windthread

continuing to think about joy.   Which would be different for everyone,  and even different for all of Us at different times.  But…just well,  kind of a generic joy for me.   How is that?   

Small moments.  Small spontaneously  joy~ full  moments when i See or Read or Think or Feel or Hear  just this  sudden kind of Trill of sensing….  it is Suddenly There, the vibration is High and Fine   and then subsides,  slowly.  Leaving a kind of glow.   Is this it?  Today, i'm thinking so.  But i am still open to understanding more….

 

but as i put these pics here,  already i understand more because taking this next handful of wet fragments,  pulling the cat hair off with my fingers,  realizing i might not want to really straighten them before pinning, but let them curl as they will,  being lost in the doing of this,  the repetitive motion of it and then hanging it Out….there was joy here and it was sustained over maybe a half hour.  And it was not unexpected…i'd done it just yesterday.   But a feeling of joy,  again.  no less.

And then joy because it was 69 degrees today.  I left the door wide open just after noon.  We came and went.   No door.  No need for a door.  In.  Out.  a Flow.   Most likely,  there will be more cold days.  Very possible even some snow.   Which made it even more joy Full.  

and that's what i think this cloth is about.   All the small joys.   That are just There,  floating,  to be noticed and received or not,  but There,  nonetheless.   I woke the other morning thinking that if everything just went along,  it might be maybe the best day ever.   And i thought about how i could think this Every morning  upon waking.  And really,  it would be true.   There are intermittant Events that are Events….that are Events of Joy.  For me,  that might be maybe when all my kids are here.  Or,  most of my kids.   When it's bizzy and loud and we are moving against eachother like the Goats do.  Flank to flank.  Or even, less than that,  when the Vet came and something i could not imagine possible,  WAS.   or  the Garden.  Seedlings coming UP, through the earth.  Green….Ready.  Occasional Joys.   But there are also these common joys that appear and reappear and weave the reality of a life.      i need to think more.

this is the first time i did this.  Just put a arbitrary piece of cloth there as a face.  Did not define a

head.

Let the eyes, nostrils, mouth and hair do that.   It works for me.  But i don't know if it works for "the viewer".

 

and here,  i'm wanting to do it again.   The drawing of just the essential features,  almost unattached to the "body",  which is just the most rudimentary Form,  is enough.  The drawing of the essential face to me is how we "create" ourselves….as singular beings among many.  We are confined some by our biology as human,  but we Create who we are by uhhhh,  gesture and intention.  In the first pic here,  it's Intention.  In this new cloth,  it's Gesture.   ??  So, looking at this too.  I like this looking.

 

Done.  Period.  $200.00   I like how things translate.  These windows that have been a big pain in the butt to me translate to paying Kelly's man to help me build better Buck Shelter for Gideon and Sunny Ray and maybe some left in case it turns out i might need another cord of wood.  i like very much how money becomes translated immediately into Stuff.  Needed stuff.  Cash=Stuff.    In this case,  paying Kelly's man to help me means paying Kelly's man to sustain their own world there,  which includes Magic and Barbara.  Buying a second cord of wood means giving Window money to Evan,  the young Wood Guy who has a young son and is making his family's  way in this world.  It never would have occured to me to ask $200 for these windows.  It was offered as a fair price.  And i have learned to take a fair price and then send this fair price Out.  So.  Ok.  really OK and DONE!

Whew.

 

 

 

nothing is Right here yet,  but it's what i saw this morning.  

I received  Eating Stone yesterday.  Ellen Meloy's final words.  All i have managed is the prologue.  I have read it i don't know how many times.

"On one of my last winter days with the desert bighorns,  they no longer kept me out of their world.  With motions I had come to know as an exquisite unison of liturgy and physics, they closed the distance between us and herded me toward a threshold, a place best described as a hairsbreadth.

Their slender legs rose like smoke from stone, curving into pale rumps.  The rump carried all the muscle, the force that was capable of pushing their stocky bodies up a sheer cliff  with nothing beneath their hoves but air and a foot hold barely larger than my lower lip.  This is what you will find at the center of the desert bighorn: dry, verticle  space.  

Their haunches held but small tensions now.  The sheep stood about like mildly bored ballerinas.  Black hooves found cusps of white snow.  Breath condensed in milky wraiths.  The wind did not matter to them.  They moved serenely among themselves, brushing flanks warm with blood,  weaving me toward that breach of transmutation.

Something in their amber eyes told me that I was about to change,  to be given a language without tongues.  I wanted to leap into that wild side…their side…then bring back their startling news from the other than human world.  But I was weighted with a wobbly confusion about how to see,  how to behave.

After so many days among the bighorns,  in the end it seemed best to quiet the mind and act like a rock.  I am simply here.  I thought, here at the periphery of several hundred pounds of Ovis with lovely rumps and eyelashes as delicate as fish bones.

I then became the first rock in history to be overcome with feeling, a serene aching aimed at nothing in particular, only a cobalt sky with no edge but winter's cold and a river rimmed with ice and a band of rare mammals, whose own biology and history could have lost them to the world"

Ellen Meloy   Eating Stone.

so i took that handfull of scraps from yesterday,  all cat hair and cat dust,  plopped it .    Went to work.  

back Home,  hung it to dry.  When you flatten it between thumb and forefinger,  you can roll off a wad of hair and wipe it on your levis.  Nice.

Encouraged,  i dumped the entire baskets worth into the bowl.  A lot.   Went off to finish the final coat of Window Blue.   Rinsing,  i realized how it would take maybe forever to hang each scrap,  some the size of a quarter of a postage stamp.  

 Fixed the large piece of cloth to the refrigerator door with magnets.   It's right next to the sink where i rinsed and then did the between the finger thing to roll off the hair,  and pinned.

Being in the kitchen, Tay was hoping this had something to do with food.

and here we have it.  

Some days ago there was a conversation, voice to voice,  where it was clear that the Other Person was less than spellbound  by this blog.  Really,  just didn't know what to think and so decided to think nothing.   And i am looking at these last couple days and anticipating the next few days and i Understand.  NOT spellbinding.   And since the Rock is inside for who knows how long,  this might become the norm.  There is no urge toward any drama.   It's Quiet and slow and Soft and well,  nothing much.  And it feels very good.  

I'll have to leave for a minute here and go to Dana's blog so i can bring back some things she has posted about that i like very much.  Should have done that ahead of time,  but in keeping with how it's going,  i didn't.

OK, back.  Dana's blog   ravenandsparrow.typepad.com .  The post is yesterdays, 2/2  and addresses Organizing one's stuff,  Clutter.  The book that she references is   The Life Changing Magic of Tidying UP.   in the book, the author gives as criteria for keeping or throwing is whether,  When Touched,  the object gives you a feeling of joy.   So i am thinking about this.  A Lot.  You should read the post.  Dana also lets us look inside her closet which i thought was thrilling,  looking inside Dana's closet…. and i SMILE when i type that…funny…me….What would that less than spellbound person think about me being so happy about Dana's closet…smile more.  And i am thinking in terms of Stuff but also Stuff that i keep in my Mind.  which would be repetative  thoughts…. Do i love them then?  Do they provide Joy?   And then,  like i am,  i begin thinking about what exactly JOY is?

 

 

 

 

Work Away

at the Weaver's home.   She'd given me some "ends" of this cobweb silk a long time ago.  It's what i've been using for the Grasses on the cloths,  the stems and seed heads,  and i finished it recently and left her a note a while ago that if she wasn't going to be able to have enough to use herself,  i'd like to buy it from her.  Told her i'd tried to get some more from Colour Mart (where this was from)  but that a very nice woman there in the U.K.  told me that they were no longer going to offer it,  that there was too little interest as it is so fine.  There on the dining room table today…this cone.  I Love using this….use it with a very very fine beading needle for so many things more than the Grasses.  Its neutral color works with everything as invisible baste  (Jude Hill~Spirit Cloth) that literally is invisible on almost all cloth.    This is enough for a lifetime.  and beyond.

and there in the Way Back two very sturdy little plants maybe an inch and a half tall. 

Flixweed.  "Flixweed is a winter annual, native to europe; 8-24 inches high;  leaves alternate, 2 to 3 times pinnately compound; segments very narrow or linear; pubescent with branched hairs or nearly glabrous; inflorescence a raceme; petals, very small, yelllow or greenish yellow; pod partitioned with 2 to 3 longitudinal nerves, siliques  1/2 to 1 14 inches long."  Weeds of the West   Published by The Western Society of Weed Science in cooperation with the Western United States Land Grant Universities Cooperative Extension Services.    Not good for Goats, this Flixweed.  it's other name is Wild Mustard.  or Fourth of July weed.    It's only the second day of February.  I hope this is not a sign.

i dreamed of my friend Luna and her buckwheat pancakes last night.  I could TASTE them,  feel their texture,  smell their fragrance.  It was maybe 40 years ago.  And the dream was strong enough that on the way home i stopped at the grocery.    I called her to ask her if she'd used yeast as the recipe on the package says…and if she partially mixed and then left over night also as the recipe on the package says and well,  it's a long time ago and we weren't sure about anything, but remembering that they were the greatest pancakes and how we canoed down their river where she lived then,  like white water rafting and i thought of Ellen Melloy,  and i thought about how i could dream something so so Strong after 40 years, how nothing is ever lost from that rolodex in my head and also how great it is that i can call her,  all these years and miles away from each other and we can remember that morning.

so i am waiting.  What's Next?  This little pile of cloth and cat hair.  The cat hair is a bummer.  But Tazmeena is old.   I'll need to deal.   Maybe someday i'll leave my hair all over everything.  Probably.

this morning before i left.   Tomorrow,  the FINAL other side and then it is DONE.  

 

 

 

 

 

this morning.  The curtain it is on is an off white.  The Winter Sky fabric itself is white.  This fire honey is the Sun Itself.   So yes.  Light returns.

I give.  This is it.  There are flaws.  But any "correction"  causes something else.  so…done.  I cannot find the wherewithall to continue.  The second window is on the bathroom sink.   After work away tomorrow and Tuesday i will finish that one and i WILL NEVER IMAGINE THAT I CAN DO THIS EVER AGAIN.  EVER.  

 

 

 

 

cleared the dried Kochia  from inside the Way Back Oasis fencing.   Some of it was over 6ft tall.  the Goats were glad to crunch away on the leaf and seed heads.   

i had tried to clear it Mid Summer when Goats were pushing the fencing down and getting inside.  Getting Inside means also eating the Russian Olive,  Three Leaf Sumac and the forever vulnerable Native Olive that are what the Oasis is.   I would very much like to keep these Three Out There.  

 

 

The Wasps.  When Mercy and Cinderella had managed to get themselves IN to the fence and i was trying to herd them Out without letting Everyone Else in,  i got stung on the mouth.   So i need to think ahead of how to work this this year.  There are other places for them,  these Wasps.   There are ways we can all be here, following the Do No Harm tradition.   I am thinking.  But these cells today were so beauty full to me…the delicate papery cells,  their color,  elegant….how Strong that "stem" is that holds the nest to the twig.   It's beauty full.   All of it.  And i remember that the Wasps feed on caterpillars and i remember how the caterpillars consumed half of this Three Leaf Sumac's leaves.  I need the Wasps.  The Three Leaf Sumac needs the Wasps.  

How can we do it?

and because the Wasps stung me,  i never went in there again to pull down the Bindweed from the branches.  Today again.  it is Beauty full…the tangle,  but stifles  the Sumac.

squatting there i looked at the Earth under these Tree Bushes…how it's changing.  Because of the fence,  the leaves seem to stay where they fall instead of blowing away.  They are layering,  decomposing there and the quality of the sand Earth is changing.  Still sand,  but with other components.  Does the Sumac and the Russian Olive and the dear Native Olive send their roots beyond the fencing,  Out…into where the Goats are and take nutrients from that soil that is changing?  I don't know.   It takes a lot of time to be able to even speculate yes or no.  All i can do is notice.

AND  i almost forgot.   On Being   Krista Tippet…..the interview with  Brene Brown.    The Courage to be Vulnerable.   

 

 

Finished.  January.   and over into the little Shop.

and SUN came back for a while,  just so much,  behind cloud cover but There and i put the Cloth on the curtain.  Light.  Illumination.  How Light adds to the story.

 

 

a few moments of even more Sun

I went Out to spend some time with the Bucks,  that being the only intention,  but after that i thought i'd see what the compost is doing

Beauty Full and Rich and Snow seeped and Elegant and Fine

as it goes,   one thing leads to another and there is the stick pile,  so

so i worked some on the Hugelkulture berms

 

 

and then i sat for a while.  Just looking.  Thinking about the Mother Pile.  Thinking about if i really needed to flatten Her.   Do I?   Just sitting there,  with no interference,  that pile is slowly sinking into itself,   the home for Who knows.    I know that last summer,  lizards ran in and out.  Small birds were constant.   Maybe i don't need to do Anything at all?   There are so many things that factor in.  And maybe i don't know even Part of them so far.  So i just sat and looked.  Sitting and Looking is very Good.   is  Important.  So i sat and looked.

Tonight.  Sun was strong enough to come through.  Good.  Tomorrow is February.  The month of Who Knows.   so…ok.

 

 

since first light,  this is this day.  Now almost late day,  this is this day.  Start to finish.  The "air" is thick with moisture.  Sometimes actual rain, but mostly just a moist dense surrounding.  There are very few lights in this house.  None over 60 watts.  There is no electric light in the Room.  So i had to stitch in the morning chair with the aid of the lamp that mimics natural light.  But,  also is dim.  I ate spagetti three times.   Once with sauteed Yellow Hots for breakfast,  then just as is at mid morning then afternoon,  with the addition of a spoon of Sambal  Oelek…the Rooster Stuff ,  hot chilis that my family likes.  And i read.   It began with page 321 in the Anthropology of Turquoise.  The chapter entitled     A Field Guide to Brazen Harlotry    .   She writes about flowers.  Bloom.  Desert Bloom.   I KNOW completely and fully all the blooming she describes.  I cannot tell you what it felt like to read her words.  I can't.   I got up,  off and on and went to the Wall to look at this Cloth,  that is a brazen bloom,  that is from a scrap of a shirt from the Thrift Store that i really don't like but i also Do.   It's orangeness,  it's brazenness,  this print of this cloth of a men's shirt.  I have never really liked it but i am also very attracted to it…the Backside of the cloth….Vicky knows about this from so long ago in one of Jude's online workshops.  I think this is the last time i will use this cloth,  will send the rest to Vicky so i am not tempted.  Working with this cloth is Work.  

So, i read.  She takes me places,  this Ellen Meloy.  I go with her.  I am There.

I have been writing down January.  I write something in the mornings, usually,  on pieces of printer paper.   As i have said before,  i usually throw out these pieces of paper every couple days or so but this month of January,  i have kept them.  They piled up.  Well,  not really,  i don't write much, but just some to get it out of my head.    Here,  from January 25th:   Trying to describe the shift.  a rhythm, a movement of doing,  a steady Ease,  the days last for a whole and complete day, a smooth just going.   the Rock presides.  Sunday, today,  the 3rd night of peaceFULL sleep.  Dreams, but easy ones.  Again,  Basic Goodness.  Neither for nor against.  a rhythmic going.  a sway of going.  Not wanting to Make anything OF it…just experience whatever it brings.  Live it.  As is.

January 29th:  Something is trying to tell me how to live now.  How to Live.  How to be in relationship with the days as they come and go,  one by one one into the next into the next.  How to do this.  What to love, What to honor,  What to hold close What to grow  What to turn under.   What to_____________?  What to notice, What to create from one's imagination, that rises up from the substance of the Place, the goings on, the Cloth, Turquoise, the Rock….talking, telling.  I didn't think to Ask.  But i must have been asking?  Asking with the sleep less ness,  the restles discomfort….things out of focus

Ellen Meloy.  Occupying the similar place that one human woman does, earth under her two womanhuman sized feet…sky overhead,  similar to all of us,  allowed an Expanse in her self in her senses that is beyond Rare and then she wrote it down and then she gifted it to us and then she died in her sleep.             I read her thoughts,  stitch a Plant Spirit in Bloom of cloth scraps in the presence of a Rock in the living room.  Things are talking.  How to live in this NEXT.  OK.

OK.

Like a cloth,  days have components.   The components to these last days have been…..A Cloth i stitch.   A Rock that i have brought Inside because of a Book about Turquoise.   Three things.

Three components.  Seemingly maybe unrelated,  incongruent?  Yet they are  tight.  Close.  Tight.

I have 21 pages left to this book.  Tomorrow morning,  there will be no more.    She's gone.,  this woman.   I don't want her gone.  In the beginning of the book she tells us about her imaginary family the Quigleys.   And to day i think about that.  What if i could have an imaginary friend?  What kind of a friend might that be?  and i thought…HER!….i would have Ellen Meloy as my imaginary friend, dressed in her accidental neon orange bathing suit,  wandering around here with me,  feeding Goats,  putting up with Tay,   staring off to the Rim and scribbling in her notebook.  She would be dead,  so she would not need more than this acre,  unlike in her life she had so much more,  she would be ok with it here and she would tell me how to Live.  Here.  With What Is.  I think she would know that…having Crossed Over.  I like this thought.

 

 

The Sort Of Helping Guy with lead in his balls hung a grocery bag of Arugula and Sunchokes,  Jerusalem Artichokes over the fence and Tay,  being helpful brought it to the porch and she and Chinche ate the sunchokes UP

but not the arugula

 

Usually,  one of the layers of cloth extends out from the story on the front.  Always there are three layers.  Whatever is the "story" on the front,  the  inner layer of harem cloth and then the cloth on the back., the other side where the map of the stitching remains.  This particular cloth,  being

WINTER

needed this very particular piece of fabric that was and is so much this Winter Sky.  And that it was a newer fabric,  so not worn or soft,  it so very well talked of that sky.   But also,  it's edges were harder than i am used to.   I'd thought off and on about putting it on a back of a softer cloth but that just wasn't it at all.  Better leave it to stand alone,  hard edged.   But waking this morning there was  "in place" a completely different thought.   And as i began trying to figure out how that could work,   things fell into place.   I have never made a "frame" for a cloth before.  All the edges now are   "finished",  not ragged and frayed so the whole Feel to it is different.  Half way through i took it all back off.  But then put it back on.    Because though it is very different,  it felt Right and i looked for a long time to try to understand Why it felt right.  And realized that tho there are components to Story here,  it is really a  Portrait.  It is a Portrait of this  Spirit of Plants in Winter.  It is a way  to see through Winter,  to see that still there,  within the cold,  within the Winter Sky,  the Spirit of things remain….active and very vital.   So…a portrait of that Ongoing  Living  Energy that is simply  ordinarily Unseen,  only  because it isn't Looked  For  during the Cold Times.  If you Look and  Call to it,  it is There.

I was very absorbed in all this and Tay tried to be patient.

 

 

 

 

I had been eating Fritos today and when i went out to do the Evening Feed,  and was Singing,  they wanted to smell my breath

 

 

Yesterday it was 69 degrees.  Today 56.  Tomorrow it will be 39.  There may be Rain.  How it is here in Winter.  Some of Everything,  and not too much of Anything.  New Mexico.  Perfect.  By Monday it will be WARM again.    Every day now,  i will go Out and close my eyes and Imagine that Spirit Plant,  hovering,  watching over,  waiting,  Knowing.   I have an Image for it now.  It can Hold me well.

 

could be more thread beads,  but i think this is enough

 

Spirit of Plant Beings in Winter….she calls Out……

the little lump at the top of the fence,  directly in the middle.   They are all standing, staring.  What?  And it's that feral cat mother,  the mother of the little yellow kitten.  Sitting on the post there,  watching the Goats.  As They watch her.    Does she go into the Albatros at night and hunt mice?  I hope so.   

And in that same magazine as the Wool article yesterday,  the other article about the Winning Burrito with this photograph that i didn't put here, but sent my granddaughter,  but still i am looking so i'll put it here

he could serve me a burrito any time.  yes he could.

 

 

and when unloading the week's groceries from the Honda hatchback,  i looked at all the other stuff in there,  a kind of mobile closet and the New Mexico Magazine from October  (old CB subscribes)  caught my eye.   Cover story was about the Best Burritos.  So when in house,  i leafed through and this:

 

 

 

 

notice the Mend

 

 

 

then the Cover Photo for the next article…from the Sandia Wilderness,  overlooking Albuquerque.

NM Mag has lost its Realness over the years and is kind of a Sales Magazine but i liked things about this article on wool.  It  spoke of different workers of wool in NM ,  about a ranch in Tierra Amarilla where 1,000 sheep awaited a  crew for spring shearing.   The crew is from Colorado.  4 men.  2 Morman and 2 Amish and Fig,  an Australian Shepard.  And then,  the one i know most about,  Mora Valley Spinning Mill .  If i were to ever leave this Place,  i would want to go to Mora.  Where there is really Nothing.  But there is a Spinning Mill.  Mora.  

But what i was noticing, when looking at the pictures is the emotion that arises in me about Herds.  Herd Animals.  People and dogs that "work them",  the close bond between human/sheep/dog.  The almost primitive motion of herding, shearing, spinning, weaving.   It's very very Strong to me.  And i am just sitting here as Sun touches that Rim and thinking about it.  How i feel such Love for Herds.  I am glad to feel this love and really,  don't need to "think it through"…i just feel it.  and it's very very Good.  

A LITTLE LATER,  reading the Email thing,  i am aware of the aroma of the Buck Goats rising up delicately from my hands in my lap.   I have been back to giving them peanuts in the shell in the evening,  speaking to them individually,  using their names with each peanut,  in hopes of making it easier to separate them out and load them ,  TenZen and Sonny Ray,  when the day comes soon.  What the fragrance is,  is only from their lips on my fingers as i give the peanut,  a musk.  Buck Goat Musk.  and i think how i don't mind it at all.  How i actually find it good and uhhhh,  good and well,  Real.  It's what they have to Offer in this world.  Their scent.  which they hope will Attract.

Jan the Dog Trainer who will be "using" TenZen soon says she would not Ever keep a buck.  But then,  she NEEDS a buck.  There needs to be a buck somewhere for her to Use.  Yes.  Here.  TenZen.  and then,  Sunny Ray for Kelly.  Who has Magic and Barbara.  Yin/Yang  inseperable.  No matter our  Opinions.  Hmmmm.