windthread

i dreamed last night.  it was a HUGE DREAM.  technicolor,  wizardry of Special Effects.

and again.  the Goats are in the dream.  this might be the 4th time?  in the last week or so?  not usual.

so…unless others want to continue on, i think i will give this a rest.  it's by no means done with, but it has come to an Unexpected Place where it can rest a while, maybe.

and i want to thank ALL of YOU that come here and participate in my Life with me.  it's really magnificant and i am beyond Grateful for it.  

and i want to thank you JULIE for asking.  little did you know, it would allow me so much Freedom as it has.  your question was more simple than my answer but your question ALLOWED my answer to become what it has.  and in this moment,  i am so grateful for this.

in trying to be Coherent in my answer,  i was able to see things differently than i have when it is just me and my mind.  it tends to be so much more circular that way…

here, i needed to lay it on the table.  let the light shine on it.  look.

and where i am with it all now is that really, for the first time i was able to see kind of clearly how i have a Propensity (buddhist term) to do things.  how it appears Sudden.  and how, Really, honestly, it ISN'T thought out…as in…how it might go…what might happen.  it is limited to the Going itself.  without a lot, or really ANY forethought.  Something seems Right.  really Right.  so

OK

GO!

and in this moment, looking at all this has brought up, all the images of the SlideShow,  ….. i really TRUST it.  it has moved me through a Life and so many Experiences.  it is GOOD. very GOOD.  and as we have said…no regrets.  and what that means to me in this moment is that i have suddenly (that word again) realized that there is no reason to imagine it won't continue that way until i'm dead.  that even now, when time is not Endless anymore,  when it is finite,  i can

Just Go.

Just Go.  i can totally.  TOTALLY.  let go.  let go.  let go of concern.   What Will BE will RISE UP as the NEXT and i will be Ready.  BUT/AND i don't need to project anything at all into the Future.

What comes comes.   THIS is really really so very BEAUTY FULL…i cannot tell you.  there is such a just so Light Freedom to it.  and i am noticing it in all the small ways one does in the days, yesterday and today when a thought comes unbidden…a Challenging Thought…habitual….and

i find self 

remembering.  Remembering that things will take Care of themselves.  They have.  They will.

it's all just so OK.

LOVE….

 

i broke my BIG RULE.  which is, if i cannot be organized enough to get what i need when in town, i have to wait till the next Town Day.  well…i forgot toilet paper yesterday and also garbanzo beans.  i really wanted to make hummus.  so.  FAST run this morning.  and on the way out of town, i had a sudden urge to stop and see if that walnut tree by the Brew Pub was doing anything.  you might remember that i was told about it last year, but when i looked, there was nothing….so, thought i'd just look.  and as Cindy says, Glory Be.  

i emptied the big basket.  took the time to remember i want to make an altar cloth of this pattern next

last year, i don't know why, i just assumed it would be in the Fall that the nuts would fall.  well,…..Wrong.  here they were lying gently under the tree and i filled the two cloth shopping bags but still leaving some there .  Walnuts.  i have Walnuts.  

and i forgot to upload the last pic.  will do that one as an edit.  but .  the old cast iron is set to work.

and JUDE, if you look here…How is best to keep some of them for adding later?  is in the basket good?  so there is air circulating?  is inside better where they won't get wet with these Moonsoon rains?  and i just thought…would it be best to just scatter them on the earth as they were when they fell from their Tree?  Some i will give to Marti when she returns.  she, being much more adept than i am with dye magic, with understanding the Substance and what it wants.  but there will still be enough left to Just Go till next harvest.  How to keep them????? 

 

ok.  so.

What do i make of it all?, so far????

FOR SURE.  for sure, i Know that i would be Good here.  "forever".  which means till i'm dead.   ……When will that be?  don't know.  so, maybe a while?, maybe a LONG while?  don't know.  and really, i've gotten good at being with that.  i just go.  and it works very well.  BUT/AND

what do i make of it all?, in the moment.???  Have i learned some of the answer to that question that drove me to Leave?  yes.  i have learned a Lot.  and i am softly deeply Glad.  i learned at least that Where you live matters in a certain way.  but most of all, How you spend your days, the days of your life is most important.   but…that's almost beside the point.  What interests me most in this moment TODAY is how it happens.  because seeing by writing about this, that the process was pretty much internal, subconscious processing,  is now freeing me from concern.  in the course of writing this down, i saw how almost impulsive everything APPEARED.  how SUDDEN it might appear.  but really,  the seed settled, layed quiet, still, in darkness.  softened, cracked, sent the oh so vulnerable initiating  filament…testing.  can it support life?  yes/no?  if so, then, GO.  

and it brings me back to that day a couple years ago when daughter and i had time on our hands in Albuquerque.  we'd taken her dogs to a Free Spay Clinic.  had to wait till late in the day to pick them up.  so, we went to the Art Museum.  and then having still more time, sprawled on the grass of the park across the way.  free association day.  and she talked about wanting to live near her grandson, be a part of his life.  this would be in California.  and then she went on.  about how GOING would feel to her.  How LEAVING me here would feel to her.  small sentences.  quiet thoughts.  just thinking outloud.  and i heard myself saying ….i actually heard myself saying… OK.

i will defer.  i have done what i needed to do.  and even tho it has brought me to a moment where the Love of it is HUGE, …ok…i will defer.  ok.  i'll 

go.

and that brought a lot of Stuff over the next months.  and She Went.  and it didn't work, so she Came Back.  But Going is still in her mind.  

So, i have had a reprieve.

and although Julie didn't mean it to be this at all,  it has been quite Great.

Will it be a Leaving?

or a Went?

or, even a

Staying?

 

 

 

 

unplanned, today was a very regular day.  a day probably that people have a lot.  a day that i don't have much anymore.  

a little of this, a little of that.

i needed eggs.  Cannot eat store eggs anymore for whatever reason.  but i can't.  so.  needed to rise Early, and GO to the Farmer's Market.   it begins selling at 8am and all the eggs are gone by 8:05 max.  there are about 5 people who sell eggs.  All of them.  gone.  in 5 minutes.  so i'd planned to be there by 7:30.  Standing in front of where i know my favorite Egg Guy sets up.  i'd be first in line.  then i'd go see Alz B and feed her breakfast.  then go get Goat Pellets.  then go drop off a jar of  the Mango Chutney and some cucumber seed to Peggy who i used to work for but quit, who broke her hip and is 88 and her cucumbers bit the dust as mine have, so we are going to try to squeeze in another crop still but she had no seeds left and i did.  that was the Plan.  be back home before noon.

but it RAINED last night.  here is standing water along the fence.  there used to be great narrow PONDS of standing water in the road, but with the skill of the roadgrader, not so much any more.  but enough for the

SPADE FOOT TOADS

the spade foot toads.  they live underground at least 12 months a year.   they RISE up during Monsoon Season, one night, maybe two and mate.  eggs are left in these puddles of standing water and if it stands long enough,

tadpoles

their tadpoles are glorious.  copper and bronze glinting fat and wiggling in the palm of the hand.  birds come and snap them up but some, it seems, survive.  Every year recently, i wait for that night when suddenly their love songs fill and i mean FILL the air…LOUD.  Everything is startled by it.  the horses in the neighboring pasture run and whinney shrill whistles.  the dogs stand all night, looking at the door.  Tazmeena the cat sits in the window and stares.  and last night, the Goats…. the Goats stood in the rain crying softly.  last year the majority were over in the other pen where the Albatros is and they went inside where it stays dry.  and they probably stood inside there, but i couldn't see them and they weren't wet so they were quiet.  This year, so much RAIN and they were wet.  the straw in the new manger Out in the Way Back, soggy.  no dry place.  and the

SOUND

so it was a long dark time.  i got up at 2 am and made coffee.  went out with a cup and sat on the Way Back Porch steps with them,  listening, looking into the dark where you can't see them, can't see that they are really kindof small.  the sound of them imagines very very Large Things.

so i was late this morning and when i finally got back, had things to do to try to help them be a little dry tonight that took a long time.  but i then stitched in this corner of the Lizard cloth.  and stitched in a different way than ever before.  letting such small details of the scrap direct the stitch????  it was good.

 

 

 

and this is why i can't spend…spend…time writing.  because it Takes time.  it Takes time that i want to be stitching.  the writing…well….it is what it is but i need to leave that to others who love it.  who love it like i love making cloths.  so…aside from the writing, the reading about the writing, the thinking about what others wrote, this is what i have at the end of the day

 

how amazing.  the Young Mimosa is going to bloom.  the Mother Mimosa that was severely damaged but lived from the Winter a couple years ago has NO blooms.  She continues.  but no blooms.  this young one…YES!  which tells me i still know almost Nothing about the lives of the Plant People.  and as dusk comes so does a Storm…and it feels like a day just disappeared.

 

i feel like i want to kind of get these details over with.  what has become interesting to me in doing this is that i am curious what i see as the big picture of it all, from this vantage point.  so…i'll do this and then read back over it, see what i think.

 

my beloved Fern.  many many miles.  i had left the Airstream with some people in Arizona.  by this time, pretty much all the money from the sale of the house was gone.   i  went up near Santa Fe, to Cerrillos actually, Madrid.   worked for a woman who owned  Tapestry Gallery.  also part of my pay was to ride with her a couple times a week.  i hadn't been on a horse in years but i rode.  oh, did i ride.  she had arabs and we would run the dry river bed of the Galesteo River at break neck speed.  this might be one of the most totally amazing things i found self doing.  i never fell off.  and i took my "dolls" to the Opera Flea Market north of Santa Fe.   i don't remember exact things about any of this whole  thing, just have these moments that are representative of certain parts like photographs that are in a memory album.  they are clear.  but a lot of details are forgotten.  actually were forgotten when they happened.  they didn't seem important.  but for some reason i left and came down to Albuquerque where i stayed in a household of several people.  Large house in South Valley, beautiful really.  i rented a room.  this is where i got Ebie

 

this is where she stayed there…with some horses and a pig.  the sign…half of the message i'd seen many times on the side of a building in Detroit when i'd lived there in my early 20's…the size of a billboard.  it said: " if you lived here, you'd be home now".

So…it's some months since i left the Second time and my daughter called.  She's Coming.  and she did.   the house wasn't it for 2 very young kids so we moved together, and Ebie some distance south.   somewhere along the line here, a friend brought the Airstream back from Arizona for me and after a while i moved again and again and i think again.  this was one of the places.  El Cerro Mission.

 

i shared caring for the kids when daughter was working and going to school.  the three of us, me and the kids lived equally in the Airstream and outside under some pinion trees where we built a little world of rocks.  outhouse.  no electricity.  for a while we had a spotted burro, Jack.  the kids rode him around.  but as it always happened, just when you get a Place right,  you have to move.  the land is sold or the people want to move there themselves having seen how really wonderful it is.  So i moved to the last place, just before Polvadera.  because of needing to be in touch for the kids,  i even paid the phone company to install a phone pole, run phone line.  i fenced it for the dogs.  started to get settled in and again.  the people decided to build there.  ok.  and i had "taken up" with the person i married.    he was living with me.  and the property was sold again.  we had a month to move.  i looked everywhere and couldn't find a place to go…where i could live in the Airstream, take the dogs, that had Open Space around it  until a friend suggested talking to an old man she bought her house from.  Sy Cisneros.  an old land grant family.  owned tons of land and developed some.  phone call.  meet at a freeway xit,  look,    an acre with an electric pole and a septic tank set.  at that time there was no one else living close.   just Space.  he didn't even ask our last names.  meet him at the …. what do you call it"….i can't remember the word…but the official place in town…Socorro Abstract?…something like that, meet him the following Monday.  sign the papers.  $500 down, $128 a month.  shake hands.  mano a mano.  we did.  

there was nothing here.  for a long time, years, i would bring rocks home.  i decorated the sand with rocks.   we had 6 months to move in a "proper" trailer according to the land covenent.

but at first, the airstream, the "asylum" and Fern.   Polvadera is Spanish for Nothing But Dust.  

and now comes the tricky part.   i guess what i really want to say here is that he taught me how to make a life with Nothing.   how to live with what you could find around you.  how to Make Do.  and in an epic way.   i was totally absorbed in it all.  and slowly there came to be a Place.  with Stuff.

and Deb Lacativa…i planted zinnias,       hollyhocks and a tree.  he built me a gate.  there was a clothesline.  then more stuff.

he could fix anything.  i bought this Bluebird school bus above.  it had inset twinkle lights around the windshield. and along the rim of the sides at the roof.  a Fiesta.   the guy i bought it from was from Oregon.  the plan was to fix it up and use it as a mobile art gallery.  and quite quickly the acre filled up with vehicles that had Potential.  and…of course, junk tires.    Stuff.   i borrowed the money for the "proper" trailer i found from a woman i worked for taking care of her son with ALS. doing the home care in exchange for payments.  when it first came here, after my living in the airstream for 4 or 5 years,  it felt HUGE.  and really, in comparison, it was.  i made furniture out of those bananna boxes i'd moved from Michigan with.    What else should i say here.

How long was it.  i guess maybe 4 years?  it might have been only 3, but …i was totally completely happy.  we drove the little toyota all over New Mexico.  we slept outside on the earth.  camping didn't include a tent.  he laughed at me.  sky was good enough.  and it was.  we were great working partners.  building partners.  cooking partners.  living partners.  he was right.  i had never allowed a man to be a partner, a real partner before.  even when i was married to my kids dad.   so it

GLOWED.

until it began not to.  and i don't want to say a lot about this right now.  and maybe i won't really at all.  but it all began to crumble.  EXCEPT FOR THE PLACE.   the earth here, the bushes, the trees, the gardens.  they would change, but GREW.  and over the next however many years,  his love of drugs made him sick.  sicker and sicker.  and about 3 years? maybe two? before he died, they, the doctors said he would.  they gave that time frame.  i think they said 2.  he stretched out to be 3.  and he finally died.  and here i was.  am.  

daughter lived about 70 miles north.  she went back to Michigan with the kids for a while.  got married, moved back to about 70 miles north.  the kids grew up.  and about 4 years ago, she got 2 goats to eat the weeds on her land here.  and it all began for her.  as her marriage fell apart, she became more and more immersed in Goats, in the dream of creating a real dairy herd.  and she began to do that.  i'd listen to her for hours talking about it all.  i'd go there every few weeks and help.   but then awhile ago it became clear that she needed to leave her marriage and she  and the Goats went to California where her daughter and grandson were with the Intention of continuing her Dream there.  she had transferred in her job but it all fell through and we brought her and these Goats back.   I can't tell more of that story, it's not mine, but hers.  so i can just tell it from a year ago spring.  when the Goats got here.   She's working two jobs and in Graduate school.  the intention at the moment is when she's finished with graduate school, she will again Set Out for California.  She'll take the Goats.  Try again.  that might be in a year ?  

so.  there we have it.  About How grace Ended Up in Polvadera With Goats.   now i'm going to read it all over and see what i think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so…i arrived at my friend Janes.  my friend from when i was seventeen years old,  my friend Jane who felt most like family to me.  she lived on 45 acres in Cheshire Oregon.  it slanted upward, gently from her home.  beautiful land.  and the thought was that i would build a Yurt there, in the Far Back of those acres.

but soon, after i arrived, her husband, a firefighter, a HotShot, told her he wanted a divorce.  so…not my own unforseen, but hers

and i needed to find something different.  i bought the Avion, which is a People's version of an Airstream.  and took it to a mountain, a little over a half way up, in Horton Oregon.  no electricity. no running water except for a mountain stream.  it was a wonderland.  i went to the Artists Market in Eugene on the weekends and set up my booth there,  selling the fiber figures i made all week.  and the drizzle.  the drizzle, wore me FLAT.  then the two maybe, stellar months of the most perfect place in the world, and then the drizzle.  the fog.  the mud.  and at the Market i met some people who owned land in Snowflake Arizona.  ok.  and i went there.  

they had inherited the land.  there were two houses.  no one had lived in them for years.  full of stuff.  in the morning i would be awakened by HUGE cattle rubbing themselves on the side of the little Airstream to itch…and i think as i write this, just like the Goats do….!  and i would sit on the roof of one of the homes there every morning and watch the coyotes run rabbits.  watch the life and death.  the kill.  listen to it.  on the roof of the house.  the people said i could live there forever.  they had no use for desert anymore.  and all it took really, was hauling water.  no water.  and i walked the arroyos endlessly and found that gasket thing that hangs today in the ROOM in one of those arroyos.  and i sat.  LONG hours under scrub trees and called my daughter from the pay phone at the laundromat in Snowflake.    after a while, one of those conversations:  she had had a second baby.  could i come back?  she wanted to go to the junior college there.  could i come?

i remember driving back.  it was i guess in the fall.  because it was hunting season.  deer would flee across the "blue highways" i drove…suddenly, lunging out.  deer in headlights.  it's an expression that might have fit all of us at that time.  so…

for a while i stayed with her.  i shared my granddaughter's room.  she had a bunk bed.  i got the top.

it didn't work out all that great and i think i lived in 4 different places.  that didn't work out all that great.  They say you can never go home again.   and i couldn't.  so after almost a year, i LEFT again.

 

 

 

 

the fence around the Oasis in the Way Back is ify.  it was hard for me to put a fence there in the first place, but there was really, no choice.  Goats will be Goats.  and if there is time on their hooves they will chew on things.  so they had dented in the fence and eaten a side of the remaining Russian Olive.   i'd talked to the young man who feeds the horses in the pasture over about coming to pound in some xtra metal Tposts for the sag.  but he never came.  hence, the half eaten tree.  so i ran the hose to mud up the  sand and this morning,

climbed on the little ladder, afixed the post pounder and pounded.  Voila.  post in.  i think it will be ok??  deep enough???  we'll see.  This is a good example of what i mean when i say i was thinking about "retiring" from certain things a year or two ago.  just gracefully becoming old, a wimp, really.  it was ok and maybe even deserved.  however.  stuff still needs to get done.  and who but me is here?  no one.  me.  so, ok.  i'm short.  daughter refers to me as a pocket sized person.  i find that kinda…hmmm…well…i wouldn't describe myself that way…  But i'm not big.

so…after this i notice that there are some weeds growing in the Oasis that i don't want to reseed and i am in there, pulling them, when           the Thing in my Brain,  NOT my mind, but my Brain begins flashing warning:  STOP.    this happens when i am doing things with my hands…it happens when i am about to put my hand into a place in wet earth where a Child of the Earth is, it happens when i am about to put my hand onto an unsuspecting and innocent toad in a harsh way.  like that.  so, the warning went off.  i stopped and scanned.

there.  there in the pulled weeds.  so beautiful and FINE and EXQUISITE AND MAGNIFICANT a young Praying Mantis

i was electrified…Please, Please Wait…i sent thoughts and ran into the house for the camera

be sure to click twice to enlarge.

and THIS.  This is the kiss on the forehead.  that electrical moment of stopping,  seeing this most elegant being and then, h/ir waiting.  waiting till i came back and posing for the camera so that everything is there…to see…all his or her stuff…

 

 

 

 

 

 

so…we will take the first pic.

 

so.  this would be 1989?  i think?  or so, give or take?  how old was i then?????   math is like glass shards in my head.  43?  could it be?   someone correct me if i'm wrong.  i'm 67 now.

so  here i am.  in Debs Minnesota.  on my brother's farm where my mother then had come to live.  i had Set Out from Ann Arbor Michigan and went there first to say adios to my mother, mostly.  but them too.   and that was the first time i said what i will never say again.  a "for sure" thing.  a promise, really.  she kept saying "Why are you doing this?"  i said,  "i'll come back if you need me".

and who decides  the nature of need?, this  becoming  the question over the years.  i went back once.  for her 90th birthday.  i did not go back when she died.   i don't know if that matters.  still.  

so..what WAS i doing?   i left these things:  a job of 17 years on the acute admitting ward of the Adult Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Michigan.  a year old  part ownership of a New Age bookstore,  a newly blossoming career of Art Therapy with spinal cord injured men.  and MORE, an almost 14 year old son and an almost  18 year old daughter with a one year old daughter herself.  

What was i doing?

I had a dream.  it was one of the "Narrator Dreams" where i would dream and then just before waking,  a "Narrator" would pull it all together and give me a One Liner.   this one was……………. "Your Life is a Kind and Loving Nightmare".  no need to detail the dream other than as these words were "spoken",  i was about to open a black lacquered box that was in front of me on a pedestal.

so, this.  and a woman who i had studied Tarot with,  very casually almost,  said to me…." is it possible that you have fulfilled your karmic obligation?"

i'm trying to make myself slow down with this telling.  there is an urge to hurry through it.  i've thought about it so many times.  so many times.  but….i am going to try to go slow.  see if there's something i might have missed.

so.  for over a year,  i had these loooooong draining conversations with the kids.  i repeated.  over and over and over what my "bottom line" was with them.    Which was…go to school.  simple.  Not.  Having brought them up to question everything,  they both were adept at it.  and really, they didn't believe me…that i would leave.  that they could rely on their Dad from then on.  

But i did.  The house was sold even before it went on the market.  the cats given away.  i left a lot of stuff just IN the house and told everyone i knew to come by and take anything they wanted.  and i packed several bananna boxes from the grocery store with cloth, with threads, beads, drawing paper, colored pencils, graphite pencils, pink pearl  erasers, kneadable erasers, books, books, books, and my sewing machine.  and left.  i left in my beloved 197o Ford Econoline, Fern.  and i drove and cried.  cried and drove.  and drove and cried and cried and drove.  all the way to Oregon.

what was driving me nuts was the Question….

What was the Basic Equation?  the MOST basic equation?

?????=a good Life  

 

 

 

 

just going to put these here this morning  and then see how the day unfolds.  supposed to be a big Storm day…so, just in case.

 

 

 

about What Ifing a white shirt…into something that just barely covers.  how i was sure i didn't have anything to work with, even if i might decide i would and how all of a sudden, i remembered.  and was so surprised i didn't dust the mirror or even comb my hair…..

MORE later

 

InBetween Storms:

i did it.  there were 3 sacks of 4 Mangos each.  on sale, a dollar a sack.  not all were good.  but here it is.  5 pints all processed and sealed for eternity, 5 little PINGs  as they came out of the canning bath…i love that.  PING!  such a sweet sound.  and then 3/4 of a quart jar to use now.  i ate a lot of it…taste test…and what i know is that a lot of my spices are old, dull.  need to renew before much more Indian Cooking.  ok.