windthread

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life,  with another,  with a community,  a work;  a future.  To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.  To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world;  to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist,   with things we find we already care deeply about;  with a person,  a future,  a possibility in society,  or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on.  To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.

David Whyte   Consolations

out of the blue had an exchange with an old friend from Michigan.  She taught Art in the public schools and is an artist herself.  Graphite and oils.   Drawing and Painting.   I've never shown her what i am doing now,  she knows me from my Art Doll days.  She has some.  She emailed because she was somewhere in town and looked out of the window of that house and saw in the window of the house across the street, Two of the Fiber Figures that i'd made.  So i thought i'd send her some pics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what i make.

To be honest,  i am still grappling with that thing of Useful.   I'd like to not be.  I'd like to give it up.  I'd like to come to some kind of personal conclusion.  Everyone can come to their own personal conclusion.  I'd like to come to mine.  It's time.   

I don't want to make quilts.  I don't want to make pillow covers.  I don't want to make book marks or clothing.   I just want to make these things i make.  They are not "useful" i guess.  but

so what.

they are what i make.

and as i was working away,  cleaning someone's house,  being useful and coming away with $65 ,  i thought.

What's the difference here?  and my thinking might be very flawed,  have lots of holes,  but it was interesting to me.  Does someone Ever Say   that's a good drawing.  But how could it be Useful.  Can you figure out a way to make it into a pillow cover?

or

That's a nice poem.  it's really,  a GOOD poem,  but can you think of a way to make it into a blanket? make it useful?

Substitute sculpture,  substitute metal work,  substitute clay 

Substitute anything….   Is Utilitarian the Ultimate?  

so this is what i'm thinking about.  I am tired of thinking about it.  I'd like to come to some kind of conclusion and then Just Go.   

 

the Old Woman Apricot tree is setting blooms.  Like she does.  Every year.  almost always too soon.  There will be another Frost,  another Snow even,  more Fierce WIND,  and almost always they will be for naught.  No fruits from them.  

BUT

they come early.  Really, the first for

the Bees  who have woken.  and are hungry

if nothing else,  she feeds the bees

 

 

 

 

clean curtains

 

a curtain might be for Looking at Things.   Things might be for nothing else but being looked at on a curtain.

 

looking at  a woodpile through clean window

 

 

more thread beads and then…maybe enough.  What is this?   Why is this.  What might it be FOR?

 

i keep saying that.  that somehow everything is or Can Be different.   But it feels like i am just sitting here, in the Morning Chair,  waiting for Different to show up.  l  It occured to me that that's not how it might go.  Maybe i need to Invite Different in?…..  like,  indicate Welcome.  Be Forthcoming.  ????

So what do you do when you are going to Welcome a Guest????   How i was taught,  you clean house.

I thought about that,  and really,  am not so much about how the house looks,  presents…..it is what it is and no amount of cleaning will change that a lot,  but i suddenly thought….

windows

i'm standing,  against the stove in the kitchen.  Looking  West,  to the big window.  I took off  first the Spirit of Goats.  Then,  Yvettes beautiful veil.  I layed them gently.  Next the curtains.  How long has it been???  A few years.   

 

 

things on the shelf below

i washed the window.  In and Out.   The Light is ,……   the Light IS.

 

Looking Through

 

 

and i went out to clean the Buck water bowls to find Nogal,  BeautyFull Nogal with HIS BELL  tangled in his scurs.   His horns are not really horns,  horns like his father Buckwheat had.  These are scurs.  The unfortunate result of the Vet doing a less than good job at disbudding him as a baby.  I should have taken him back to be burnt again,  but i couldn't and here we have the result of my inability to do what needed to be done.  These  horns but not horns and today,  tangled with his bell.  

he loves his bell.   Spends time with it.  Listening.  But well,  if Goats can make trouble,  they will.  Somehow it's pulled off the fence and wedged between his horns.  

I took a big pocketfull of wild rice sesame sticks and sit.  Feeding him.  one by one.  and every now and then when i can i grab at the bell.  No luck.   He doesn't mind it there,  dangling on the side of his face but it could get caught if he rubbed his scurs on the wire of the fences,  could somehow twist his head his neck,  that plastic baling twine…

What to do.  and i decide to wait till tomorrow and then call Jan the dog trainer and  between the two of us we can trap him in a corner and maybe i can cut the twine   and i worry.

but i go for the evening Feed and there is the bell,  lying in the earth near the feed tub.  He's taken care of it.  He's taken care of it.  OK and done.  

 

so.

i look at this.   

What's happening here?

I really don't know.

this next week the grandson will fly here from California to take care of some legal junk.  Fly back.  I will be picking him up from the airport,   driving him,  bringing him back here,  taking him back to the airport.  A lot of just driving on the freeway.  driving.   so it's a good time to make a switch.   Maybe there will be something here every day.  Maybe not.  Maybe it might be words,  maybe not.  Maybe it just might be a photograph,  maybe not.  It will be Different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More swirling

 

and re the post yesterday.   A small thing,  but still….often when i do the weekly shopping,  i know what i will use the vegetables for.  And often,  it's a casserole kind of thing,  or a curry kind of thing.   For a salad,  i might want the crunchiest.   But for these,  not really.   It is a lifelong habit,  to pick up a few, looking for the most perfect.   Now,  i think WHY?  If i am going to use whatever it is,  say the bell pepper that day, or in the morning in something that will feed me for the week,  Why?  No reason.  So i look forward to shopping on Monday and passing up the Perfect one for the next in line.  Let someone else have the perfect one for their salad.  

When the kids were little,  they had a Hermit Crab for a while.   Her home was a very large glass aquarium with all kinds of things to make her feel happy.  But two things would happen.  One was that now and then she grew out of her shell and tho we had some shells in there for her to change into,  sometimes none of them were the size she needed.  Only she knew.  So we would have to go find many many shells around town for her to try out.    The other thing was sometimes they would take her out of the aquarium so she could just run around.  The living room or the diningroom.  Just look around in a bigger space which she seemed to enjoy.  But a couple times,  they forgot she was out and when they remembered, we couldn't find her anywhere.  We looked and looked.  Finally finding her and once she was out of her outgrown shell…just her thin body all with dust and dog/cat hair stuck to her skin behind the piano.   I thought a lot about how her skin must have felt so sensitive without her shell,  how with her shell she could stay moist and comfortable and just OK.    So maybe i am feeling a little like her?  just my body?  That i can't find any shell that will fit right now?  The politics are difficult for me to say it nicely.  And tho it will go as it will,  still,  …..  it all will really matter so much.  We can say it won't,  but it will.  In the long run.  We don't have that much time to lose.   So…my skin feels uhhh,  well sensitive.  and the very least i can do is Care and not pretend.

 

The recent issue of National Geographic arrived in the mailbox.   I WISH everyone subscribed to National Geographic.  But if you don't,  they will have it at your library,  this issue and it's worth taking the time go find it and read this article.  It is WONDERFULL and no matter what you take away from it,  you will take something.  …. it is that Wonder Full…something will Stick and will Matter in some Long Run.  It's excellent.

 

double click on all the pics and you can read the text

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the Energy has begun to Move

 

tho today needed to be work away Monday,  it was ok.     When i finished with it all,  including the one trip to town for the week for groceries,  there was still some left of me for cloth.

 

the other two layers cut and pinned and i finally surrendered to the fact i needed to do something about that upper fold crease 

 

pressed water into it with a wet wash cloth and let it dry a little stuck to the table.  oK.

 

 

and i realized that it was not just happenstance that i was looking at that collage.  It is related.   Then is related to now,  to this Cloth.    What was then is now this.  Ok.  Very much, oK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yesterday in her comment on the post,  Jan used the words….meaning making. 

meaning Making.  I like this Very Much.  meaning Making.  A lot.  

Early this morning,  i sat in the Morning Chair,  just looking around at things.  At what i have.  House at a Glance.  I can see everything from the Morning Chair, except the bedroom because my back is to that short hallway but it's ok because all there is is a bed and then those utility shelves with….cloth.  One shelf of clothing that i wear.  Nothing worth studying.  So…i'm looking around at what i have,  what has been made by hand,  someone's hand, my hand.  

and what i spent the morning with was this

it's normally on the kitchen counter,  behind the colander of compost,  propped to cover the ripped electrical outlet that i had  taped with duct tape because once the mice were coming in through there.  They don't need to do that anymore,  have made other more convenient points of entry,  but the duct tape is still there,  hence this to hide it.  

I think i made it 21 or 22 years ago.  Right in the beginning of the time with that person i was married to for almost 10 years,  who has been dead for just over 10 years…so…right in the beginning of that when i was still wanting to Believe.  Even so soon,  there were signs.  But i didn't want to look at them.

Anyway…in those days there was NO extra money,  Zero.   I relied on ten cent Tuesday at the Thrift Shop for everything.  Everything.   And i so distinctly remember spending a whole ten cents on this plastic oval picture frame….not knowing what i would use it for,  but oval frames are not that easy to come by.  Still,  an extravagance.  

 

in the middle here,  just above the sheep,  is Alexandra David-Neel.  You can google her.  I love the quickie side bar bio that Wikipedia has:   a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer.    

I had this pic of her,  my total heroine,  stuck in some book.   The others here too,   most from National Geographics along the way

 

 

 

 

I remember the day i made this collage.  I had stopped on the way home from working to buy a small bottle of Elmer's Glue.   The next day i made it.  Meaning Making.  

It's been through a lot.  Pretty worn from daily wear and tear,  how there is just a hole next to my face where his face was but that i tore out finally when he had died and couldn't have a response.  Really, the hole is as good as his face was there.  Maybe more.   

Meaning Making

I'm not finished thinking about it.   Maybe tomorrow morning will be enough.  But i thought if i had to leave here QUICK,  like some do in this world today,  leave Quick,  

if i had to leave Quick,  with only what i could carry,  like say in a back pack.   I think i would take this.  It's been my Friend for a long time,  through a lot.  It tried to tell me things even tho i didn't want to listen.  It was also just Beauty FULL to me and still is.  Just it's Beauty holds so much.  It is of no practical importance,  well,  except to cover the mouse hole,  but not really…but…

it was all i was able to do at that time as far as "meaning making"….my life then did not allow for anything else.  Torn pictures,  glue,  a Ten Cent plastic frame.   

Meaning Making.

 

 

 

 

this is the way i love it most.  Unstitched…loose

 

but it's a Cloth.   Things get stitched down.

I listened to Zoe Keating .  You can go to Utube   Zoe Keating Davos 2016 Closing Performance.  I want to make cloths that are like Zoe Keating's music.   I listened to it over and over and stood in front of this that was pinned to the Wall,  holding my hand up there,  feeling what it might be like to have that Butterfly of Sun hovering just over my hand

and i understood a little, maybe, about saying outloud that i am tired of cloth.   What i mean is

i feel like i can't find a way to make the things i see in my mind,  translate to cloth.  I just don't know how.   And maybe i never will.   So i apologize to cloth….for saying that.   I apologized to my baskets of cloth scraps,  to my threads.   I didn't mean it.   I love you, cloth.