for the 3rd time in about a week, the Windows program on this computer has had problems starting up. Does this thing to trouble shoot and then reload automatically. So far it's worked.
ACK.
so just in case i cannot appear here…that's the Reason and i will be sitting here trying to figure out what to do.
Cross Fingers, Please. Not a good time for this.
Like most every day, but today in particular, i wait till dawn, day Break, glancing over at First Iris. Patricia Spangler. followingthread.wordpress.com
So, the knapsack which isn't a knapsack any more but is something, but i don't know what
stitched the seams. Stitched the selvage down with invisible baste like Jude teaches. The satisfaction of this is extreme. Extreme.
added a rim of cloth, to hold the INSIDE things, which i don't even know what that means yet…..
like this
His hospital bed is at an angle in the middle of the livingroom, so he can see the TV but also so there can be the little table with all his Care stuff on it and also room to Give the care. So his back is to the Front Door. When i came around in front of him, he opened his eyes and saw me and started to cry.
Cry like tears flowing, his face all how faces get when there is crying going on. So i sat down and he just cried a little while. This was new. He talked about how it's hard now to hear out of his "good" ear. He's had a bad ear from a broken eardrum most his life, but now the good ear seems gone. And that seemed to be the one last thing gone. About how it's just too hard to keep living this way.
He said a few times that he wanted me to "go with him", but knew i couldn't. There's more, but no need to put it here.
And he asked me to take down four photographs in frames from those shelves at the end of the living room . His mother and father, his daughter that died so young, and I included the one of him as a little boy with his cousin on a pony and then the one of the 5 prize winning heifers. He wanted them packed in a box. Done. He wanted to again talk about how it would go with the cremation and how would Blake come for his ashes and put them in a Prince Albert can, take them, up to that little lake in Colorado and feed him to the trout. At one point, when after a long silence, he began to silently cry again, i found myself leaning down and putting my head to his.
I'd thought i'd be there maybe an hour but it was most of the day. When i got home, Alz B's son Bill called that it was a good day to change the oil in the car and so i went, we have been waiting for this good day for that for quite a while past the mileage point, and while he changed the oil and rotated the tires we talked about a lot of things, it was easy and there was goodness to it so, an Antidote. Nelia and i speculated about our crappy gardening this year and that was good too. I came home at dusk. Tay had waited at the gate. I used to think i didn't know what she did when i'm gone…but then realized i can look at what sticks are by the gate or elsewhere. Her important sticks were right there at the gate.
So…it might have been just a practice run. Or, it might be….well, it. No way to know. But it doesn't matter. It is what it is and it is really Something, this dying.
and Look. Oh and eeee and EEEEEEEEEE, eeeeee, o and Look…
it's happening. Finally. So very Few in comparison to the "normal", but oh and just, Oh
i also saw a flight of migrating Pelicans on the way into town. Migrating Pelicans. Can you believe it????? But i saw them.
What might this day be like, if i were free of current obligations?????
Try it. What might i feel like doing with this totally Available day??????
A mouse was on the counter again last night, enjoying my saltine crackers through the wrapper. Where to PUT them?, so cleaning out the middle cupboard shelf. Washing dishes i NEVER use, and stacking them, two casserole dishes with lids, too, nice, but i Never use them and took them over to the across the road neighbor Margie to keep or give away. Bread and crackers can go on that shelf. Then suddenly, i was cleaning,…vacuuming. All kinds of things, the shelves, the books on the shelves, the inside window frames, corners, behinds and unders. The big pillows on the futon couch, Tay's crate.
All the while going back and forth to the BeautyFull skirt almost cutting it multiple times but always Not and then rifling through some baskets….
WHAT IF????????????????????
Then, thinking about the post on Spirit Cloth, Jude being advised to protect her Art…..
from one of the Workshops…maybe Cloth to Cloth…i went crazy in love with this little weave she did and she sent it to me.
it became and remains my Altar Cloth…moved here just for this pic.
It is so so simple, but though i have similar scraps and tho i have some even scraps From her, i CANNOT, REALLY CANNOT RECREATE THIS. I tried. to see exactly What IT is that makes it so Alive….and what i came to understand makes it so Alive is
her hand.
so i am looking for something, i don't even remember what, but it doesn't matter because this is Leisure
and i find this. From just before i left Michigan. The lizard said "Go".
fooled with the pic because there was Leisure
from the baskets, these three
a gift from some time back that i haven't seen for so long so it felt like a gift Again
tweeked so you can see the SunBurst
and out of no where i began to feel my Mind and my Brain holding hands and Imagining Something that i had never "seen"….maybe not a pouch thing at all because then everything would fall to the bottom, but what about like a folder…these three attached to one another but separate????? WHAT??????
so thought to find some things that would go In this knapsack or whatever it is and try to imagine them In Side
What If i don't NEED all that Space????
?????????????????
and because it was a Leisure Day, i let it all GO and just layed back on the futon couch and watched the Altar, being amazed by having such totally spontaneously NEW and FROM NOWHERE thoughts that very clearly Want to Become but i have no clue HOW yet????, but it FEELS good. There is a Feeling to it, in my "head"….the Mind/Brain, holding hands.
Watching self stitch a Cloth called Shelter. as I shelter in this modest home, but in comparison, luxurious. Shelter. Shelter and Safe are close sisters. Safe meaning many things. For some, Safe could mean familiar. Something you
Know. that is reliable. always stays the same.
so while vast numbers of human beings ………….immigrate………here, my thoughts are about the coming winter. Evan, the wood guy, the young man with his 4 year old son along, brought the rest of the wood tonight.
Just behind Chinche is Tay's crate. It's 30inches high, 42 long, 27 1/2 wide. A Big crate. But it was what she knew when she came here. Since a puppy, her crate had been Her Space. Dorothy, the Animal Shelter person who raised her up till she came here, had her sleep in this crate. Had her go to her crate for her meals. The crate is Tay's space and she understands it as such.
In the beginning, when she was being rowdy and didn't understand things, i would say
HOUSE!
and she would rush into the crate and take a time out. We haven't done that in a long time now. We have come to understand each other and there is no need. But still…the crate has been where her bowl is and in the morning and evening she eats in her crate. Chinche has a bowl in the kitchen, around the corner from Tay and her crate.
At first, the crate seemed incredibly Intrusive in this small space of my Shelter. Pushed up against the futon couch. Just next to the front door. Last year i brought that wooden box inside for stove wood. Further squashing up space…it was even more between the door and the crate. Also only allowed for a minimum of wood inside at any time.
From a Different Point of View, the crate HAS served other purposes. It's where stuff sits that will be taken to the Libray. Where the basket is that hold my work gloves, the dog brush, and little things that need to go out to the Albatross…wire and stuff. Sometimes, like today, when i've done laundry, the laundry basket, till i take it to hang on the line.
She no longer sleeps in it. All summer she has chosen to sleep outside. Most likely, when it becomes colder, that will change? I don't know. It's up to her. But
i'm thinking,…..do we need the crate any more? If i took it apart, she can sleep anywhere. Inside or out. I could choose a designated place for her to eat. Put her bowl there. Over time it would be ok.
But…………What might that mean to her, in terms of Shelter…in terms of her own Safe Space? Her own Personal Space.? I think.
LATER
Goats won't come through the Corridor because of the New Wood which is just outside their Cooridor, really no problem but for them such a CHANGE…all that Wood piled up along their fence, so i go out and go In to the middle pen and call them and they come rushing and i scratch and love them up, being sure, Each One, even the ones that won't let me touch them….Arctica, Karma, Just Going, even them…tho they won't let me, they like it that i keep trying and they can still say NO!…so this….and more and more i think about Shelter…how Shelter says we are ok. About how much i would wish this for every sentient being on this planet, that we are just OK. Not a Lot, but just ok is enough and what is ok and what is enough and i think and the Goats are in and out of their Albatross which is really MORE than many human beings have tonight…it's dry. it's Safe.
made late last eve so i could have it for breakfast.
all these, right on the porch, just outside the door, Antidotes.
this exceptional crystal, which to me is a flock of birds and as i looked,
behind it, this small form of thread, resting, looking as if it is Becoming….so still and self contained…
went into Tenzen and Nogal's yard. Their shelter suddenly looked tenuous…the support post barely touching the roof. That would be all i need, for one or the other of them to be up on the roof and it come crashing down. But no…it IS in need of mend but the cross beam is strong, so for now, it's ok. While i was there, i went to the far side and poked around in the sand.
JULIE:….your hots will soon be satiated. There was MORE. I'll hose it down tomorrow, get some in the mail.
Close now.
Evening. Evan the wood guy, the young one, came. Had a half load of wood. Not the Whole that i will need, but half and could he unload it. Yes. The antidote for me to Winter is Wood.
Tay forgot from last year about the delivering of wood. She chewed her stick in the Grasses to quiet herself.
yesterday
Datura
it's poisonous. It can kill you. at the least, make you crazy for a while. I tried to pull it all out when the Goats were still coming through the Yards but it has insisted and now, since i let it, Blooms. The Place here smells of Goat. The buck Goats have been active in this rain season, i think in Rut but i'm not sure because they are Nigerians and so can breed monthly, like women, but it seems there is a bi yearly time when the Bucks feel the need. So…it's stinky. Yet, this morning, above all that Goat, was the most incredibly delicately intense Fragrance of this single bloom that halted me in my tracks. Datura.
The Grand Daughter calls Tuesday eves on her way from Chico California to Sacremento…to school. She has head phones or something and i often have an echo of myself…two of me, one of her and tonight i told her about the knapsack. I knew it, that she would like this a lot, and i told her about the Inktense Pencils and the drawings and well, about the knapsack and as i knew she would, she liked it a lot. She asked if i was going to write anything on the back of the little paper drawings and i said i'd not planned to do that, because i would hopefully just recognize something of the drawing itself and that would be enough and she said yes, but what if someone was looking at them WITH you as you looked and wouldn't have YOUR words for what they were seeing, maybe having some few small words on the back, that that other person could read aloud might be meaningfull…..
There is no way that i can say the extreme Pleasure she is to me. No way.
This is not going to get me into New Mexico Magazine, for sure, but it's an experiment. I spread two bales of Sunflower stalks over the front of that part of the Oasis…to act as mulch, to keep the Kochia at bay. Now it's so obvious but in time, the dogs and the Weather will break it down as it has over along the road fence where the Native Plums are. It won't Glare. But for now, is an
experiment.
Am interested in
experiments.
gifted yesterday from Valerianna and sourced by Mo today:
Ursula LeGuin from Dancing at the Edge of the World: thoughts on Words, Women, Places
"If it is a human thing to do, to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it, or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again….if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time……….."
so…the knapsack for holding joys. I looked today for the cloth for it, having in mind the skirt of the oh so softly worn denim "work dress" that just couldn't hold a patch tho i tried…but when i found it i saw that i actually CAN mend it. I saw it in a whole new light. So i continued to look and that led to weeding through the tons of recycled cloth on the big shelves in the bedroom and i bagged two entire large garbage bags to take back to the Thrift Shop from whence they came and found this
skirt from over 30 years with me that was gleaned from a thrift shop in Ann Arbor Michigan. It's rayon. Very large. would need a lot of altering to be able to wear it, need a lot of hemming. But really, Not wearing it is just as good. Just its beingness has been enough. And i'm thinking some of it might be just the thing.
it might be it. Will wait some days. Listen. Feel. Look.
I went back to Jude's Contemporary Boro 2 and the segment on bag making….travel bag. Yes. this is for the great journey. ok. Not that i would take it with me, but it would hold things. Things that could then be burned or buried, unless Alyssia might choose to keep it. but would for enough time, speak of all the joys.
and i looked at some thread that Deb Lacativa sent this week and thought, yes, maybe some strands of thread in that bag because these are nothing less than Joy.
and i spent some time picking up dog shit, as Tay is not at all modest and Chinche is too old to be anymore and in light of the above, it too seemed well…joyful. even.
this morning's Light was exceptional. Some of the colors here are not quite True….the dark ness of the left Storm Sky, the scrap just under the face of the being…they are darker…but for the rest, finally, it is as it is to the naked eye. Naked eye. like those words…naked eye.
just over to the right on the Wall, still hanging, this, and how beauty Full it was in this true light.
as was the array of Rust on the Dye Table
so i went off to fill in for one of the care givers who was filling in already for the other care giver.
care giving
not pleasant. and coming home to the "celebratory" sound of Classic Rock from my across the road neighbor Margie's son's truck radio blaring Classic Rock because that's what we do in this country, the U S of A or Amerika as we referred to it in the 60's…..it's Labor Day. a Federal holiday celebrating Work, how funny, but people take a 3 day weekend as a time to play music of their preference very loud and indulge in things. I love my neighbor Margie's son, Robert Jr. or Strong Man as he is called in the family. I love him a lot. He comes every weekend to hang with his mother and the 2 year old son he has here in the hood. He's a good son and a good enough dad. So i hum along with the tunes as i hang out this eve with the Goats. They don't mind, don't have an opinion.
and i'm back to this. I'd gotten it in preparation for Alz B's death. It will be one year ago this month that she finally jumped. After that, i'd quit reading. But here we are again and i am beginning from the beginning.
unless you have a propensity for Tibetan Buddhism or a very Open mind, it's probably not the book for you. In its way, it is extreme. But if you follow along, no matter your "position", i really believe you can't go wrong…it is comprehensive beyond comprehensive. In the introduction it says:
"Death is one of the most precious experiences in life. It is literally a once~in~a~lifetime opportunity. The karma that brought us into this life is exhausted, leaving a temporarily clean slate, and the karma that will propel us into our next life has not yet crystallized. This leaves us in a unique "no man's land" , a netherworld the Tibetans call "bardo", where all kinds of miraculous possibilities can materialize."
the turtle rock has changed a lot this year…it's "shell" is steadily eroding away. Here, it holds down the lid of the big enamel walnut pot
garlic chives
6 blossom pods on the Datura that i tried to eradicate
Caroline
clearly requesting a moment to Share Breath
tomatoes that simply Are. that simply stay the same. this has never happened before.
On Jude's Spirit Cloth blog today, she said this:
"….sometimes simply being right where you are is so beautyful and a simple going is, becomes, the path itself. And you feel joy."
and a comment from Geri deGruy repeated those words…..i clicked her name
Geri deGruy you can google her, or geridegruy.com/blog her 9~1~15 Post met me there……….. Were All Going to Die and i was so incredibly grateful for her words there….nothing dramatic, simply very thought FULL and Honest wonderings and also no apologies for the subject matter.
I think about the Old Cowboy really, all the time. He is just in my mind. Day and Night. I watch as he goes back and forth from trying to giving up. Yesterday he was softly quiet. Some small exchanges, but quiet and small. He is at the threshhold and there is no option to go back, to change anything, yet he also cannot go forward. He is in a limbo world.
I watch. and think how for so long now, years, he has said he is not afraid of dying, how he wanted to die in his own home and he held me to the promise to ensure that. Little did we know that dying is such a phenomenon that has its own timing that no one can understand. Off and on his Mind goes and he is not Present. But then he returns, like yesterday, asking me how the economy is going. Spiritually, he is, as he always has been, a blank. He had and still has no interest or capacity to Imagine. So he spends day after day at the Threshhold, empty but for his nightmares and worries about money. As i watch this, really, Experience this with him, i of course think of my self. What will i have?, when reaching a point when my physical body is in charge? I say he has not done his homework. I imagine my self as having done and doing the home work…but what if i Have, and yet my physical body continues? It was so, too, for Alz B. I have no answers. None.
But somehow reading Jude's words….referencing Joy and then finding and being so grateful for Geri's honesty….I thought that maybe, at that Time, remembering one's Joys might be useful. That somehow those Joys might allow the Flight. I do have some kind of sureness that we come back, to Begin Again. So maybe these Joys would help in faith that we can continue to Become. ?????
So maybe it's just to comfort self in these days that weigh heavy, maybe just that. Or whatever. But it occured to me to stitch up a knapsack. The image that came to mind was of the Rider Waite image of the Fool Card*. The figure with the knapsack on a stick over the shoulder, accompanied by the dog, blithly stepping to the edge of the precipice….one more step away…………… *Tarot
and i think i will. stitch this knapsack. and begin putting Joys in it. Most likely just the small drawings i make. maybe a word or two? maybe very small scraps of cloth that i love? just uhhhh, hmmm, what is the word i want?, maybe just keys that can set full imaging free?? and if i find myself at that point where i don't seem to be able to go forward, maybe this will help. In case i end up not being able to remember i did this, i will tell the granddaughter Alyssia about the knapsack.
as i lie on my back on the futon couch this afternoon, intending to take a short nap, i found my self with my hands on my stomach…feeling the soft roundness of it….and i think i want to make the knapsack the size that can cover this space. It will need to be soft. have a drawstring. easily opened so i can just put a hand inside and pull a Joy out, to look at. Maybe Remember. Maybe just Wonder about.
I like this.
a small piece of paper in that sack might say: Shelter Cloth and i might remember this cloth that i am so so Loving….
Can you see at the top, under the Storm Sky, the oh so so vague blue on the left and the sun color on the right?
these colors are with Inktense. they are absolutely exactly what i had hoped they might be.
This Cloth is a Joy.
and now, just at Dusk
what might i put in the knapsack for THIS??????
