windthread

was halfway through sauteeing the peapods, bell pepper, onions and mushrooms for the breakfast omlet when the first wave of it came.  Nausea.  That grip.  Turned the burner off and went to the bathroom,

lifted up the seat,  sprayed with windex, cleaned the rim.  Poured some chlorox into the bowl,  scrubbed with the toilet brush.  Got the hand washing bucket out of the tub and scrubbed it with ajax,  rinsed well.  Ok.  and i was ready,  but …nothing.  Food poisoning.  Maybe 4 or 5 times in my life but unmistakable.

Tuesday i had an URGE for a reuben sandwich.  Bought the corned beef,  baby swiss cheese,  sauerkraut, rye bread.  Have that really great recipe for the Russian Dressing from Zingerman's Deli…thought about it and decided i still had the ingredients in the frig.   I did.  But,  even tho i did the smell test,  evidently some were past their lifespan.  Food poisoning.  Ok.  So all day,  it came and went,  the nausea,  but i didn't throw it up.  Was willing,  knowing how if i did it would all be history,  but it didn't happen so aside from what really needed to be done Out Side, Goats….Plant people,  i just hung around in here,  hoping to get it over with.

So what does one DO,  waiting to throw up but it's  not happening?….you look at your List of Things Before The Kids Come and pick one.

 

 

the book shelves,,,the books themselves.  These are whats left of the Growing books.  Maybe 4 X this many have gone to the Library book sale.  But these remain for whatever reason.   Maybe because a few of them are first edition?  Maybe because of a single sentence that i love?  Anyway….taken down and vacuumed.  I could sit on the floor to do this,  let the waves of nausea come and go,  suck up the dust and cobwebs.

 

this one,  i didn't even know i had.   Was gifted to Bill,  Alz's B's son who gave it to me.  Time to read it now.  It was 100 degrees again.  It's lasting.  The new normal.  Time to think about different Ways.

 

the rest of the left side of the South Wall book shelf.  All spiffy now,  placed back nicely.

Never DiD throw up.  Put the bucket back in the tub.  Watched the Storm roll in from the rim and as a last hope,  poured a glass of wine,  thinking that THIS would do it…but no…so i'll just sleep.  There's another day tomorrow that will slide softly and silently through….another day.  I think that….

another day

another day

 

 

 

 

 

 

yesterday, on way home,  checked the walnut tree in town.  These two windfall.  Many on the tree.  Soon.

 

With kids coming….serious mending of the seams of the denim futon cover…all the places that fingers would,  by nature,  poke through.  

 

I drove up to Magdalena,  Bear Mountain Gallery, early this morning to pick up the Mantis Cloth.  Having gotten word from Michigan that it was still wanted there.   Spent some time talking to Danielle, the owner about the people who bought the Crow Dreaming cloth….i'd thought they were from Santa Fe, but not.  From L.A.  How amazing to think of this,  that somewhere in L.A.  that Cloth hangs.   

and i wanted to go home right away,  i needed to stop at the lumberyard and bug them about finding me a window,  but then

thought i should call my friend and see if she wanted to go to lunch.  She didn't,  was tired,  but we thought i could get carry out.  I did.   So we sat and ate in her most beauty full home on the planet,  i've put pics of it here somewhere before and then we sat out back,  watching the birds come to her bubbling fountain bird bath.  In the course of those couple hours,  somehow an Amazement happened.   She talked about how she is working through letting things go…material things….figuring out what to keep and what to let go and how to let go,  mostly keeping things that are ….flat….can be packed in boxes.  Her adult children live in Spain.    Paintings, for instance.  she has a lot of them.  And she said…."OH! yes!….that piece you have at the gallery,  the hand and the butterfly,  would you trade it for the Crone you gave me? "   I'd given it to her maybe 13 years ago?  Could it BE that long???  The "doll" is cumbersome and fragile.   

 

the bodies were made of natural fiber,  always,  even back then and before…because it felt right to the touch.  and even back then,  much of the fabric was recycled clothing.  but a lot was also scraps of drapery or upholstery cloth, as this one.    The faces,  the masks,  and hands were made from forming casting tape…cut into thin strips.  The faces,  the casting tape formed over a balloon to create the convex shape with the "fronds" draped over my fingers to create the sense of hair.  I would sit and hold them until they dried enough to be set down.  When completely dry,  I would "paint" them with Acrylic modeling paste,  diluted,  to keep the fronds in their shape and then after that dried,  would glob on thick paste to the face.  Just globbed.  This would dry in the Sun or in winter on the wood stove.  Once it was completely hardened,  i would begin carving them.  There was always some crack that would call the first cut.  I used my father's jack knife.  I would slowly carve away the excess material as the face began to appear.  I never knew what that face might look like until it appeared.  Some were male.  Some coyotes.  Some birds.  Most were women,  some young, some old.  I would never know.  The faces, once carved were painted with very dilute oil paints.  The eyes were seed beads.  I made hundreds of them.   Some like this,  some seated figures and toward the end,  figures with armatures.  One was life size.  Some were made from Alyssia's face,  my granddaughter…when she was maybe 3 or 4.  I would make the casting tape "mask" ON her face.  

I'm going to "publish this" right now…need to go feed Goats and it might disappear.  But i'll be back in a few minutes and continue.

i'm back.

I look at this one  and wonder how different they would be with all i have learned about cloth…their bodies…,  they would be so great now.

I quit making them in the last times with that person i was married to.  So much became impossible.  After his death,  i went back to them but things were different.  I no longer was ok with the isolated figure,  i wanted Place.  For a while i thought about making them "dioramas"…which would have been complex and really,  impossible to ship.  Had i lived in some other area,  with the ability to transport them myself to galleries,  maybe,  but i didn't i lived always in the middle of some Nowhere.   So i just quit.  I didn't make anything for a while, but money….working more jobs.  Cleaning more houses.  No Making.  I was adrift.  

and then i saw Spirit Cloth.  I FOUND Spirit Cloth.  Cloth could be Everything.  Cloth could be Anything.

 

 

her Sail

 

 

 

so here She is.  In this same house as the Winter Bitch.  There will be a lot of conversation.  Quiet mutterings in the night.  What  will happen??????

 

that mark of Wind

 

as i mentioned the other day…the "dolls" were accompanied with words….like this…and maybe the Cloths should be too?????

 

 

 

and how these Marks that the Plants give are never ominous to me,  but rather depictions of the

BODY

of the Earth,  of this planet,  this Being.  Depictions of her BODY,  a universe unto its own self….not rock and dirt,  but a Universe of Being.

 

and at the end of the day…my own Stonehenge

 

 

 

 

just moving it off the table this morning,  that big cloth was already there, 

 

 

so

What if i DID do this?

but the next question would be…..Why would i…………?

i debated.  Both were "true" to the Cloth but…

 

it's the seven beads.  Seven black and white and then the one blood bead.  Here, thread beads from Jude.  In the past,  for so many years,  seed beads and the African blood bead.  

And so.  What does it MEAN to me,  the 7 black and white and one red?  

An Unknowable Order that just is.

a symbol of the source of all things out of which everything arises and into which everything resolves.

Un knowable.  Just is.  Some kind of natural order of the Universe and maybe more.

just

How Things Are.

it could have been a butterfly….this is as butterflies  are

 

Fire.   Fires here are Beings.   Right now there are active Fires to the South West of me,  the East and the South,  where Sonny Ray went home to tonight.  That fire,  to the South,  is mostly contained.  Electricity is back up and running and Jan the dog trainer is returning home.  But Fire.  Fire is Real.

Jude commented the other day and i don't know which day, that she was surprised at how hot it was…those were the few days in the 100's.  They are unusual,  so far,  always a few, now and then but usually not so hot.  Low 90's feel just very much ok and like summer because of the lack of humidity.  You learn to work OutSide in the mornings and then later in the day,  when Sun goes to the Rim.  Mid day you stay In.  It's a nice and gentle routine, really.  Some for Everything.  a Routine.   And because it's dry,  there are no mosquitos or really,  any biting insects.  As i've said before,  it's Such a Benevolent world.  and it is.

 

this is better.  It's how it is.  No need to make it into something it is not.  So it's back.  to how it is.

 

 

it was Work Away and when i got back i took a nap.  On the futon couch.  Woke and just sat there,  looking across the room.  Looking to the West Window on the right with Winter Bitch and the Best Cloth.  Looking back, across the room to the altar and then…to it's right or my left,  the squares of wood that had been lying flat under the tray with the tomato seedlings.  Still there….and i stood them up and just stared at them.  They seemed to depict how it is in my mind now,  where i can't find a Thought that seems to offer any kind of sense to what seems to be happening with  Humanity right now.  I became very interested in them because when the mind cannot make any kind of meaning,  it looks for anything that might give meaning.

 

 

 

 

 

i wish i could believe there is a god,  i wish i could believe in God,  i wish.  but i don't.   and so i am left here,  in this day today unable to find a single Thought that eases any of this,  that sees hope of any Intervention,  human or divine that will steer us through these dark days.  We are on our own.  How do we Go?