windthread

the Grackles….so sensitive to movement…just a millisecond before there were too many to count but i raised the camera at the window and they scattered.  And it IS as i had guessed,  they are here to feed on those big grubs of the Fruit Beetles which were not as prevalent this year as last,  but many enough to bring this flock.  Flock is such a uhhh, small word for what they are.  More like a Tribe,  or Band of Grackles.  At any given time,  there are way over 50,  maybe close to a hundred between the Front and the Back.   There are adults and juveniles.  The adults are lucky hunters,  the juveniles run after adults that have snagged a grub but there is no sharing.  It's every bird for its self.  Goats ignore.   It's quite something to see,  50 or so grackles running amidst the Goats as they feed,  Goats as if the grackles do not even exist.    The grubs are here because of the Goat manure.  The birds are here because of the grubs.  OK.  

Sometimes they run.  they run as i do,  alternate legs forward and back…striding…and sometimes they hop.  Sometimes they hop/run/run/run hop.  One has no tail feathers,  but it doesn't seem to make a great difference in this moment,  but maybe with migrating it might.  I won't know.

 

Finished.  a strand of Jude's magic thread to hold things Safe.

I feel like a human being today.  Homo Sapien in her Diorama.  Peacefull.  Attentive.  Present.  Amidst.   

 

Grand daughter sent this…this pic from the monitor screen.  She is coming next week.  I have a list.  One of the primary things is to learn how to post links.

Deb Lacative sent a link to an interview in The Sun.   The Geography of Sorrow    Francis Weller On Navigating Our Losses.   Google The Sun  October 20015 issue,  it's the first article.  Everything in it.  I nod,  yes.  The grandson who is floundering somewhere Out There,  it is about Grief.  Grief for a father who did not hesitate to make it clear that he didn't care.  But who also had  felt that lack of care before him in his own life.  How it goes.  And now the grandson has spawned a  son.   Now What?  He looks upon the infant.

last segment in the interview:

McKee:  Can you give an example of what we might gain by embracing grief?

Weller:  I remember one man i worked with who struggled with depression and addiction.  He was married and had children but felt separate from his family.  He also carried a degree of shame that made it difficult for him to make friends or let his wife get close.  He told me that his parents had divorced when he was young, and he had rarely seen his father after that.  I could tell that the grief had made a hole in his heart, and he had no way to heal it,  so feelings of unworthiness had rushed in to fill the empty space.

One day,  as we were working, the man reflexively placed a hand on his chest, and I suggested that he pause and notice what was happening there.  He said he felt a tightness.  I asked him to listen to that tightness and see what it might be about.  After few moments he told me that he saw a young boy in the woods playing hide-and-seek,  and no one had come to find him.  He couldn't remember if this was a real memory or not, but there was truth in it:  no one had come to look for him in his time of sorrow, and he had been hiding ever since.  He was able to tell the boy that he was there and that we had found him.  And he was able to bring that experience home and share it with his wife.  Now,  that's grief leading to intimacy."

So.  Check it out.

Great Storm,  now softening .  I watched the old dead Russian Olive Out Back and i accept.  It needs some of the heavy branches removed.  They wavered and creaked…are weakening.  They could easily fall and hurt the Goats.  So it goes.

 

and this.  One side stitched.  a Pocket,  an Envelope.  I kept it as plain as possible,  to allow the Cloth to speak in all the beauty FULL ways it does with such subtle marks and shadows.  Ok.    It's Good.

 

 

I have company in the storm.  Picked up Old Cowboy today in his new manifestation inside this funny,  as in quirky little kind of veloure (sp)  pouch.  He's on the dining  room table which is really never used for dining but just where all the small cloth scraps and thread reside.  It's been a week.  Does he still linger?  Is he lingering as i write  this?  Hovering?  Watching?  and i think about how it might have been so much better if he had come here,  to where i live,  for those final times.  How i could have gone in and out,  continued my own life while tending to his.  How Tay could have come to his hand and loved him as she would have.  How he could have listened to the Goats and the Storms.  

In my own Envelope/Pocket that i made a couple weeks ago,  on small pieces of paper,  i am writing thoughts as they come…just small sentences.  Like,  i would like to be able to see leaves of trees.  I would like to hear the Goats if we still have them.  Feel Tay.

kind of like love letters.  One sentence love letters

 

 

 

even though today was a work away day,   the sense of Round prevailed.    When i got back,  there wasn't a LINE,  but just a nap and then more roundness.

 

 

 

things like this.  3 views of Tay's digging of something,  she does nothing with the digging,  just digs it.  There are several of these around but this one is in the House yard.  So in keeping with a Round Feeling,  i filled it in.  Some.   Not totally.  Thinking to leave a depression to plant something in next spring.  But the point was/is  that instead of just seeing it and walking by,  i stopped.  Stopped and took some moments to change it.   

 

another example…the walkway that is made of flat pices of slate and sandstone…

sometime earlier in this circle of season i'd pulled weeds and thrown them there,  thinking to gather them up and put them in the burn pile.  This is just a short distance from the porch steps and Dear Chinche has liked peeing on them.  Not far go go and somehow a good place she thinks.  So i have walked over this flat piled peed on weeds for the whole summer now.   Everytime thinking, Move It,

but i didn't.

Today i did.  Rain and soon some snow will wash the dirt off the stone and it will be a walkway again. These are such small things,  but there are MANY of them…just small things that have gone noticed but undone.  I have only done things Required for Real Going.  I have gathered up dog shit.  I have given Water to all.  I have raked out the Albatros that is the Doe Goats Sleeping Place.  I have kept fencing strong.   I guess that's it.  But none of these small things that are small Housekeepings,  that are small round things.  And the pleasure and satisfaction of doing just those two things is just Fine.

I see that even though there has been more Water From the Sky this year than Before,  we are moving fast into the Winter months.  Things are dry and letting go.  Not what i would have expected.  So i am watching this.  Wondering.

I had the thought to put Maria's cloth on the wall like this.  NOT in pocket form but as it was when it arrived from her.  

This is how it is for me with plant dyed cloth.  It being impossible to use it as i would other cloth…the marks of the plants and their company being just So Much in and of themselves.  So i had thought to make it a pocket which would allow the images of the cloth itself BE.  Not be obscured by stuff.   And then too,  i always am thinking about what is good or not about Cloth making,  as in UseFull…a pocket might be usefull?  Where just something of Beauty might not be considered so?

 

i LOVE those black marks.  Just LOVE them and they  are Usefull to me.   They feed me.

So since Tina wanted this LizardMoon,  i will let her decide.  How does she want it?…as a Pocket??? or Like this.

 

 

 

 

how they are beginning to feel like they have no edges,  but just this Roundness,  no corners,  not pointed but Round,  rolling into Night and then out again into Day

it takes Time to experience this.

Today,  this day,  rain off and on and overcast,  there being chill to things for the first time so i did things in keeping with that chill,  sealing windows,  closing down the swamp cooler.  Thinking about wool socks.  Rolling with Round Days

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over at Spirit Cloth,  Jude is circling round and i spent time just being with the Magic Diaries Cloth,  just small parts of it that held my eyes,  my heart…asking self what it is about these particular parts that hold me now….how i might Go from or because of one of them

Just NOW!…like NOW! as i am here typing this,  the SUN breaks through in the end of this Day and is brilliant and the Goats explode out of their rain shelters…..

There is such Love to it all

females.  All of them.   And they have

thighs.

they have a strength to their beingness that  i so much connect to.  Not scampering Things,  but Beings.  Strong and Fierce in their way.  Whiptails.

 

do i or do i Not want rings around the moon????????   Looking,  i am thinking Not.   ??????

 

Things change.  The quality of light is so different,  things are so defined when during the Heat of the Summer,  it is so melded together,  but now,  not so much.  Definition.  Leaf to Leaf.    Stone to stone.  dirt to dirt.

from the Farmer's Market.  Red Kuri squash. 

I talked to Grand daughter tonight about all that might happen in the near future,  how maybe even they would move back here.

I talked to the great grand son,  Julian who will be SIX on his birthday,  he,  who has never been a phone person suddenly has become one…he TALKED to me.  I asked him about what he might want for his birthday

and he said

pictures of the Goats.

pictures of the Goats.  pictures of the Goats.

pictures of the Goats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lizard tails are hard to manage

for a long time, like years,  I was never there often enough.  How I would call to get a grocery list…deliver the stuff then later that day or in the morning he'd tell me what he'd forgot.  So i had to go again.  I would always tell him to get better at making the list,  but i pretty much always just went again because he couldn't go anywhere by himself, 10 years, give or take,.  He was dependent.   (I wonder what that felt like?)  (I wasn't always easy on him)  (He knew he was annoying me)  (But he was good at walking a fine line…pushing it,  just as much as he could, but not too much)  (he was lonely).

This last year or so, momentum.  His need became not choice but reality.  Thinking back, almost daily, it grew.  Until his life was as imminent as my own.

I woke in the middle of the night last night and there was this:

if you agree to

matter

to someone,

no matter how, (you matter to them)

then,  really

Matter Well.

 

Went there today to wait for the Hospice equipment people to retrieve their bed, commode, nebulizer, etc.  They never came.  When finally i got to the bank to get the Will out of the Safe Deposit Box because since I am not blood to him,  they need the Will that says he wants to be cremated, and i got to the funeral home,  nobody answered their door so i came home with his safe deposit papers and a fire proof box from Walmart, just in case.  And i did some things here,  started a crock pot of beans,  some things Out Side,  pet the dogs a lot, Tazmeena, try out scraps on the pouch, maybe, and all the while,

Something's Missing.   Not in Place.  Missing.

I think of him there,  downstairs at the Funeral Place,  his body in that fetal position waiting for what's next,  his spirit hovering,  How he is dead now.  and like i always said,  I didn't love him.  But i am learning how much he Mattered as time went by.  How much of who I am I put into Mattering,  being Mattered.  It's more than i'd thought.  I miss him.  So i am drifting now,  for awhile,  finding self just looking at stuff

looking for scraps for rocks i found this ….  had forgotten all about it

 

 

front and back of the other half of the Maria Cloth

what i think i can say with all confidence is that the moment of Death is Gentle.  We are taken back by What gave us.