windthread

On Being    Krista Tippett interviews Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult.   Please go listen.

 

the Other Sides of things

 

 

this is First Iris     a Cloth that Patricia Spangler made that i bought from her.  It's ordinarily on the wall,  just to my right as i sit at this screen.  I look at it every day.  It is maybe the most extraordinary cloth i know.

 

i took it down today and ran my finger over it,  feeling how it knows Things.  How it knows what it is to Rise from a tuber that might sit dormant for so so so long.  So so so long and yet Rise.

"The great human rights activist and Irish  nationalist Roger Casement investigated horrific torture and genocide in South Africa's Putamayo rainforest  a century ago and campaigned to end it.  While on this somber task,  his journal reveals, he found time to admire handsome local men and to chase brilliantly colored local butterflies.  Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism.  And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful,  alienated,  and isolated,  joy is a fine initial act of insurrection."

Rebecca Solnit

drawn really fast on a print out,  just to see how it feels.  The crows don't really look like crows,  the lizards look more like elongated tadpoles,  but just to see

 

this is what's on the other side of the fence along the Buck Yards….that acre that a while back i talked about maybe buying if ever any money comes from the Old Cowboy.  Buy it only because Charlotte who owns it has begun thinking of selling it.  None of her kids wants it.  She moved to Magdalena to land of her parents acres some years ago and it was rented for a while by some good people and their children but that didn't work out and it's been empty for maybe what,  4 years?  Falling apart.  Like stuff does here unless little things are constantly done to undo what Wind does.   That dead tree was a flourishing cottonwood.  The renting family grey watered and it went to the tree and to a vegetable garden they had.  It's probably crazy to buy it.  She wants a lot.  But remember, i said i wanted it as a Buffer.   It would mean this whole end of the road would be me.  Hmmm.  I think about that.  But it would mean that people with loud music and party energy wouldn't be there.  It would mean that the Buck Goats would be able to live their stinky little lives without offending anyone and that causing trouble.  Trouble.  Don't need Trouble.   Anyway,  that trailer,  a big one,  is imploding.  Needs to be GONE.  But,  as i passed it today on the way to the post office is Saw THEM again…how amazing…..

 

 

Charlotte's grandma's Rosebush cutting,  now a bramble of BRANCHES,  thick,  mostly barren but there today,  still,  blooming.  Had it been pruned,  it might almost be a tree…

so i hold this in my heart tonight.

 

and that crack in the Sky….i saw today….what comes from it is

Crows

many many crows.

 

 

 

i know rain on this New Mexico Olive in the morning as i brush against it taking feed to the far bowl in Nogal and TenZen's yard.  The raindrops this morning, double click,  were like jewels

 

i know Kochia,  the DOMINANT weed here,  always here,  always dominating and this year a Bumper Crop.  It has a high protein content…good for Goats and if i could let them Out,  they would make quick work of it ……BUT  ONLY after making quick work of the trees,  the bushes and so,  it's there for me to pull and hand feed as much as i can.  Weed Whack the rest.    Kochia = Work.

 

what happened here, i DON'T know…..   This week's pound cake.  Same recipe but divided in half.  I am not good at math,  but i think i can divide by 2 but maybe not.  At first when i looked,  it was rising up all over the outside rim of the bread pan,  like Really, rising up all over it so i took it out and cut off the rim stuff and put it back in for some more minutes.  What did i DO????????  Obviously, something,  but i really have no idea……………….

 

and then here.   NO IDEA.  But the Cloth is strong.  OK.  Strong even that  separated curve of SKY…why?  how to deal with it in stitch?  What is it DOING?  WHY?  But as i try to change it,  it won't happen,  so,  i look.  Waiting.  Looking.   Many  "possibilities" came and went throughout the rainy day but at the end,  it's just this much.   OK.  Tomorrow then.

"Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us,  it's more predictable, and in a sad way, safer.  Authentic hope requires clarity….seeing the troubles in this world…and imagination,  seeing what might  lie beyond those situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable."    

                                       Rebecca Solnit     Hope in the Dark

 

 

 

 

 

they had arrived together,  Sixteen Writers On The Decision NOT To Have Kids and

 

it's just WONDER…FULL that i read 16 Writers first.  It was easy and fast and so much energizing,  reading what women in their earlier years in this life say,  reading the arrangement of the essays that Meghan Daum deftly put together.  Looking on UTube for her and finding her and finding her with Cheryl Strayed and it so meshed with past conversations with Granddaughter about her college classes in the humanities,  human services,  how she told me that there is a great deal of activism ….she is older than most of her fellow students at the age of 27,  that the young ones are very energized and how i was surprised to hear that,  asking if they were in denial and she said no.  No denial.  but they just are GOING.  They are GOING with what they are committed to.  Just Going.   But in keeping with the first book,  many of them,  at least at this young point of their lives,  are not at all interested in having children.  There is a WHOLE HUGE thing to talk through here and it will come,  but it hasn't yet.  So i wait.  Wait and begin this

 

"Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward,  but history is not an army.  It is a crab scuttling sideways,  a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking  centuries of tension.  Sometimes one person inspires a movement,  or her words do decades later;  sometimes a few passionate people change the world;  sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do;  sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal,  and change comes upon us like a change of weather.  All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.  To hope is to gamble.  It's to bet on the future,  on your desires,  on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety.  To hope is dangerous,  and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

I say all this because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch,   feeling lucky.  I say it because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency;  because hope should shove you out the door,  because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war,  from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal.  Hope just means another world might be possible,  not promised, not guaranteed.  Hope calls for action;   action is impossible without hope.  At the beginning of his massive 1930's treatise on hope,  the German philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote,  "The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming,  to which they themselves belong."   To hope is to give yourself to the future,  and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.

Anything could happen,  and whether we act or not has everything to do with it.  Though there is no lottery ticket for the lazy and the detached,  for the engaged there is a tremendous gamble for the highest stakes right now.  I say this to you not because i haven't noticed that the United States has strayed close to destroying itself and its purported values in pursuit of empire in the world and the eradication of democracy at home,  that our civilization is close to destroying the very nature on which we depend…the oceans,  the atmosphere,  the uncounted species of plant and insect and bird.  I say it because i have noticed:  wars will break out,  the planet will heat up,  species will die out,  but how many,  how hot,  and what survives depends on whether we act.  The future is dark,  with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.

Here, in this book,  I want to propose a new vision of how change happens,  I want to count a few of the victories that get overlooked,  I want to assess the wildly changed world we inhabit;  I want to throw out the crippling assumptions that keep many from being a voice in the world.  I want to start over, with an imagination adequate to the possibilities and the strangeness and the dangers on this earth in this moment."

Rebecca Solnit

 

a Second Iris

 

Mexican Elderberry,  stricken down a few years ago by unheard of temperature of 17 degrees below zero,  but somehow Just Going,  today,  forming blooms

 

the much maligned Salt Cedar  which will grow anywhere,  not matter what.  Salt Cedar.  Salt Cedar that bees love.

 

Salt Cedar, copper and rust

 

dog

 

seems as if this is Next.

and letting things drift near and around each other….how What this cloth might Be is connected with the thoughts of yesterday,  with Making,  with the commitment to Making,  the commitment to being a particular Something for Time Being  and it was again an

extremely stunning day

 

 

 

if 

you double click and go

INSIDE this bloom….go there…..go there

the day was.  Stunning.   Having rained two nights in a row,  having rained off and on yesterday,  a soft seeping Woman Rain,     everything is Greening.

 

 

everything is washed clean,  breathing Green

I sat looking at it

 

and in between reading,  i threw the ball for Tay,  threw the ball,  threw the ball,  threw the ball.  I dumped and cleaned feed bowls of fermenting rain and scrap,   I pulled the THRIVING kochia weed and fed it to Goats one by one by hand,  them taking them in their lips and teeth like delicacies.  But mostly i read.  I LOVe anthologies.  I have 6 pages to go.

Last eve,  granddaughter called as she does when she intuits that i am brimming with Stuff.  We talked fast and hard ….remembering when this was the topic of one of her college classes recently,  the changing sense of the world of the 20's somethings and very much including the "necessity and pleasure of parenthood".  We talked.  Is it because she is blood of blood?  or is it Soul to Soul.  Old Same,  her, me.

and i woke in the middle of the night

 

i woke with neural pathways of my brain sparking and flashing in NEON,  new pathways shooting out,  opening up ROOMS of thought,  connecting, re~forming, re~interpreting and all i could think was it felt like this……so i turned on the light and found this old tried and true book on the shelf, about  Clustering  in   Writing the Natural Way,  Gabriele Lusser Rico 

and it was a Stunning day.  And i wish i COULD talk about this book here.  Not so much what is IN this book but what all it Opens up for me.  But i think it wouldn't work.    For me.  There are too many quiet people out there and i wouldn't know how what i am thinking makes them feel.  and  so  it would become  too filtered.  So….i will just let it become Alive in me and manifest  how it will.   And i hope it Does.  Manifest.  Become Alive somehow.

 

Everything,  pretty much,  is stitched at least tenatively in place.  Except the very light blue on the right,  WIND.  Still loose,  as Wind often is.

And this Cloth is the most "raw" ever.  I think?,  i think.    Raw being frayed fragments.  Collaged.  And yesterday on Spirit Cloth,  my mentor Jude Hill  (feel like i need to keep saying that incase of anyone new who came in the back door) posted Fringe – the Natural Edge.  Referring to the difference between a raw edge and a turned edge.   and yesterday i responded in the comment box there:  "the reason for me to turn an edge is to thereby emphasize some raw edge's rawness".    The whole post stuck with me as did my comment and today as i was stitching down,  i suddenly SAW what was happening of it's own accord.  !

with this Cloth,  i am being "asked" to go as far as i can with just the nature of the scraps.  Letting them do what they will.   And as i was stitching down the fragment/scrap along the left of the Being,  i was caught so completely by how the cloth had arranged itself.  And Lo and Behold,  MaNY turned edges.  Not deliberate on my part,  simply the way the cloth had arranged itself in the scrap basket for years and now was,  its  "form".

 

 

 

 

how the edges that had turned themselves are so clean,  soft,  serene.

 

and how i DID turn under at the bottom,  the long right hand scrap that is WIND

 

and

and we are going to hope i don't find myself needing to talk about this.

it's BIG.

but knowing myself,  i might.

 

 

Flax in bloom,  in bloom, in bloom and on and on….a song to Flax

 

Mercy came to listen

 

keep trying to find a time of day that the light will allow a true image of the color.  This is close.

 

i found my Grandmother in the dictionary.  A while ago,  i was wondering where she was and well…right there,  in the dictionary.  Have a habit of putting photographs and other things in books.   Find it interesting that they Show UP out of the blue.  I never know.

Maternal Grandmother.  She died before i was born.  Katerine Frances Ludvinka.  Born in a town in Moravia,  that i can say but have no idea how to spell.  Phonetically it might be  Yero mer schizta.   but i know the beginning,  the Yero part is Jz…the Y.    Moravia.  Czech Republic.  Part of the family income came from eggs.   Story goes that her chooks would line up on the porch railing in the evening and she would carry them,  one by one into the hen house for the night.   My mother and her older sister were responsible for dispatching them when the time came.  My mother held on the block.  Aunt Frances whacked.  

i'd thought it was going to be a Drift Day,  a home alone to drift day,  but very much it was not.  Just getting in to the motion of the kantha,  phone and it's the Old Cowboy's across the street neighbor, Karen,  calling to tell me that when she was leaving for work,  there were some kids in front of his house.  Just standing around talking,  smoking cigarettes and they had water bottles.  She said she didn't want to stereotype,  but they looked like gangbangers to her.  Hmmm.  I had talked to Paul Who Can Do Anything about how he had said that his woman's son Seth was interested in yard work last fall,  i'd talked to him and he and Seth were supposed to go check out the weeds at the Old Cowboys,  see if Seth wanted the job,  the real estate woman having called me about it,  the weeds.  So i told her this and just kept on stitching.   A while and phone again.  Was Seth,  to tell me that he'd be  FINISHED with the weeds in maybe an hour and a half.

eee

ok.  so i kept stitching for an hour and then put on my clothes and went in there.  Here we have Seth, Gabriel and Damien.  3.  about very early 20's except for Damien,  less than that.  Young.  There has been serious weed work.  Piles here and there.  Still some finish work to do,  but yes.  They had worked.  I'd met Seth a few times before with Paul Who Can Do Anything and his woman, Seth's mother,   like it was Paul who redid the slope of the roof over the ROOM so the ceiling wouldn't fall on my head…..and Seth and his mother stopped by during that job once for a minute.  And then at the grocery store.  Seth has had his troubles as i guess all young men do anymore.  But they all keep going,  keep their eye on the prize so to speak,  and here he is all happy as a clam and giving me excellent introductions to his co-workers who are anxious to make a good impression and i felt like crying.  There are so few opportunities for work in this town.  Not like it was when i was 20 and went through the want ads in the paper.  Doesn't happen here.  It's word of mouth and also random drug testing so if you are inclined to like a little comfort from weed,  well,  forget it.  And i thought so much in those few seconds that maybe were a moment how i have a friend now retired from a long career as history teacher with honors at public school middle school who would take a puff on her lunch break during all those years just so she could teach History.  and i thought about my own GrandSon who i love beyond love but who would not do yard work.   And i thought about the minimum wage now in California and New York.  And i asked him How Much and i could see he was hoping it would go ok and i said ok and added $30 and there was just great happiness all around.  And just then,  the across the street neighbor Karen came home for lunch and i took them over to meet her…i'd told them what she'd said earlier,  and they exchanged pleasantries and i told her they would be continuing to come until the house sells.   So we were happy.   And i went to the grocery store because yesterday i wasn't sure,  but  i wanted to get some flour to make a Pound Cake with all those wonder FULL eggs from Jan  and i realize i still haven't talked here about the Grocery Store Story,  but i will,  for now just to say that everyone is having to shop at the same old Independent Grocery since the other fancy one went down,  and today as i am heading for flour isle,  there is "Snowman",  an old friend of that person i was married to and we greet one another and Hug as is the way and i see he is carrying a single can of something and i gesture and look,  he laughs,  he is shy,  and it's a can of pinto beans…but it's a can of ORGANIC pinto beans and i exclaim….HEY!  what's THIS and he laughs again,  there is always a lot of laughing in New Mexico,  laughs again and shyly looks down and says,  well, i try to do my part.   Snowman,  whose real name is Gilberto,  buying organic pinto beans and this filled me with 

HOPE

it is still,  hours later filling me with hope and maybe will Always be the one single thing that fills me with Hope.   I could describe him further to you but it wouldn't be all that kind,  but here he is,  carrying his can of Organic.  JEEZ.

And if that were not enough,  in the check out line,  ahead of me is Tana,  the Social Worker from Hospice that was the beginning for the Old Cowboy and me not quite a year ago today and we talk and behind me is someone i've known for a long time and she chimes in and  the Goats come up and the cashier young man who is new and just so great already says GOATS?  You have Goats?  and 

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.   He loves Goats.  He WANTS Goats.   His name is Jesse and i gave him my phone number.  

 

Early,  doing Morning Feed,     I 'd been looking  at Liz's post of all the Wild Flowers in her Texas Hill Country and this morning…here,  my ONE wild flower.  somehow it makes them so incredibly lovable because they manage to seed them selves,  just one at a time….only one

 

Martha Stewart.   Pound Cakes.  8 eggs.   If it doesn't storm tomorrow eve i'll take Dog Trainer Jan one of these when i go to help set up the Hog Fencing.  There is a lemon glaze.  

 

Kantha is finished.  I look.  She says

Stand.  Face what you know.  Do what you can.  Wrap yourself in the things of this Earth,  of the Planet.  Look for small things.  DO these.  Wrap yourself in the things of this Earth,  of this Planet.  Look for small things.  DO these.

 

OK.  ok and Ok.