windthread

Mending.

repairing.  or  filling a space that is empty in some way.   Jude's teaching of design mending.  So,  not to just fill a space,  but to fill it by 

design,  or maybe some kind of Beauty.

The Thing itself is strong still,  has vertical and horizontal,  but there are spaces  that if they are not filled,  will become weak.  If left alone,   become spaces,  which in and of themselves would maybe be Beauty Full but yet,  vulnerable to On Goingness.  

Mending.

Once again,  i get home from the work away and phone rings.  Can they come visit the Goats?  OK.

They come,  after picking up from kindergarten,  they come and they bring Gifts.  How amazing.  I don't know how to think of it.  They bring Cottonwood branches and 2  50lb bags of Goat Pellets,  a bag of shredded carrots.

you will have to double click to see him,  the child, Zarek,  in the "door" to the beginning of the corridor

he wanted to know what i was doing,  taking his pic and then wanted to take a pic of his mother and of Travis  

 

he did.  He held the camera and listened to the order in which the buttons were pressed.  Yes.

They stayed about an hour.

Maybe people mend without really  knowing?  but are "drawn to" ?????  Somehow,  mutual tendency?,  pull,  or if we want to go that far, Karmic energy?  or , even further, well….i won't go there now.  But they called.  Could they come by again?,  ok, yes.

I talked to Rebecca about helping with the hoof trimming.  She listens.  Quiet.  I like that VERY MUCH,  quiet listening.  

 

the MOON is stitched in place,  part of the Lizard except the tail which will need to be in motion with some rocks,  so loose for now,  until the rocks….then…..

there is a very quiet satisfaction to this Making.

 

in the last several days,  Tenzen has transformed.   No longer the quiet one,  he has become very suddenly a vocal tyrant.    Standing on the roof of their hut,  he repeats and repeats his most heartfelt vocalizations that are the tongue blubbering followed by a shrill falsetta call.   Repeat.  Repeat.  etc.  Young Nogal stands rapt beneath him,  does not challenge him,  but mutters quietly as he is sprayed (willingly) in the face  with Goat jiz.   This has ended with dark until last night.  I was awakened at 11:30 by something and listened and there we go again.  My hood can be completely silent at night.  This night it was so and   I "willed" him to stop for a half hour,  he was the only only Sound.   The ONLY sound.  Over and Over and Over.  So i got up and with the flashlight turned on the hose at the house, went out in my underpants in the dark and 

hosed him.

it was a distance away,  his roof,  so he only got sprayed but it did the trick.  Enough was Enough and today was moderate in comparison.  But tonight,  a day from Full Moon.  From these days forward i will call this moon the Tenzen Moon.  It's not something easy to forget.  It is just dusk now.  How will things go tonight????  And Why,  has he suddenly changed?  By next year,  if all the same of us are still here,  young Nogal will challenge him and it will become a different story altogether.  Nogal has large scur horns.  Tenzen, successful disbudding which means,  no horns.  Next year it will become Nogal's year.  So maybe that's it.  Take your one year when it comes.  Live it to it's fullest.  So, Ok.

Tomorrow the new Vet returns to "read" the TB test under Sonny Ray's tail.  How difficult is That going to be????  with two people,  me being one?  I have no idea.

 

stitched down.  Enough.

 

maybe this will go in?   From Roz Hawker.   Were supposed to be earrings,  but that was in my dreams,  i no longer wear earrings,  so instead on a string,  which i also no longer wear.  Me.  Nothing but a body.  But  sometimes i wear the necklace….the silver with a Goat's Head,  the copper with the Diamond and a Dot.   I think it will go In,  for the granddaughter.  Sometimes, i'll wear it still.   But anything on my body now feels like too much.

 

first pouch.  Finish the inside Rim

 

then they will be sewn together,  back to back.  Just the two might be enough for the small bits of paper.  I don't know,  but enough to begin.

 

At the old cowboy's today he was frail.  weak.  but restless.  Had been awake since 3 am but wanted to sit up,  so ok….

We sat,  probably an hour and a half, him in his Del Rio Bar Tshirt and diaper on the side of his hospital bed.     me in my bleach design La Rana (frog) Tshirt and i guess what are called capri pants on the seat of his 4 wheel walker,  knees to knees.    He fumbled.  He dropped his little pieces of paper towel on the floor,  then leaned precariously to retrieve them.  Over and over he did this.  Alz B used to do something very similar and i wonder what this is,  dropping and retrieving.  Much mumbling that i couldn't understand.

From the book,  Die Wise,  Stephen Jenkinson

"Dying well is the same kind of act as Gandhi's cotton spinning or salt harvesting; a nonviolent insurrection that dares the statuus quo to oppose or prevent it.  Dying well gathers adversaries.  Of this you can be sure.  Dying well means dying knowing that there is much at stake for the greater good.  Whose death is it, anyway?  It is all of our deaths,  one death at a time, until our time comes.  It is one enduring place where we can declare what and who we are willing to be to each other.  We can reclaim our way of dying and decide upon it,  and we must do so now.  We can take it from the hands of professionalization and privacy  and legislated monopoly only by assuming the greater responsibility of learning about death in the course of our lives, and teaching it if we are able, and by being an exemplar, an incarnation of what we advocate when our time comes."

SO.  We,  he and I,  have reclaimed and claimed.   Declaring who and what we are willing to be to each other.  Ok.  Ok.  

and ok.  

Jenkinson talks a lot about stories.  and it is true,  it seems.  that Our Stories are what we GIVE Life.  How we feed ourselves and one another and Give,  back into Life,  what there is that can be taken of us, forward, through and beyond our death.

so i searched in my mind, my memory for stories he had told me over the years and really,  there are only a few.  Most of his story is about his money.  But there are the stories about what his father told him.   

Use Common Sense.  Judgement.

If you don't know,  find someone who might and get a second opinion.

Don't steal.  You are only stealing from yourSelf.

Respect your elders.  You will be one, someday.

 

over and over,  he has repeated these things to me so i think to say them back to him today,  as what his dad Leroy had always said,  how they had become his story and by telling me this so many times,  they have now become My story too.  How he gave me Good Story.   But it seems that he isn't listening.  I don't know tho.  I don't know how to Help.  It seems such a struggle for him.  We spent a lot of time in silence.

 

 

 

 

It turned out to be mostly just this

 

 

all week the clouds were astounding.  Driving in to the Old Cowboy's,  the Sky was FILLED FILLED and FILLED with clouds….Clouds MOVING,  in layers of differing speed.  I would get dizzy looking into them.  Like different worlds,  floating,  moving.  In the evening, they would rest.

 

watched Moon,  morning,  day, evening and into the night.

 

Watched a flock of Juvenile Grackles come every day to drink from the Goats water,  to play on those pieces of wood,  the ones all falling down back behind the stump.   Here, not so much, because many flew as i came to the window of the door,   but all week and continuing,  they stay….before their migration.

I could not stop looking.  The first morning I sat imagining all the things I might accomplish,  so much more than the ordinary,   but i just Looked.  There was such a Silence to it.  It soon became Surreal,  and then soon after,  going to the Old Cowboy's every day,  usually mid morning,  Returning  to the continuation here,  there came to be a sense of some kind of parallel reality.  It was disorienting.   It was Full of Wonder and i realized that putting pictures here,  putting words, Sharing image and thought has been such a Gift ….a Gift that blends everything into a kind of Whole,  the All of It.  And does so because of the sharing,  the exchange.  I missed EveryOne.  I missed traveling to Other People's Places.  I missed how i have become This familiar,  this so much Kin.  The We that we Are to me.

Half way in the week,  Travis and his woman Rebecca and her young son Zarek came.   We sat on the Way Back Porch for such a long time…over an hour….watching the Goats.  They are young.  and that they could sit like this,  just Looking.  The 5 year old child played with gathered sticks and a piece of rope.  Snowbunny was in complete attendance to every move.  The rest,  an arms length away but the herd moved with him as he pretended to be lost and building campfires.   Shhhh, his finger to his mouth,  Shhhhhhhh,  go quietly,  he would say.  They would.  Sometimes he could get me to "go quietly" after him,  kind of crouching,  but moving fast,  him carrying the wood bundle,  me and the Goats,  following kind of fast.   All this heightened the sense of parallel reality,  so unexpected.  

As they were leaving we began picking Yellow Hot chilies for them to take….suddenly Zarek screamed and flung a dark thing off his handfull of chilies…..dark and limp….i rushed to see….  the Mystery was solved.

 

 

 

 

All pics pretty much the same but i couldn't pick,  so i put them all,  and 

 

Tomato Worm,  Child of Hawk Moth.  First of this whole season.  Because of the almost Nothing of this Tomato season,  when i saw this Being,  actually,  the day i turned off the computer,  i decided to leave it.  To Let it.  Normally i would want to save the plant.  But since it's so late in the Circle of season,  i thought…..Let it.  Watch. 

so…much time this last week was looking so close.  Beginning in the morning,  all through the day,  on into the Dark.

But then….suddenly,  s/he was Gone.  Had been looking Everywhere,  HOPING to see the beginning of a cacoon spinning????????????   There, though,  there s/he was.  On a pepper plant,  darkening to a brown,  limp, dead.  Zarek and i looked close,  looked close,  his face inches from mine,  and i told him the story of this Being and wanted to run in to print out a pic of it in its other form,  

We were all quiet awhile.  This added to the sense of parallel reality.

 

Seams on the Out Side….invisibly basted flat as Jude teaches.  The Satisfaction of this was immense.

 

the Creature…some kind of Wind Being that carries her.  When it's Time,  I will recognize this.

Old Cowboy remains.  Most times flowing in a nether world of dream.  But he remains.  Here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am

HERE!!!!!!!!!!   HOME!!!!!!!!!

I can't figure out how to post pics in the moment…just finished  a long session of SpyWare,  but it's ok,  i'll figure it out and OH just so OH and OK and i have missed this Very Real Part of my World

and i want to see if this posts and if it does i might come back later, or i might just be so incredibly full of GRATITUDE that i go back to sit on the porch as i have done for a week tomorrow,  sitting and looking and trying to know something about all of it,  but

I have MISSED You All,  so so very very much and I love EVERYONE,  so so very much……

 

 

 

I can't BEAR the thought of losing all my photographs…not just the ones from here,  but for instance the ones of my Granddaughter giving birth to Julian in San Diego….those…can't stand the thought.

So i am going to play it safe.   Will turn this oldie off in the next couple hours and leave it off.  Will order a new one tomorrow and soon as he can,  Travis will do the transfer.

Until then,  Everyone, Be Well and Much Love….

 

 

Computer had a hard time Opening this morning.   I really don't expect it will continue to be  able to.  And at this time,  there's nothing i can do about it.  So chances are that i won't be here for however long.  I'll continue taking any pics that seem to want to be taken.  

Hope to see you here later today, after i get back from the Old Cowboy's,  but if not,  see you soon,

Love to All and Thank You

 

to Mo….a Bell.

 

 

from the Yard Gate.  The other things i stole when i stole the Janet Chairs.  The fabric they are tied with is rotting.  Last WIND,  this one fell.  I knew one was missing because i have to duck when i walk through,  ordinarily.  I looked but couldn't find it.  Tay did.  

 

Shelter is finished.   The first pic,  to get the truest of the center orangered post

The second pic,  more true to the other colors.   I put it in the shop although it is reserved,  has been for a while,  but the shop is how i keep track of things i've sold.  Just in case i need to ever be accountable.  I doubt it.  it's not much,  but you never know.

 

Will miss this scrap.  I have loved it so much for a long time

 

 

 

a piece of Deb Lacativa after a walnut dip.  Can you see the lightning??????

 

 

and then the far left…..eeeee….What is This?

 

The young Fig.  Enjoying the weather below 90 degrees and bizzzzzy making new leaves.   What to do when cold comes?   Bring it in?    Swaddle it and leave it Out?  If it lives through this winter i'll plant it in the Earth for next year and Let Be what will.

Today Old Cowboy slept.   I watched him sleeping.

Travis,  the Loved Caregiver,  also knows computers and when i described the Events,  said it's my harddrive.  Ok.  So we are typing on the razors edge here.  Again.  Cross fingers, please.

 

The day had a different quality somehow.  And everytime i begin to try to find words for it,  i know that they are just words,  words "trying" ….  so i can't say much,  but there was a Feeling of slow motion.

The Tuesday work away job and then Old Cowboy's for a kind of Quality Assurance check by the Nursing Supervisor of Hospice,  to determine whether or not they can extend his care.   Then to the court house to prepay his property taxes for this year,   to the Insurance company to try to pay his homeowners insurance but they never got back from lunch for over 45 minutes so i just came home.  Nap.  and waking,

 

just Looking

 

some beginning stitches on the second pouch.  And some more,  but it all somehow felt like slow motion.   Just now before sitting down here,  i got to taking the sheets  off the clothes line and usually i might have thought….it's LATE!  and just now i'm taking these down.   But instead i found myself thinking what a perfect time it was to be taking the sheets off the clothes line,  it having begun to darken,   a slight wind,  the Goats having finished their evening feed and coming to stand under the clothes line with me and after that i filled the water bowls as even more dark came,  but it was somehow that kind of slow motion.  I like it.

more from the book:

"Time carries everything toward what has been,  toward the past.  That's where we're headed,  to join all who have come before.  The weather of time is blustery,  reversing and scattering, but the past is the …current…of time.  Ah, modern life is a hard one to live through.  We bank on the future.  We keep our options open.  We trade on potential.  In our busyness and in our spare time we are crafting antidotes to this current of time,  little weirs to contain the past and what it means for us now. 

When was the last time  you stood anywhere for a moment and saw  that what you meant and felt and how you loved and lost and what you said and held off saying might already have become waves lapping somewhere else,  washing up upon a shore you've already passed by,  where someone else is standing…..  

It could turn into your prized possession,  having learned the endurance of what you did,  the willingness to know how it is, and the skills of living accordingly.  "

 

if you click it,  you can see how the tallest of the native sunflowers    LEANS   and arcs toward the Earth.    Summer is letting go.   the others i cut and fed the Goats,  the seeds having been eaten quickly by finches and the wild canary.

it was a Work Away day…to the Windmill house,  the one i am thinking of   "giving up"  as my birthday present to myself.  and i am conflicted.   I really love cleaning that house.  It's spacious and easy.  Always so peaceful there.  It provides half the income i use for Goat feed every month.  The Man there, Steve,  won't be ok with anyone new.   Martha,  the Woman there.  does not do housework,  but rides the horses she breeds.  So for them,  a bummer.   It's Easy.  It feeds Goats.  But i want to just be Here.  So,  we'll see.

And i stopped by the Old Cowboy who was so Soft today.   How can i say it.   He was just soft.   His hand on my arm but not in the old way,  just a light and soft way and his face,  soft too.  He talked about how much he loves Travis,  the caregiver,  how Travis tells him stories and he smiled and asked me if i had the "money book" with me and i thought he meant the notebook he keeps the monthly statements from the bank in and said no…i leave that in the drawer over there where it always is and he said   NO!,  you don't leave it here?  and i realized he meant his check book and said Oh,  no,  i have that with me and he was back to soft again and said   Give him extra.  Give him a lot.  Which is so unlike him and i said i was so glad that he had said that because i had wanted to.  Wanted to give him a lot.   So, yes.   We were in sync today.  and he said

I love you

and i sat there looking into his face and realized this was a 

Moment

i could decide something for him

and in that moment,  i could Honestly say to him,   I love you too.  In that moment,  it was Honest and i said it.   I love you too.

 

It came.   I don't know what to say.   am just so little into it,  but  i am reading something i have never read before.   Most things written are a rearrangement of words,  a rearrangement of thoughts,  sometimes very Beauty Full and perfect rearrangements,  but this….this is different.  It's

Hard.   as in New.  Different.  the same words,  the same language,  but telling a completely different story.    Here's an example:

 

TIME  sit on the shore while everything else goes on by you,  and get through  the low-level anxiety and the boredom and the feeling that you've already seen it all.  That's a good time to learn.  Here's what's there to see.  Everything we do and don't do makes a wake;  a legion of waves and troughs that pound the shores at the edges of what we mean,  grinding away on the periphery of what we know.  They go on,  after the years in which we lived our individual lives are long passed.    If we don't learn that simple , devastating  and redeeming detail of being alive….that what we do,  all the jangle of our declarations and defeats,  last longer than we ourselves do,  that the past isn't over… then the parade of our days stands to indict much more than it bequeaths.  This is something that we need to learn now.  Many  of us count on our best intent winning the day or getting us off the hook of personal or ecological consequence.  It hasn't and it won't work."