windthread

there are SO many crickets suddenly

i set the dictionary on the floor to refill the coffee cup and when i came back,  this.

this one had actually crawled to this spot maybe 3 days ago.  it is in the exact Center of the most high traffic area of the house….traveled across many time daily by 2 dogs, a cat and human, once, two humans.  in the first hours, i scooted h/ir over to a more quite floor tile near the wood stove, but no…back again.  scooted again.  back again.  so…ok.  and somehow everyone managed to walk around h/ir.  and there s/he lies in this moment, slowly just falling apart of h/ir own accord. 

and this will be a Cloth for the Sandhill Cranes.  for Migration.  Especially for # 59905468 who traveled 51,100 miles.  and i think about the Purpose of Sandhill cranes.    they are not critical food sources for predators.   they are not generally hunted by human beings.  i am thinking about their purpose.   the purpose of this really massive migration.    where i grew up in Michigan, my dad used to take us to Waterloo Recreation area to watch their Arrival in the Spring.   i was absolutely

stunned

my first year in N. Mex.  when driving, i heard a sound.  my whole body responded to that sound.  it was their distinctive call.  they have something very singular about their skeletal system, i don't remember, but it is found maybe in only them?  or maybe very few birds?  When i go to the Festival of the Cranes this year at Bosque del Apache,  i will be sure to go to the exhibit that has the skeletan and remember what the Interpreter tells me.    i'll come back here and tell you.  but,  how amazing.  i had left their spring nesting grounds and come to the far end of their migratory passage here in the south central Rio Grande valley.    but back to the question.  what is their Purpose?  Raptors and Game Birds,  well…yes.  But these cranes?

and i started the Judy Martin Dress which really isn't going to be that.   i don't know what it is.  a jumper.  maybe i'll jump.  Julie mentioned skipping.  ????  don't know.  but it has begun.

and an Update on the little boy:  

Yvette…Nogal is the spanish word for Walnut.   which is his color.   in certain light.  today, he cried only half a day on and off.  Today, his crying was because he wants to nurse.   and that somehow makes it better for me to listen to.  Because he had become too big and too rough to continue nursing.  and he was demanding.  Lucky Star had a very hard time limiting him.  he was becoming more than she could handle.  Rough.  he had at the same time become able to impregnate her, his sister, his Aunt and his cousin.  if any of them had come into heat, he would have done his business.  so…the crying.  The other Bucks,  Sunny Ray, Tenzen and old Gideon are really very kind and gentle.  Way more than i had imagined they would be.   So…although in this moment as i write this i can hear him,  his warblly whaaa,  tomorrow maybe he will have forgotten some, the taste of mother's milk.  for sure, in time he will.  

in that very slight thin space between sleep and waking this morning,  a very surprising question occurred.  

What if 

i spent the rest of the 365 days, which would mean 134 days, 

Experimenting with being

Purposeless. ?

Would there be a noticeable difference?   or,  is my constantly being driven to define my life by a sense of Purpose really,  an  Illusion…….?

INSERT

breakfast with the Big Boys

10:12 a.m.

from NM fish and game website    www.fws.gov/refuge/Bosque_del_Apache/wildlife/bands. html

Band Number 599-05468

"This band was worn for 36 and 1/2 years by a Rocky Mountain Sandhill crane.  It is one of the oldest RMSH's known.  The bird was banded with its broodmate on 29 June 1973 one mile north of Border, Wyoming on the Thomas Fork of the Bear River.

The distance as the crow flies from Border Wyoming to a staging in the San Luis Valley of Colorado and then down the Rio Grande to the Bosque del Apache is approximately 700 miles.  If you assume this crane returned close to its nesting grounds each spring and back to Bosque del Apache each winter, the band made the round trip 36 times as well as a final one way trip where it was recovered.  That is a total of 51,100 miles in a lifetime, or an equivalent of circling the earth more than twice."

Out in the Way Back, there is a new order.  Barbara has been allowed back.  She ate from the bowls. Drank from the communal water.  she layed next to her mother and her aunt during cud time.  and i will watch now to see the changes.  i think that Oona has moved to the top.  her mother, the Grandmother of all, Snowbunny, has kept to herself today.  i need to watch the next days to really know.  but it's over and done.  for this time.  and in their very singular terms, All is Well.

but…that's the Way Back.  Out Front, a different story plays out.

Nogal has assumed his Place in the buck pen.  this is not a good photograph but it seemed cruel to take pictures of such Grief.  in the first moments,  there was a Great Display.  Even old Gideon rose to the occasion and huffed and snorted,  the other two, surprisingly, TenZen, who is so passive,  but him too.  Much stamping and vocalizing and tongue flapping and just virile rowdiness, much peeing on beards and nudging dear young Nogal.   then intense Watching as he went about the perimeters, looking and checking if there was a way Back to his mother.  and then scouting hiding places, "in case".   that lasted maybe an hour.  since then, he has cried.  non stop.  For his mother. and the Bucks just watched and listened to his misery.   His mother watched.   His sister Celia called back to him all day.  but his mother, Lucky Star watched.  it is almost Rim Time and his cries are becoming a little softer, a little more space inbetween.  But who does he have to sleep next to?  i won't know.  maybe no one.  maybe he will sleep alone.  Deep Breath in,  Deep Exhale.  

this was a very Canary Yellow cloth of Deb Lacativa's that i put in the copper pot with the pods of the Snake Tree.   just wadded up.  the Dark is from oxidation of the folds that as the liquid evaporates  in Sun,  begin marking any cloth.

and all day,  i looked at the Vertical image.  but late,  nearing Sun Set,  i wondered….What If?  and i think this is IT.   what it IS,   i have no idea.  but i think it's the next Cloth.  it speaks of a repeating Rhythm.  maybe of the Cranes return, of migration,  of following some really unhearable things that tell us Things?  that there is no language for.   but only some kind of response.   the best we can offer in any given moment.

?

it's moving toward the Rim….watching.   and today,  the first of the Sandhill Cranes arrived overhead.  i was out there, clearing the weeds as tall as i am from around the horse trailer when i heard them still to the North, and stopped and stood,  waiting  until  YES!   they are Back!!!!!  All is Well.  migration.

i'd said i maybe would really take time and organize my thoughts and feelings, but i don't want to.  Here i am again,  just winging it, like those  Cranes…

i'm not ready yet.   but i know more.  i know that the Unforseen still arises here Out of the Blue.  I know that if something even seems remotely possible,  i feel compelled to do it.  i know that if i

CAN,

i feel like i SHOULD.  

and i know that there is something about that that isn't right.  or, isn't right for me anymore???

i also know that i  continue to put my Making,  and in this time it is the Making of Cloth,  as 

second.

because i still continue to feel like it is self centered.   self gratifying.  Less Than,  for instance,

milking goats and making cheese.  

so…not much further along at all.   except i worked hard out there today.  Tomorrow, Nogal will go in with the Big Boys.   today, i watched the Herd of does in the Way Back do things  i could never imagine them doing.  they were hard on eachother.  relentless, really.  Rearing, head butting, HARD.  you could hear it all day.  a deep resonating THWAK as head hit head.  moving in a circle, muttering, pushing,  negotiating.  all the while, Barbara with the bloody scur had to stand aside.  Barbara, who in the past has been a bully,  has been reduced by her circumstance to really, Nothing,  except a catalyst for  all the rest.   and watching them so earnestly be their most sincere Goatly selves,  i know that when i reintegrate them with the two milking does in the regular yard, it will all need to happen again.  and i know it's hard for me to watch.  and i remember daughter saying…"then don't watch".  

and now Sun has reached the rim of the planet.  and i know that i just really want to Make Cloth.  and i know that i didn't again today.  and i don't know what i think yet.  and i know that im getting

really tired of my Self.

and this is a while later.  i went out and sat with the  Goats.  the babies are now shy of me, out there, because they have become accustomed to me coming at dark to take them from their mothers.  So, they came so close.  but then in the last second, ran.  

so…what i know today is You Can't Have It All.  yes?  is this true?

Looking and Thinking.

yesterday's post and all your responses are completely Present for me in this moment.  so am not going forward today, but rather just standing still.   these thoughts, mine and everyone elses are ……uhhhh,   well, i want to use the word "critical"…but that sounds kind of dramatic.   so, though,  "critical"  but not in the end of the world kind of way,  but "critical" in that they speak of a very significant moment in this Just Going of mine.  and i need some time. ,, Tuesday being a work away day and this particular Tuesday with added events/requirements.   so…i hope tomorrow i can go forward.   i think this might be the first post so far that i will think out ahead of time,  ahead of just tapping away at the keyboard, letting the thoughts and words fall as they may.

and here it is.  same cloth as yesterday, but today, dry.,,, fooled with by WIND.  big difference.

and here's the Wall.  River is gone from it.   there is a large empty space.

a thought, floating through the ether  for the Time being, is simplifying.  Divesting.  of stuff.  

Simplifying.

i write that word and notice that i exhale rather forcefully.   

i don't have much stuff anymore, really.   and in adding that qualifier, really, i guess i am not really sure if this is True?  but, i think, in comparison, i don't have much stuff.  of any kind.   so….i have no concerns about divesting of stuff.   what i do have in material goods, i think i could walk away from relatively painlessly.  Just leave it.    but as i think and read others thoughts,  it occured to me today that what i do have maybe too much of is Doings.   When i had imagined Doing a lot less,  i see, if i look with certain eyes, i see that it is possible i have replaced Stuff with Doings????

thinking of these things, i remembered again that somewhere in the incredible book that could take a billion lifetimes to go through and understand Some of:

I Am That      Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj   1973  Acorn Press

thinking, i remember most …..that he said….."do not add."   

so with these three words, i am going to spend some time thinking.   and in the moment, i think it's not an issue for me to Divest of What I Have,  but rather,  to Not Add.    and in keeping with this thinking,  i know that i refer to Circumstance.  the prime example is the Goats.  i didn't decide suddenly that i wanted a herd of Goats and went out and acquired them.  the Circumstance arose that i had the choice of keeping Her dream alive or saying no.  i said yes.  and the Circumstance was that several does were bred already at that time.  and so, more Circumstance.  but then…i bred 2 again,  because i wanted to learn to make cheese.  and in this case, i think i became my own Circumstance.   and now,  i know that i can make cheese.  i have made cheese.  and i am at a point of breeding again to continue the Cheese Making.   this is not circumstance, this is Choice.  the first breeding was Choice that naturally arose from circumstance, maybe….but NOT THIS TIME.

so it's good.  that i thought of Nisargadatta saying:  Do not add.  and i looked for the book and Good Again,  i found the picture that i have been looking for for years now, in it's pages

i don't know when and how i acquired this Postcard.  sometime in my 20's.  probably Detroit or Ann Arbor.  i honestly don't know.  but i saw her.  and i identified totally with the image.  this is me.  someday.  i  thought.

on the back, it has a copyright  1988 Nancy L. Safford  Limousin, France  1977-1983

but then…i kept Adding.  Not stuff so much, but Doings.  and Doings, really, i am thinking are as strong as Stuff.    so….here is where i am in this moment today. 

i took the noile out of the enamel walnut pot.  it's very Wet in this pic.  it will not look like this dry.  the color is one i don't even know a name for.  and when it IS dry,  i'll think about more over dye.  it's for the Judy Martin dress/jumper.  the small piece to the right is the cotton muslin of the aborted saradine imprint…i like it.  but it isn't at all what i had hoped….i have NO technique.  Do i Want a Technique????  maybe not.  maybe i don't really care.

i need to.  and if that were literal, this would be one of the hands i would need to use…

i hardly recognize this hand…except for the scabs.  the bandaid.   look, though, how the veins and ligaments or whatever are so prominent, and then…those pleats of skin at the wrist…………..

there's a cloth under all this

an aborted saradine can attempt.  now in re dye.  i am not very good at all this.

and this.  

This is some of the silk noile i got from Dharma Trading.  i kind of don't like it.  it is tame.  civilized noil.  i like rough, raw noile.  but, oh well.  so this is in the big Walnut pot which is an enamel pot.  it's in there with that giant iron thing that i've showed pics of before.  This cloth,  when i get it somewhere close to "right" will be my Judy Martin dress.

Judy's Journal,  blog post of August 19th, 2013  Celebrate and Cry.  ever since i saw that, i've had this idea of making a "dress".  and well, it isn't really a dress, it's a jumper sort of thing.  it is similar, Judy's,  to some of my denim uniforms that i have for summer.  i have no clothing words to describe it….don't know them,  but it's loose and well…drapes.  i think the silk noil that i don't really like will do that.  Why i want it is because going out so early to do the Goat things,  i need layers.  and soon i will be coming back IN where it might be moderately warm or really warm, depending,  and i  DO NOT LIKE changing clothes entirely.  so if i could really just remove layers?

under the "Judy Martin" dress i could have first, against the skin, leggings.  then over them, some cut off levis.  (there would be wool socks).   i used to wear this kind of thing in the winter because i liked the look of it.  but i remember too that the "dress", or long skirt, or jumper, created a pocket of warmth between it and everything under it.   So…not to go on and on,  this is in keeping with the Goldilocks  Principle and we'll see.

here we have it.  a half ton of alfalfa.  we had to seperate the  half ton bale into "flakes" to get it off the truck.  but we did it.  i really like determined women.   a Lot.   and tonight there are very very peaceful Goats,  lounging in the Evening Sun,  chewing cud and finally, all is well again.

and i received word that the drum, the Yantra, as he calls them,  will be set into the postal system tomorrow.

i could have known.  but preferred to be in denial.    the morning began with some chaos.  somehow, i think from just rattling against the cattle panel gate hard enough, somehow the 3 little ones got out.

there they were, cheerfully milling about nibbling here nibbling there in the Albatros….finding bits and pieces of the old kind of grass hay.  Getting them in to their side was an event, their mothers screaming at the top of their lungs because none of that was supposed to be happening, it was supposed to be milking time.   Then,  that done, coming in there was an odd sense…so i looked out into the Way Back and 

total Insurrection.

almost all of them which would be probably 8 goats, i don't really know because i was so freaked, almost all of them had decided enough was enough and had broken through the fencing that surrounds the Oasis there..1 small tree, 1 Very small tree and one large bush and native grasses, the first time this year wild asters,…the Only Green left out there…  

and to make a long story short,  this repeated three times.  each time being no easier to get them all out than the one that preceeded it .  so i went and bought some bales of alfalfa/grass mix.  ok.  i give.   and the truth is,  Goats will, if they possibly can, forage for what they need nutritionally.  their instinct is Strong and SelfSustaining.  and they will stop at nothing.  and truth is too that people can say as many times as they want over and over and over that eventually, if there is nothing else, they will eat what you give them.  and i suppose that might be true.  but in this case, there IS something else.  the Oasis.  it would take them maybe 3 days to completely consume it.  and maybe then they would eat the junky grass hay.  but i can do better than this.  and i will.

so…Goats aside.  what's really on my mind is Art.  Making stuff.  Other artisans and craftspersons making stuff.    participating in a network of support.  Some conversation over on Spirit Cloth about this and i really have strong opinions that i don't need to repeat.  but as Deb Lacativa says,

Buy Art.  It's Good for You.

i totally agree.

and i have an Art Jar.

i keep it under the kitchen sink.  into it goes change and often one dollar bills.  it adds up.  i had been using this Art Jar for Jude's work.   and it's been a while.  but months ago, i don't know how long, there was a cloth she made that i totally wanted.  and i saved for it.  but it never went into her shop.  so that Art Jar had gotten pretty full.   today,  it is emptyish.

Go to India Flint's blog.  click on the video that Tracey Mc Connell-Wood made of India in Scotland this summer.  Watch.  and most of all,  listen.   the sound made me Crazy with love…

it's a steel drum made by Jason Shearer,  his email is there in the credits.  

a drum is coming.  i can't believe it.  i can't believe how perfect this is for this Time in my life…how this  CREATION  can make sound for the Goats, for the Morning Light, for the Cold of the Winter , the time of Looks Within, for that River, the Rio Grande.  Really….it's extraOrdinary….how much i LOVE this sound, how much i know will be CHANGED by being able to make these sounds.  how they will Help me.  Help me know what to do in each Next as it comes.

Go listen.

and about selling Art/buying Art…   what could possibly be better????,  really.

i spent some time out in the buck pen.  as i sit here, writing this,  their "scent", which is what it is to me,  stink,   which it might be to others,   kind of billows up from my levis, maybe even from all of me…i can't tell,  being in the midst of it.  but  i like it.   Sunny Ray was so glad.  he stood so terribly care Fully still as i scratched his now stinky one  year old self.  it's been a while.  all the milking stuff.  they have gotten only food and water.  no time, really.  Thinking.

and the River cloth is finished.

it will go to the little upper right hand Shop.  for the household economy.  thank you Wendy….of Grace and Mending…for those words,  household economy….

it's about the Rio Grande here.  about the week of Rain that brought surprising WATER to this land, to that river, but it could also be about any river, about Your river.  Rivers.  they are all under threat in one way or another.  so…it's kind of a song.  or a prayer, even    To them,  For them. 

and working, i realized that the odd commercial cloth from China that i really Needed for the grasses…i realized that what it takes me Back to is when i first began knowing about Life.  when i would see the Eggs.  the Eggs of salamanders, frogs, toads…i guess, amphibians,  in small pools of water.  the pools being because Rivers had overflowed, had flooded and it was in these pools that life could continue.  i remembered, stitching, seeing these clusters of egg beginnings.  just a black dot in the middle but then if you kept going back,  it all played out, right before your eyes..LIFE.

so….i guess this cloth is about some kind of Hope.   That River  that  could be anyone's River.