morning face after up and down night, dreams of Elephants, worry re Old Cowboy stuff, unable to keep from clicking on the "news ap" at 2 am to see how the immigrants are faring…..
Ready. Harem cloth in middle, the back, the walnut saddened blue, which is perfect.
Something is shifting with this Cloth….some kind of letting go to the Cloth its self, to how the cloth fragments can tell the "story", that is mutually mine and theirs. Mutually being the key
failed faces
some times, just takes a lot of looking. Storm sky has moved UP to where it belongs
i wanted to take her totally away. But that would not be Right. I wanted then to cover her UP, but no, that would not be right.
all day.
then, just some simple lines. This is Good. yes. ok.
Brain Pickings, Maria Popova Google it
Grace Paley on Aging
Paley writes:
My father had decided to teach me to grow old. I said OK.
My father wanted to begin as soon as possible. […]
Please sit down, he said. Be patient.
The main thing is this….when you get up in the morning, you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.
This is a metaphor, right?
Metaphor? NO, no, you can do this. In the morning do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully, it's probably easier if you are a man. Then talk softly, don't yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don't be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.
Talk? What?
Say anything, but be respectful. Say…maybe say, Heart, little Heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper, also, Remember, remember"
on printer paper…Early morning….wanting to See………………
Face on cloth. Does it change? or does it not? according to what is Near it? Does my face change, or does it not according to what is near it….?
they have separated the calves from the mothers over the ditch bank. There is Great Noise, the callings, the response…sets the tone
so…True Face. Cloth, Shelter. Shelter from WHAT?
the pixie face is covered over. NO pixie face. What IS it i am looking for, i say it's an older face, but really, what is it i am wanting with Faces? I think what i need to do, to know is what that face i want is FEELING? Do I need to know this First? …. the Feeling? Maybe
Identify the Feeling, give it words?????
THEN, maybe the face can come?????
But for sure, not a pixie face.
Is this about ME? about my own True Face? , for sure, NOT a pixie face, this face of mine.
Green Tara on my wall
Work away and the bite on my forearm was driving me CRAZY….swollen and itching, how it does, the swelling was inching it's way down to my wrist. I never see who it is that bites, but the response is always the same. My guess is that it's a spider in the Grass Hay for the Goats, i see them in there now and then, just ordinary and brown, but the response is intense. So i stopped on way home after a quick old cowboy stop and got some benedryl. Hurried to feed Goats before the afternoon STORM (AGAIN) took a pill and that was pretty much that. I slept through the Storm and tried to get some energy going for the cloth, but not…
turned the scrap on the bottom right the other direction because Mo was right, it "read" as boat and it's not, so this may help. can't tell yet.
a little more Inktense on the face . just a little.
So. August 31, 2015. Ok. Nothing much.
Spent the early part of the day at Dog Trainer Jan's, as half of a chicken wire team. We wired the whole of her large Goat Yard, attaching the chicken wire to the existing cattle panel fencing. For the babies. the 4 of them, one of which is Flash who will come here as a wether in the not too distant future.
This for me was excellent. Was my kind of, well, i guess Socializing. We WORKED. talked while working, watched Goats while working, chickens while working, the horse, Empress, ran the fence line and spoke all Horse Things, kicked up dust and lipped my hair. I was energized.
Jan, subtly, is encouraging of me to breed at least one of the does here. For milking. For cheesemaking. This wove in and out of the hours i was there. I listen and think. and in these last moments of this day, i think that i will make this Great List of questions. Who to breed? and Why? and Why Not. Questions of all the logistics that were so emotionally hard for me the last time i tried. She is so much more pragmatic about it all.
So IF and this is the Neon IF. IF the old cowboy has let go his grip by November, maybe i will. Maybe one doe. Maybe two. November means they would kid in April. When it's warm out again. When it would be easiest to do what needs doing to begin milking.
and the NEXT. What a relief….that there IS a Next Cloth…there is always that feeling for me that i have no more cloths In me….but …..here it is. and it Does have a name, even….Shelter.
see the dark mark on the center post?….how important this small dark mark is…….
the first of the Walnut dyes. On the right, see the strip of blue…that was too blue and i could never use it but with the walnut, it is a fine fine blue. It's from a linen thrift shop blouse.
A Beauty FULL and very Fine Fine SUNday.
fooled around with the Inktense
and faces….didn't want to draw faces, but wanted to see what the Inktense could do with a face, and i like it a lot
but i wasn't "feeling" a cloth coming on…so just set some scraps. There is no intention with these, but they did break the restlessness, just cloth on cloth. I need this.
and just to clarify for Mo and Martine about the eye of the beholder…..
When i say weeds here, what i am pretty much referring to is Kochia. Some years also Pig Weed. Not so much this year. But Kochia for SURE. This is from inside the fence but will give a reference…. it's a 6ft fence, so those Kochia tops are 7 and 8 ft. Their stems at that point need to be cut with tree trimmers or an axe sometimes.
ADDENDUM.
I quit at the point above because the evening's Storm had arrived. Needing to turn off the computer.
I don't say anything anymore here about how the Planet is changing. There's no use.
Kochia is Opportunistic and can GROW with almost nothing to support it. But i have watched the steady Holding of the other natives and Kochia bows to them over time. Over time. Over time.
Just as i was finishing the first part above and Storm CAME, …..huge dump of Rain and then HAIL for many many minutes…just pea and marble size….but i listened to it clang and clash on this house, these windows, and thought…now's the time to begin living in homes made of sticks. In homes hollowed out in underbrush, homes of grasses. I thought of the lizards…how hail storms would be really meaningless for them…they live so close to the earth with the rocks for shelter. Birds in brush. Insects, close to the roots. This is how to live. These are the shelters to Imagine.
so…maybe that's the next Cloth?
in the cool of the morning i cut weeds. It looks like someone lives here now. Is this important? Or should i just let them Grow…take what they want? I can never decide.
Looking….that Gap between Cloths…it's BIG in the moment. But this scrap has my attention.
Old Cowboy had an event….panic attack and an episode of Air Hunger. so
i went.
Of course it might change, but in this moment of time, he is not at all Present. His mind is completely preoccupied with the ranch in Colorado, events of years gone by. ReRuns. He is not oriented to Person or Place. at all. Ok.
When my present responsibilities are complete, or
When this particular Karmic Obligation has been met, when it has Ripened, When the fruit of it falls from the Vine, back into the Vastness,
I would like to draw Lizards. I would like to draw and draw and draw lizards until the point when i touch the pencil/pen to the paper/cloth a Lizard FLOWS . Without thought, without design, just FLOWS.
And not just "lizards", but the Whiptail Lizards that live here. Whiptails. Whiptails.
I was on my way Out this morning and an oh so small, just New One scattered from my foot step and i stopped and she stopped and how they DO, she looked up…Eye Contact…..
but i had to go.
So when this responsibility has been fulfilled, I would like to NOT need to Go. But be able to squat, to share that moment of connection fully…and wait for her to break it….
these words from Dana have stayed since i read them in her August 15th post at ravenandsparrow.typepad.com.
last night when i was wanting to find The scrap that would be the One for that last rock, knowing it was somewhere in one of the baskets, not knowing what it might be, but knowing i would Know when i saw it, ….. light dwindled, dusk came early and then there was not enough light to continue looking. One more time i ran my fingers through one of the baskets and
there it was. No question. and not a rock at all.
I got up a few times during the night to look at it sitting on the Cloth….having the feeling i had dreamed it.
I woke early, impatient for DayBreak, to see it in the light of day….which seemed to take forever on an overcast morning.
yes. And stitching it there, i was really in awe of how perfect a scrap it was, one that i have had maybe 30 years, and just now, finding its Place. Its perfect Place. Its Moment.
not a rock at all, but a thing of Magic. and Dana's words and some thinking i have been doing in the last days fell together and into the stitching. I asked myself some days ago to "draw a picture" of what i wanted my days to be like when this present responsibility is over. By draw a picture, i mean to myself, to envision, to visualize, and i was surprised at how difficult is was/is to even focus on this. How totally my mind has become immersed in the just doing of it all. How absorbed i'd become. And then the Mantis. and then Dana's words. and now this scrap that represents to me the Magic that is There, if we choose to see it, like how the Mantis is there and too, if Magic and the Mantis choose to be seen.
So i am thinking that though Dana was referring to Beauty, i am thinking Magic and Beauty are the Same and so it could be said….magic arises, animates, and recedes…. and maybe even, Love. Magic~Beauty~Love, these three.
Another storm approaches the Rim.
