windthread

the Mouse.   I really like to think there is just one.   But i know that most likely isn't so.  But here

because i was interrupted by a quick visit from the Greatest nurse Cindy,  i had left a bowl of food on the counter.  Chana Masala.   a VERY spicy chick pea dish.  Spicy and HOT.   Most of it is gone, and that hole in the Naan.  and then the tomatoe.  So i am hoping that he,  and i think of him as he,  ate himself to death.  a dietary challenge for a New Mexican mouse….very spicy Indian food with yogurt sauce.  

i cooked the traditional holiday food,  Posole.   Hominy and pork.  red chile.  both dried and not.  More spice.  a big pot of it.  Enough for  many people.  I will eat it for a week.  You can't make Posole small.  Something about it demands a POT of it.  ok.

cleaned out the Doe Goats bedroom in the Albatross.  Spread new clean bedding straw.

several wheelbarrows to the compost bed

done.

i went to where Barbara and Magic live now.  Because they have eggs and i needed eggs.  Things got mixed up and no one was home.  So i wandered around and found them.  I am conflicted.  Their space is small.  There is no herd.  Just two Goats in a small space.  I cried.  

But they came later to bring the eggs and again,  the talking,  the listening and smiling Man and it was the first time Tay was loose when they came and she did her Far Circling Thing a few times, but then came directly to Kelly and sat and put her face to Kelly's hand.   

There is a need for Trust of things.  They do not have their Herd.  They do not have a Migratory Corridor.  But they  have a woman who very much wants them and walks with them to the Cottonwood trees three times a day.  

They are what might be called very poor.  They are beginning with pretty much nothing just on land that he acquired from family.  I know that.  I came here and there was nothing.  She dreams so much more.  I know that too.   and so…well,  just and so.   Tomorrow eve i will put something,  i don't know what yet,  but put something on the Raft for Them.  Kelly, Cliff,  Thomas,  Noah,  Barbara, Magic, cats,  a horse,  chickens…their  Dreams.  I'll put Kelly's Dream on the Raft.  and hope.

Michelle gave me the word ………….. Seamlessly.

all day,  i think of Seamlessly.   Aspiring to Seamless.   

 

 

i didn't look long enough last eve….to even realize the impossibility of this.   Sun is behind me as i face the far fence setting all ablaze,  but casting shadows.  I was seeing it,  but i also couldn't consciously Realize it.   But here it is.  it's Real.

from Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm:

"If you decide to open your sensory gating channels more widely,  engaging the metaphysical background of the world more deeply, develop Gaian ways of perception, you, by definition, leave old forms of thinking behind.  You begin to move into the world the Tao Te Ching speaks of when it asks….   'Who will prefer the jungle of jade pendants if he once as heard stone growing in a cliff?'

To hear stone growing in a cliff,  however, means that a shift in consciousness must occur.  You can't hear something the linear mind has been taught does not exist.  The phrase "shift in consciousness" however has taken on mystical trappings.  As it must in any linear system making it seem something that only adepts in ancient traditions can accomplish.  But it is not as hard as it sounds.  In fact it's extremely easy.  Every person shifts consciousness thousands of times every day…it's just that,  because of our schooling, hardly any of us notices it.  For example,  every time we read a story  (work on cloth)*    we drop into a dream state….our consciousness shifts…and that story  (cloth)  comes alive inside us.  The story (cloth) literally becomes real.  We're no longer aware of the words on the page;  they have disappeared.  In some magical way, as the writer John Gardner puts it…..' We read a few words at the beginning of the book or the particular story, and suddenly we find ourselves seeing not words on a page but a train moving through Russia, an old Italian crying,  a farmhouse batterd by rain'.  

Each of us has had the experience of being awakened suddenly from such a dream by the insistent ringing of the telephone or a sharp knock at the door.  It startles us awake as if from a deep sleep and it takes a few minutes for  us to recall ourselves,  for our conscious minds to begin functioning again.   Yet even as we answer the phone or the door, the meanings, experiences, or people we were dreaming about linger in the mind like a wonderful taste on the tongue or delicate strains of music shimmering in the ear,  more real yet than the salesman at the door or our friend on the telephone.  A shift in consciousness has occured.     ………though we usually just call it reading.

During that shift, when we become immersed in story (cloth), a unique alteration in sensory gating channels occurs.  The gating of the feeling sense is no longer narrow, it opens more widely….and this is crucial in the art,  to the story (cloth) coming alive inside us.

There is a reason why gating opens more widely (and the more accomplished the writer,  the more widely it opens).  It happens because writers  (clothmakers)  learn , one way or another, to combine the visual and feeling senses into one unique sensory medium.

                                                                    its called synaesthesia

If done well,  when you read a visual scene in a story  (cloth) you also feel the deeper realities underneath  those  visual scenes.  You begin to encounter the metaphysical background of the world…the feeling dimension that is inside all visual phenomena."

Stephen Harrod Buhner            the parentheses (cloth)* are mine.

so i start out this way,  almost every morning,  looking at this Cloth that has Yvette's beautiful creation draped around,  embracing it.   It is Otherworldly.

 

 

 

 

from the Morning Chair,  i watch.  Watch it all assume different form as Light comes.

 

Maybe?   Maybe this is what i want to Claim.   This way of Feeling/Seeing/Being  that i might let become the Whole of the Day.   That i no longer draw a line.  Saying….ok,  now.  Go into the day.

Maybe i want to find a way to hold myself into that Morning Dream to wrap it around me and live the day from inside that?????   Maybe i want to Claim That.  Once and for All.  

Why not?   When would be a better time?

 

 

it has been an Odd day.  I could use the word strange,  but that has too much a sense of …..well,  an ominous sense?,  not ominous at all,  but odd and strange.  Not at all ordinary.   

early this morning the word Claim came up.  To Claim something.   As i ready things here for Solstice of this year,  this word,  Claim is what rises.   A time to Claim.   Claim what.  I don't know.  I have NO idea.  But claiming.   it's about Claiming.   Claiming,  i think,  in the sense of acknowledging relationship to,  or maybe even love For.  Or maybe Primary Importance Of.   I don't know.  It's a new thought.

Mo sent me a Mary Oliver….from The House of Light….Singapore.   I took the book off the shelf and looked through the index to find this poem.  Then turned back a page to a poem called Spring.  About a Black Bear just risen from sleep and starting down the mountain.   The entirety of this poem is as Mary O always is….Clear and Stunning,  but it was just this one sentence that  was IT.

"There is only one question:  how to love this world."

and then the concept of Claiming.  The word   Claim.  

I had fed the goats their evening grass hay a little while ago and soon after, it started to rain.  Not a lot,  just light,  but they ran for cover.  And i went back out to the Way Back and turned all 5 feed Bowls upside down over the feed.  I've learned this.  In the past,  it would go to waste because they wouldn't eat it wet.  This way,  when the cloud burst moves,  they come back and i turn the Bowls back up,  pile the feed back in.  

I just now,  This Moment, did this.  And as i was,  the thought came….Claiming the Life that IS.

Not the life that is imagined,  but the life that is happening.  Happening.

Is this it?     ?    ?   

i found this by the no freeze faucet when hooking on the hose for the Buck Goats.  Could this being have actually LIVED here?  or is it somehow here from somewhere else?   And i noticed that there are actually NEW Iris shoots coming up.   ?

am going to send Wendy's Kids this dog cloth.  Some things to do,  but it's pretty much It.

i took the face off this one and Look.  SomeThing Else entirely.  Maybe this is a kind of Claiming?

 

 

 

 

 

there would be dull,  there would be Dark and there would be Light!   Back and Forth.  

and when the days are so small,   dark so long in the beginings,  so dark so soon at the endings,  i look for comfort

and it is found in the scraps.  This is one of my most loved pieces.  Silk Noile, so soft of Hand and dyed with the Eggplant  way back when Glennis Dolce gave the online class in dyeing.  I can't even remember the name of the dye we used…Color Hue?,  something like that but this piece,  oh,  it is so so satisfying.

 

 

 

 

so i comfort  mySelf with standing and Looking.   I think about how i am grateful that i have these things.  How well they comfort me.  yes.

and This has been moved from the blueish backing to this kind of grey lavendar back.  Which ties into the moon event up in the right hand corner and also softens the Whole.  I am thinking so much about this Cloth.  How "the dominant "She" has such meaning to me and also had meaning of the Taliban and Joni Mitchel.   What to end up Thinking?   But it's a Strong Cloth and Wants to Be, so i just go.

at NO store in town were there my awaited Butterfly Calendars.  So this coming year we have Flowers.   And i wonder why Butterflies are no IN this year?   Not the Dollar General,  Family Dollar or Walmart.    This year the grocery store doesn't have Any calendars at all.  

So Flowers.  ok.   This cover photo is Glorious.  Printed in China.  And i think about the people there who work in the calendar company,  who package them…inserting the sturdy piece of cardboard,  apply the shrink wrap.  I wish i could tell them how important their calendar is to me all the year round.  How almost every day i look and mark it with my pen.

just a work away day, really.

and then when i returned,  a long on the phone with the Old Cowboy et al day.   The day did not belong to me,  but to the world.  But, i think…how many of Us out There have so many days like this?  maybe even the Majority?  So here it is for what it is

"Available" light.  Not much by 4 something Oclock

and it's really ok.  This is how it IS as we move so close to Solstice.   Standing,  Looking,  i thought how really great that it takes only 12 months  "12 months", to move around the Circle and how beautifully it all is arranged,  the moving, and the changing from this to that.  REALLY,  how totally GRAND  it is.   That just as we feel it is ENOUGH!!!!,  we begin to Turn Again.   There could not be a finer plan.  

And the Granddaughter is coming Into Her Own.  In the conversation,  i said something about maybe making cloths that are too personally oriented.  And she said like what?  and i talked about this one and she wondered why i thought it was "personal"?….  "There are a lot of women who have dogs". …"That's not personal"    as Jude would say…Ha.

stuffed in the Neighborhood Box Unit today  ….   see that her "skirt " is made of grasses?

see that?   The First Artists      I haven't read yet,  but there it is in bold Print…..Artists.  Maybe i might understand something about that reference….Artist.  What is considered to be the work of an Artist.   I believe in National Geographic.

Update on the thing in my nose.  It seems like it's "flat" today rather than upright yesterday.  Will wait a day or so.  See if it goes away.

 

it seemed so far away just the other day,  but i look at the calendar and count the boxes and it is now SOON.  SOON.  till we again tilt toward the Light.    How amazing.  Tilting away then suddenly tilting toward.  

so after a period of silence,  we again have this.  Why, one might wonder?  There is Free Access all over this house for a mouse.  But maybe it's some kind of Creativity?  Instead of scampering around the corner,  the choice is to chew through the wall board.  Back to the Tin Mouse Live Trap.  This is tiring.  

I think of Andy Goldsworthy

 

 

 

 

WIND, like the wind that came yesterday and through the night, rearranges things.  Chairs are overturned,    rakes, hoes and shovels knocked down,  large landscape pots over turned,  the clothesline askew (forgot to take pic)  and down low…Installations.  Small gatherings of things that when i squat down,  i feel as Stories.   Tell me,  i think.  

and i seem to have gotten something lodged in my right nostril when throwing the Goat feed over the gate last eve.   The beauty of the organism,  body,  has caused my nose to run constantly today, well, my right nostril.  Left one is    quietly normal.  The right however, a constant flow.  I can feel whatever it is…right "there,  above where the nose flairs in the nose…a something.  and i think what if it's a side oat grama seed?   eeeeeee   So there would be two scenarios…one that all that snot will soften it so i can blow or sneeze it out  OR  all that snot can moisten it so it will germinate and i will have a clump of Native Grass growing out of my nose????????????????

and i listened again twice to the On Being interview with Joy Laden.  Hearing again the two words:  Coherent World

i am fascinated with the still unpictured images that these two words suggest.  Coherent World.

Coherent World.

maybe that is what i am always trying to find with the cloth making….or Make,  with the cloth making?  a  Coherent World.

 

that kind of straight line wind.  NOT gusting,  but just this one single constant WIND.   Good news of the grandson, 24 yrs who flounders,  the news making everything just that much Brighter.   Granddaughter signaled her intent to try her hand at……..clothmaking.!!   I will send her examples of stitches in the mail.  OR just now i thought…maybe one of Jude's online classes…!!!!!!!…?????  Watched Nogal express himself in the most Great way…he DOES NOT LIKE the side oat grama grass hay.  Usually just walks away.  This eve he stood a moment then hooked his scur horn in the rim of the feed bowl and FLUNG IT OVER  then set to flinging the hay EVERYWHERE with those same scur horns.  Then he walked away.  I am thinking he is not a really hungry Goat.  But i like that he made himself very Clear.

i thought to check out Christa Tippet's  ON BEING…can google it

and there is a truly WONDERFULL interview of December 11th  with Joy Ladin  entitled Gender and the Syntax of Being.  It is ExtraOrdinary to me.  About her transition  of gender in her 40's.  It is just the most tender and beauty full STORY of a human being.  It is about so much MORE than what it's about.  I will listen again tomorrow morning.

all the above while stitching  Grass Seeds.  and thinking about the question of yesterday,  the importance of dialogue in making art.  

AND IT'S  8:49 PM AND THERE IS GREAT WIND,  RAIN, MEANING WATER FROM THE SKY AND IT'S FIERCE.    fierce…..fierce…..and not so much as other places, like Vermont where Cynthia is,  but fierce for here.  So…i close the Dog Door.  Hunker down.

 9:o4 p.m.

Tay is not used to the Dog Door being closed.  Even if she might not…MIGHT NOT…want to go Out in the WIND and RAIN,  she is not  used to not having the OPTION.  She is uneasy.  I am too.

We are uneasy.

 

 

 

 

i took the one messy window Out Side

and yes, as i had thought might happen,  Tay had thoroughly investigated the ashes.  And as if this weren't enough,  as i worked on the window,  i looked up to see her ROLLING in them with zeal.  So shoveled up into wheelbarrow.

 

Out there with a razor blade, i scraped clean two of the panes both sides and a third one side.  My back aches.  It's tedious.  No wonder Paul Who Can Do Anything …didn't finish.  It's a bummer.  He slopped the primer on without taping and it's like cement.   So when i finish the scraping,  i'll sand again, fill the dents with filler and sand and TAPE before the primer.  The second window i can do from scratch,  so easier.  It's amazing what one will do for $200, isn't it.  But it will  help here.  AND i can do it at Home.  So, good.

While just Out There,  scraping away and not moving around,   i was able to learn more about how They all spend a kind of cloudy but not cold December day.  I listened to Sunny Ray as he trilled away with practice of his love sounds…practice on his father Gideon who is now silent and patient.  Gideon just stands or lays there and goes elsewhere in his mind.  Doesn't seem to pay any attention to Sunny Ray's efforts.  Maybe he's just remembering his younger days.  Dear Him.  Nogal and Tenzen spent a lot of time rubbing their heads on things.  Nogal has those considerable Scur Horns and his rub of choice is the T post that has the bell so there is a lot of nice ringing going on.  Tenzen likes the strand of heavy wire along the back most "wall"  and it makes a very odd sound that i can't think how to say here.  The Doe Goats move back and forth along the corridor for no reason i can discern except they seem to like doing it.  Suddenly one will just begin going and everyone gets up and goes too.  Soon,  Repeat.  They are NOT as yet making any moves to rearrage herd position as i'd thought they would with the absence of Magic and Barbara.  So far, just going.   Tay spends her time digging and chewing things up.   I'd not realized how serious she is about the chewing up part.  She patrols the Whole Space and now and again siezes a stick,  a piece of 2×4,  a dry root,  a weed, and chews it into smitherenes.  This is serious work for her.  She is very focused.

the second and third grass leaves stitched down,  two seed stems.    The thread i usually use for the seeds themselves won't work.  Not sure what to do.

 And over at Spirit Cloth, Jude talked about  "expressing a core idea".   About how she's thinking the  "whole idea of making art has a lot to do with dialoge".   Hmmmm.

Last week i contacted Judy of Tapestry Gallery in Madrid, NM  that i've talked about off and on,  that had the fiber figures i used to make,  …..i contacted her and asked her to look at windthread and let me know if she would be interested in trying them out,  these Cloths.  She said YES!, Send.  So thinking about this and thinking of what if i sent this particular one.   Would it make any 

sense?

would it make any sense…without the dialoge here on the blog.   The odd change in perspective,  those oh so small ink figures at the bottom…the Grass People that create refuge for them,  and then  this Face of kind of Gaia but more?????  What / How would this cloth appear on it's own,  out of context?  And will i want to send words with it?,  like i used to with the fiber figures?  Do i want to send words?  Jude says "expressing a core idea".  She means something entirely different with these words than i take them as in relation to what i make,  but still,  it's a core idea.  

So, i'm thinking about all this.  as i just go.

 

 

 

i did extend some lines of the Kantha into Her face.   it's good.

spent a lot of time stitching the beginnings of two long leaves of grass.  the one on the right remains…and decided that isn't it.  So…rooted through all the scraps and found one that will work, and again,  i SHOULD have been more conscientious about dyeing this summer with the Mexican Elderberry, *  and these i think will be good.  The seed stems will be thread.

and i'm not sure how i realized this,  but i did realize that the dial on the camera was NOT on Auto…but rather manual.   How did that happen?  but it accounts for the trouble i have having for a while.  I'd thought maybe my retina's were detaching.  But no.  so ok.

and the mid afternoon to early eve were spent BURNING, finally.  No wind.  Perfect.

this whole little pile of wood had been completely covered…over to the fence and then about  maybe 7ft wide and then almost 6ft high with Pigweed.  This is weed that causes problems for Goats because of the thistle like seed heads..or like fish hooks…can get lodged.  so, pull and burn.

here we have it.  Done.  I  hosed it down when finished so when the ashes dry i'll shovel them into the wheelbarrow and do something with them.  But it felt really really good to get this DONE.   I am probably overly concerned about burning.  Even on a day like today, i start so CARE FULLy…only a few weeds at a time,  but as it goes,  i become confident and really enjoy seeing the smoke billowing.  Tay was very interested  All does came from the Way Back to the Middle Pen to watch.  It was well attended.  

 

 

 

over the course of any few days,  i end up with a little pile of papers with things written on them and when they begin to feel like clutter,  i go through them to see if there is anything needing to be saved…if not, i throw them out.   a lot of what's on them is from very first thoughts of the days,  like i used to do Morning Pages…a left over from those days…now it's just sentences,  not even complete thoughts.  sometimes words.    This morning there was this.  I of course know i did this,  but really, don't remember why or when.   Had to be in the days before Magic and Barbara's Big Day tho.  And those days,  when i was waiting for Sunday,  thoughts were very fragmented.  So i looked and saved it here.  Threw the actual paper away.    Why did I think this?  There is some very very hazy vague memory of a dream …?

and because of Liz's post about altering a book,  i got to thinking again about whether it matters  to me if the human images in the cloths i make seem to be one race or another,  well,  one, really, i guess,  like caucasian…which is me of course,  and also they are almost always on unbleached muslin,

and suddenly i remembered the conversation she had with the Navy Recruiter who came to her Alternative High School.  She was 17 and graduating and they i guess had a quota to fill and Recruiters hit the Alternative High Schools hard,  offering so much including the money for a college education.  It was her way of Seperating ,  of Individuating.  No one in this family,  her mother's side had any military inclination whatsoever to put it mildly,  but she took it.  And i remember her telling me as they were filling out the final papers for her to sign the next years of her life away,  he handed them to her to proof read.  There was one error.  Race was checked Hispanic.  She corrected him.  She was NOT hispanic.  She was half Black and half White.  And though brown,  was Not Hispanic.  He kind of just mumbled along and said to just go ahead and sign.  She wanted that corrected.  and he told her…..  "It's ok.  just leave it.  You can be anything you want to be in your heart".   And she said good them.  In my heart i am half black and half white.  Change it.

so i guess at that point his needed quota of 17 yo girls from single parent  Hispanic family dropped a point, but it all went forward.

So.

i thought…what color am I?  What race am i,  on the inside.  what race am i in my heart?  The answer was immediate.  I am half me and half dirt.  I am half  and half.  Like her, mixed.   She actually said that to me once when she was much younger…that i didn't look like a white person…i looked different.  so maybe she could see that?  Maybe she could see how i am the color of dirt?  If anyone would, it would be her.  

But then,  as i write the above,  that face there isn't at all about me.  It's about what i let represent the Feminine of All that Is.  We can say Gaia.  But i also don't really relate totally to that,  but really something even more Vague.

So this has brought up a whole different thread.   In the meantime….i wanted the Face of It to be at least part brown…earth colored.  

a print out.  With the grasses as shelter above the oh so small figures below.  And as i was fooling with that,  i realized maybe i want the Kantha to extend INTO that representative "face".   But not in a way that would maybe identify It as any particular race or culture….,  just part of the All.