if i'd not made this deal with my Self, i would have skipped today. But i did make this deal with my Self and so, at the end of it, i had to Place mySelf in it, in the last of it and so to do that i caressed Nogal's face as i filled his water bowl. He gets all dreamy, his eyes gazing into mine. Goats are into eye contact. Goats, Dogs. Tazmeena. We look loooong into each other's eyes, go Inside each other this way.
grasses begin to seed in earnest
Chicharra in Spanish. they SOUND now. Steady, from dusk into the darkness. Where i'm FROM, they Sound in the day, but here, evening into dark. I love it. Their Sound. It says "stuff is as it should be. Stuff is OK."'
this morning, there was
no cloth
i touched the baskets and up rose this patterned background….it was a dress. Just pieces of it now. But they "talk". Ok. and through the day i put stuff there, trying to use my Mind to begin something, but it wasn't working. And so i thought…Ok, Sand Play. So i just put stuff. Like a child might in the Sand Tray. Not needing it to "become something", but just to put it. For the moment. Not for any time more.
Ginger and her daughter Cinderella…Gideon is Cinderella's father. Cinderella is SunnyRay's sister.
Scurs. Disbudding done by the vet. NOT. So, Cinderella has these uh, substantial scurs but also ones that do not curve into the skull. So, are not well, attractive, but also are not threatening to her well being. If i were a dairy goat woman for real, i would breed Cinderella. Ginger and Gideon as sire and dam fortell a Great Milking Goat and she is gentle and willing for all things. She would not only make a great milker but would kid excellently. I would breed her with Nogal.
But i am not a real dairy goat woman.
Jan the dog trainer who has Goats has been talking about banding scurs. There's opinions on both sides. But with Cinderella, they are ok. She's not at all interested in using them as Horns for taking Place in the herd. They, as i said, are not threatening to her well being. So…they just are. She wouldn't win a beauty contest, but then neither would i. Her mother, Ginger, is my daughter's Favorite Goat.
Goats have reasons for things. Who can know. There are 5 feed tubs for the doe Goats Out There. The first is at the gate where i dump it all from the stash in the Albatros. Then i go through the house and out the Back Door (where the Praying Mantis was yesterday) and divide it up into the other 4 tubs kind of evenly. Some days, everyone spreads out evenly too, but today….
Have been watching Snowbunny. and Part of it is that she is getting old, but i think part of it too is that it's hot and she is just Wise and Conserving energy. She chose this bowl/tub.
she just lays there, eating the feed around her until she's full then gets out. I nod and think this is smart and maybe what i might do if i lived with a lot of younger pushy women.
Wendy Golden Levitt sent this today. Sand Play. you can google and there's a lot about it but look for C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles…What is Sand Play Therapy. A good overview. Sand Play was developed by Swiss Jungian Analyst Dora Kalff. Wendy does this with her kids. In the pic, you can see what happened with the Dog Cloth i sent.
this is the cloth. I was unsure about sending it. Maybe it was too uhhhh, Fierce? looking???? But i know Tay and she is fierce looking and IS fierce in her way, but she is also so many other things, more and more as she grows older. So i took the chance. Trusting that Wendy's children would be same as me and Need Fierce
see the baby crawling to the Dog?
this, untitled, is finished and in the shop.
I am GrateFULL for this day.
heading out to the Way Back with the bucket of pellets, i am about to open the door and i stop…turn my head and look up
above my head…maybe about 2 ft above my head and only a shape because of the brilliant SUN light, a shape. THE shape. I did not see it, i couldn't have. My eyes are at about just over mid door height and i look at the door knob on approach. So i didn't see it, but the Brain did. I LOVE when this happens, when the brain, the biological magician performs these feats of magic knowing.
So open the door slightly and with my hand, scoot him out….would have taken time but They were waiting for the pellets…loud and rowdy so i scooted him out and lightly wedged the door, distributed the pellets and came back and
yes, oh, yes and eeeeeee the soft and oh so loving kind. This is the first this year i've seen. Maybe just a little over an inch long so not too young already.
how they are so NOT shy, coming toward the camera lense
had all the Goats not been there, i would have offered a hand and maybe could have gotten a close pic, but the Goats were, and they immediately were wondering what i was doing and gathering, so I gave Thanks. I gave the deepest Thanks to this Being for first coming in the house, and then, waiting for me
Back before i had a screen door in the front door, when the light would be on in the late evening, almost always one would come in. Then the table was where the Morning chair is, a light, books, papers on the table about 15 ft from the door and they would come directly to the table, light there and then
Look
around. Walking so slowly, so curiously over the books and papers, around the cup, finding some good place to
Look at me.
The intelligence of them is so KIN. I don't know how to speak of how much i love them. So, today was a day of Celebration. Praying Mantis. Praying Mantis….I love you.
OOna, looking back
Thought about how maybe taking pics of Goats everyday might be like almost some kind of Remedy, like a Bach Flower Remedy. So i'll try it.
Jan the Dog Trainer's second Goat, Joey kidded…another buck and doeling. This the buckling. So i will choose between the one from a few days ago and this one that she referred to as really "flashy". Tenzen did well.
Moth Moon is finished and in the Shop.
i stand at the OtherSide of the Migrational Cooridor and YELL!….SNOW BUNNY! BUN BUN!
i yell…Bun Bun! and then…she comes…dear Eldest her, she comes because i yell for her
I wonder now what i would Ever do Without Them?
there was some only slightly veiled effort to change this on part of the Old Cowboy, but i clung. Clung to knowing that it's critical for me. I really need days strung together, uninterrupted, to gather momentum, to follow closely, a thread of thought or feeling or doing or if i'm lucky, all three. But i can't have that any more. So i at least need a single day, Full. From dawn to dusk. I NEED it.
It's great that the Findhorn book appeared in this moment. I am Needing some distraction from the tangle of my days right now, and since i am already familiar with it, but from so many years ago, it's perfect. I can look and think and see how things have changed for me in these years. I still, now, have the same trouble with some of the images….am not much still into gnomes and fairies. Am not much still much for some kind of sense of Supreme BEING, a God kind of being so the descriptors are still troublesome. But the essence of the Work remains so extremely Amazing, and there is no denying that it was and is REAL. Dorothy is the one who communicated with the Devas.
"Essentially, the devas are energy, they are life forces. (We humans are as well, only in our own unique way.) I was told in guidance,' You are simply surrounded by life. You are a life force moving along with other life forces. As you recognize this, you open up and draw near to these others, becoming more and more one with them, [working together for My purposes']."
so this is what i came away with in those years ago, knowing from my childhood life that this was True . And all along, i know from living that this is True. But i have never been able to find a Form that works for me. The closest being North American First Peoples cosmology. and more recently, that work of Stephen Harrod Buhner…Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.
the Beauty of Cabbage….the elegant fierceness of Cabbage
need to double click to see the important things, one of which is the irridescent metalic insect being, only one of all the very critical things happening here, the letting go and the still becoming
hard to see, but thread beads on Moon and drifting down as Blessing, and now She is stitched to her world
as it goes when there's a lot of stuff going on, i wake at about 2:30 am and am awake for over an hour, till i fall asleep again. That hour, MIND just has it's way with me. Going from one thing to the next sometimes back and then around. All just not necessary and really, wasted. Kind of interesting, but not necessary and really, wasted. But it Happens and so, i am the receptor. Last night it was associated to the dream in which there was suddenly a Garuda, you can google, and Tay lunged and worked to "save" me but suddenly was on her back and "laughing"…how does a dog laugh? i can't tell it in words, but she was. She was laughing. And i got tired of all this in the middle of the night so i got up and went out, naked, to the truck that is still inside the fence from unloading feed and i got up on the hood and just leaned back on the windshield. I watched the "Sky"…that darkness with myriad points of light we call stars. And i thought about how it is that
i Love.
I love summer. The heat, the uncontrollability of what happens, good and not so much, but good and not so much for WHO? Why am i still the center of this?
I love this Place, the Goats, Tazmeena, Tay and Chinche, the birds, the lizards, insects, plants,
I love it all.
I love that i am alive.
I love that i am alive and in Relationship with Everything. I love that it's Love that is at the root of any sadness at imminent loss. I love that. and it makes it worth it…the struggle to understand.
I love that my meditation practice now is Driven by the realities that present from day to day.
I do not love the Old Cowboy, but i DO love what he requires of me, love that it is teaching me things that are invaluable. I love that the Cloth Making eases it all and is about Love
i love this stone, that is so much a Goat's Eye and came from the Sea. far away
and rests, day unto day on the Altar here
I love all the things possible to Believe In but somehow, not completely for me, but some, all of them
When i went to clean at Allan's there was this and a note on a post it…Thought you might like to look at this….
well, yes…takes me back many many years, many many hopes, many many Loves
this all might sound kind of Grim, but, really, it's not, it's just how it is.
it was a work away day then Old Cowboy and the Old Cowboy is getting more complex it seems by the day. So there wasn't much left by the time i made it back Here. Stuff fed. Stuff given Water and i am working to clear the place behind the horse trailer where i keep useful scrap wood so i can begin digging a grave for Gideon. He and Sonny Ray are together. Just recently, Sonny Ray coming into his third year, Just Recently, Sonny Ray is hard on his father. Gideon is Old. He has arrived at the usual estimate of a lifespan for a Nigerian Dwarf Buck Goat. So i remind self that it's really ok. It's time.
Tonight when i threw the feed into the bowl, Gideon started out in his crippled way to come, but turned around and went back by the fence. This the first time for that. Usually, he makes his way. So i went in and took him his own feed, where he was. Looked back a few minutes later and Sonny Ray was eating Gideon's feed. Gideon had made his way to the feed bowl. They do it how they do it, Goats.
and then
Snowbunny didn't come from the middle pen to the Way back for evening feed. I stood at the end of the migrational cooridor and yelled for her and she finally ambled through and just stood. So,
oh eeee
Snowbunny too.
OK. She sleeps now, alone, on the shelf in the Guinea Hen Palace. She's choosing Alone.
So, i'm looking at all this Old and Crapping Out…i don't even mention Chinche, all of it and well, it's really just a lot of Just Going. How to be OK with it all.
I need to dig the grave for Gideon. When he goes, there won't be extra time to dawdle. I don't know anyone to help dig the grave. So i need to do it a little at a time. Till it's ready.
I only have this much. It's the cloth from a kimono…WW2…from RagStock in Minneapolis where my x sister in law worked where you could get vintage clothing and cloth by the pound in garbage bags…it's just this much. So today i ordered some Derwent inktense pencils to see if i can reproduce this somehow because it has HUGE meaning for me, i call it the Coyote cloth, and i don't know if i can, but i'll try. Lynda Merry of i Wonder used the pencils and likes them. So, ok.
This is TenZen's little buckling, just a couple days old… to the Dog Trainer Jan's Goat. Two. a Doeling too. But this one…IF
IF Kelly comes and takes Sunny Ray, i will bring this buckling here as a Wether to keep company with Gideon, if he is living, to sleep with him. Goats need sleeping partners. So…we'll see. Stuff born, stuff getting old. Stuff getting so much Just Going.
This morning, early, like very early, i wander over to Jude's just to read comments and somehow notice that something is new on the sidebar.
Danny Mansmith
so i click and go back through some posts, click the Flicker slideshow, click, click, click, click and look. I became very very quiet…it is Sun day morning, my favorite day anyway and it is JUST morning light and there is a breeze coming in the screen door and everyone is just waking and not needing to be fed yet, but going slow into the day and i look. You can go look yourself. There are some things he has made. But mostly, there are just photographs of some very ordinary things…being new to him, i don't know, but i'm guessing just the ordinary things of his day. And it was well, just so extremely Peaceful, this Place….a blog.
I walked back over to the morning chair and sat down, the tea still there and i was suddenly awash with the sense of River. River. The SMELL of a river…i could say scent and it would be "nicer" but it was so strong that i use the word smell…the smell of River that i know so much from all my life before Desert. There was no River in his photographs, but i think it was just the peaceful ness, the Ease of it all that translated to River for me.
And i thought about the exchanges referencing Blog/not Blog /Facebook etc etc and this was the perfect example of Blog. Looking there gave me Peace. Well Being Ease. Nothing amazing, well, his Making, yes, but that was just small amidst all the rest and i thought yes. This is blogging. No drama. No ego. But SUCH A GIFT. I look forward to it now….will check every day. See how it's going there. Because it Feeds me. It fed me a River.
i was going to wait for the walnuts to fall but tried this one out on some darker backgrounds and really, no. So i tea dyed some muslin and it light and good. So will finish this way.
and i got a call from Thelma of Mike and Thelma who used to own the native plant nursery for some years. She was just calling. She is not anyone for whom i might need to "filter" my thoughts for…what ever comes out is what ever IS, and it was nice. Because she just wanted to hear how it's going and i found it interesting, what i shared with her….
and it validated what i've been thinking about that initial Euphoria about "therapy"…that really, stuff is just how it is. "Therapy" can't work it. There's nothing to change. It just all IS. And there is Just Going. and there is understanding More, what …."live with ease"…really means. I am finding that the daily sitting meditation is easily expanding to an hour. An hour. this is Good.
all day.
a Bless ed day at
Home.
small stitches. invisible stitches. MANY of them
she keeps Just Going…Looking. Wondering.
