just for some,  will finish in the morning.  I stayed with the ones i did to repeat filling their water wells twice.  

 

the Vitex is doing well…has Grown…wide.  I don't trim it anymore.  I'd wanted it to be a tree,  which it can,  with trimming,  but that winter a few years ago when it went to 17 degrees BELOW ZERO brought it to its knees.  It grew back from nothing and i think it feels stronger as a bush.  Today it's  BeautyFull.  Bees.

 

also known as Chaste Tree.

 

just this.  and only maybe.  The Stick is ….asking a lot of thought.   a lot of looking.  More than i would have imagined.    The stick is another entity,  no less than the woman.   no less than the Crow.  I wait.

Jenny called at end of day.  she and Alyssia had gone to the Hill to work some more.  So slow  and steady, the work there.   But they finally,  for the first time,  and maybe because it was just the two of them (or three,  Emrie)  they actually 

sat.  Sat and looked.  Sat and were quiet.  Sat and talked.  They sat for the first time.  And she called not to tell that,  but to tell that while they were sitting,  MANY lizards came and looked at them.  She said they were Flying Lizards.  They would LEAP,  as if flying,  branch to branch of trees and undergrowth,  leap distances.   Almost as if they could 

fly

and she told me how they would come close,  because she and Alyssia were still,  would come close and LOOK at them…cock their heads,  as lizards do,  make Eye Contact,  turn their heads while listening [as if]  making  an effort to understand….and she kept telling me and i closed my eyes listening,  imagining her and Alyssia there,   imagining HER,  Jenny,  my "hard won" daughter,  (i guess me,  her hard won mother)  telling me what i KNOW,  what i KNOW,  that lizards are so curious about human beings,  are so interested in us,  so engaged,  really,  so willing,  so INTERESTED in living in community…

she is saying all this.  SHE is saying all this that i know,  so deeply inside me….SHE is saying this…

my daughter.

the Lizards are doing their work.  and it's working.  Gratitude.

 

 

 

 

both of which i learned from Jude.   Jude Hill,  Spirit Cloth.    

The deep pleasure of them.   How i do the stitching i guess isn't either one,  but some kind of  hybrid?

What i want from the stitching sometimes  is the Beauty Full flow that's created visually and equally,  the complete melding of layers of cloths….totally and completely into One.   Often they give the cloth a feeling of some kind of Energetic Field.  This time,  it's an Energetic Field of Holding,  of Keeping?

I wanted to look again at the Boro book….the catalog:  Mottainai: The Fabric of Life     An exhibition  at the Portland Japanese Garden,  2011.   It's packed away.  But i knew which tub.

 

 

and just looking to day,  i knew i need to Boro those Hose Dresses even it means they won't be Hose Dresses again.  

 

so here,  the stitch is tighter than if i was just wanting Flow.   I DO want flow,  but a flow of an Energetic Field.   

Before any more of that though,  i need to see what goes on the stick.  the staff.  What is the word i am wanting here????  i can't find it.   it is a stick/staff  of declaration,  of both standing ground and the ground that is stood upon…the mutuality of that.  of Claiming…both ways,  mutual and it's Strong even tho it is invisible.

 

each stitch.   each.  determination.   

i have put several sentences here…after determination…but there was something no quite true with all of them.   So…leaving it.  with,  determination.  One palm forward,  One palm back.  It's enough.