a ~whole~ day stitching. no phone calls. nothing unforseen. no STORM. just Quiet. Heat. Stitching. at the top, left…stitching "in tongues"…marks of some kind of meaning unknowable. Surprise that the Vibrations really uh, descend down to filter through that loose net and once through, seem to multiply or intensify in some way.
i think this is enough. will let it rest till tomorrow and see. but i think it's enough.
no pics. just got a call from granddaughter, again driving home from work. again, the work is in the United States Navy. from which she is supposed to be getting discharged, but the discharge papers have not been processed. it's months.
anyway.
here i am. having somewhat of a present conflict about How It All Is in the World …post before last, and her call today is to ask about Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged. she has ordered it for her kindle that her mother and i got her for a gift a year or so ago.
she is asking because she is going through a mile high pile of paper work. it's her job. she works in decision making for the Navy Reserve. and she said that for some unknown reason, a certain letter appeared a couple times at the top of the pile. it was a letter from a Navy person who was requesting a simple discharge from the Navy, from the Navy Reserve. his particular commanding officer was opposed to this and wanted a less than desirable discharge. so it was in her hands to ferry this request through HER superior who would make the decision. and why she was calling me was that in this man's request, which she said was like a many paged letter, were quotes from this book, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. she said it was a very UnOridinary letter and she didn't know about this book, this author. WHO?, she asked was this author? did i know.
HOW AMAZING IS THIS??????????????????
so…just to put this here. which is now my "journal", which should be exclusively Cloth, but then included Goats and sometimes also seems to want to include LIFE, to document this moment. She is 24 years old. Her mother and i have referred to her as The Bloom. me the root, her mom the plant, but Alyssia, the Bloom. and so it is. I told her it's not an easy book to read. will take some work. she said OK. so she and i together will read Atlas Shrugged. how amazing is that.
so today was devoted to taking the Old Cowboy to the bank, to change his pin # because he needed a new bankcard because of the Incident last week. and …oh, jeez….there is no point to telling this. but just like everything, one thing is dependant on another, so it was that, getting into his bank box going to the Department of Motor Vehicle and getting a photo ID back to the bank etc. it took all day. and today, as he had me captive, while waiting for things, he could repeat things a zillion times. i sit silently unless he pokes me and says "Savy?" and i say uh huh. and the one amusing part was the bank woman trying to get him to verbalize why he keeps an $80,000 balance in his checking account. especially in light of last weeks fiasco. this took about a half hour. she was extremely patient. i was internally going crazy. but it's done.
and i got home and checked the Goats. everyone was ok. so i worked a little on the Lizard Cloth.
WHY? do i insist on this large ish piece of a linen shirt here? i don't know. but i do.
and i'd told myself that i was going to put a more generic lizard in this cloth. but no…..it has to be one of the Whiptails that are the dominate members of this diorama. there are a couple other kinds, but it's the Whiptails that cross the path of my footsteps constantly and me theirs.
New Mexico Whiptails. more on them as the cloth goes along.
Thunder Man rumbles just in the close distance. Time to go sit with the babies so they don't forget. it's an everyday thing now. needs to be.
i accomplished small things today. raked some pulled weeds. pulled out some nails from the fence that were in bad places. Undid Barbara's scur horns from her Stuckness in the Oasis fence in the Way Back. for the rest of the day she continued sticking her head through but was able to extricate herself. i baked sweet potatoes and plantain. picked up a truck load of grass hay bales and unloaded in an orderly manner. Brushed Gideon. spent a few hours stitching vibrations. not much of anything to SHOW for any of it, but it filled the day from start to finish. and all the while, i continued thinking about All the People. about how it can possibly be. and although it is very sad, what i am really doing is trying to understand it. i think it's like things here with the Goats. SO many things factor in. and my granddaughter called. from California. on her way home from work. in the Navy. and i was telling her and she said that although she knows it's not for me, she likes to listen to Talk Shows when she's driving the almost hour to and from her work every day. and that she has listened to a lot of shows about this, many people calling in. and i asked her if she had been able to understand what might be at the core of it all, with all this listening. and she said
no. no one seems to really know. no one seems to really have an answer that feels like a real answer. so we agreed to continue thinking. She is going to be 24 soon. she's in the Thick of it.
and this is Caroline's girl. the only one of 6 that remains skittish. it takes maybe a half hour for me to walk around behind her, going this way and that until i'm able to grab her. then we sit. not so much petting, but just with her on my lap, her feet touching the ground as she needs them to. i talk to her. touch her some. wait until her breathing becomes very quiet. until i can feel her body forget it's being held. today there was some progress. she came very close and played next to me on the rocks. watching me out of the corner of her eye.
her brother on the contrary, is very interested. has lost his shyness. interested in me and interested in the Goat dress.
this is Lucky Star's life in any given moment.
and here we have the Zinnia from Georgia to New Mexico. She made it. a little off , but Here. i'll save her seeds and next year, the seeds will remember, how seeds do.
a day of Unforseen. Alz. B. When i got there, i said, kind of hanging sideways, my face close to hers, hey, Betty…it's me, grace and she got a soft, very strongly softly intense smile and looking me directly in the eye said…"grapes?" i stayed a long time. today she felt very lightly in her body. the first time i have felt that. loosened. her spirit felt loosened. mostly we held hands. i stroked her here and there. she drifted. i'll take her grapes next time.
Home and phone ringing off the hook a FEW DIFFERENT TIMES, the Old Cowboy and i won't go into detail but last week he used very bad judgement about a young man who came to his door looking for work. bad went to worse. in the beginning, i was bluntly opposed but he said i was being a bitch, and so i backed off and now we clean up the mess.
and i spent time with the quiet dear bucks. i pulled them kochia and scrubbed their water tub with pumice and raked their space. somehow TenZen, who is the most quiet and unassuming made his fur glisten in the sunlight. Glisten. he is not a really glistenie goat, but today he did. thrilled with the company, maybe? The absence of Buckwheat is Enormous out there. Realizing just how much energy he had magnetized to him Self, actually, Demanded. and i think about that. i still don't ever know how much you Give, once you begin Giving. is it the Right Thing to Give Forever? or, is it ok sometimes to say, Enough? i DO NOT KNOW the answer to this. i never have. maybe i never will. but now, i am acutely aware of that initial moment of commitment, or, really, the moment BEFORE that moment…when you know what you are on the brink of doing but haven't done quite yet. Aware. and i find self looking at one of the little bucks, one of his sons, and thinking.
and if i was still drawing, i would sharpen my colored pencils for this and spend days and days and days. to me, this is just completely elegant….
i love this. the forms, the blurs, the clarity, the color. Everything. Every Thing.
and there's a storm hesitating again, from the East. WHY? Why the East? so…will end this here with the West and go back to answer comments until the lightning makes me stop.
************** oh…i guess i have to tell the truth. the Other Thing today was that someone told me to go look at Bill Moyers…Frontline….the report of two families in Milwaukee. almost 2 hours. and i watched. and i was stunned. Where have i been? these years that this has taken place….i 've been Here, but some how insulated from understanding really, what all that news meant. the loss of jobs and then endless jobless ness. FORECLOSURE. somehow my understanding of all that was totally small in comparison to what i saw today. somehow i imagined the Foreclosures to be because people had over extended. somehow i thought that there was some excess involved on the part of people who drowned in their credit debt. How can i say this…
Life here, where i live is really so Small. so Plain for the majority. it reminds me of what my mother told me when i asked about the Depression that occured in her life. and her answer to me was that she really didn't experience anything at all. life was so spare for them, it remained so, and differed little. all she could remember as different were the men who came to the door. asking her mother for food and to sleep in the barn for the night.
so i went off to see Alz B after having watched that program, that almost 2 hours and i felt like i did not know anything at all about the world and felt disassociated from what i had thought i'd known. and i still feel that. it's lessened. but it remains. and i feel odd.
email from DeadbrokeRanch:
Buckwheat is good. Buckwheat is "Mellow"…a direct quote from an email. he is with the two young wethers (neutered bucks), Ben and Jerry. They are just fine. Their area is in the shade, against the house. She actually SAID the word MELLOW. and i thought…Buckwheat???????????? mellow????
but there it is. Who Knows???? and Here, tonight too, Mellow with his absence.
the word Trust rises up. Trust intuition. ok. and Thunder Man is rolling over the Rim so time to shut down.
am going to put this here now and then spend the rest of this evening out with the baby Goats. just sitting there, letting Them take their time in coming and going. there is a beauty Full sky all blue and with clouds. no sign in this moment of storm but that can change in a heartbeat. but this is the intention and as i write this the oh so clear and piercing call of the Meadowlark burst through.
so, here
i am very taken with this. All this time, all this learning, thinking, making, and about finding what is one's own marks, images….yesterday with the Waiting about Buckwheat, these marks that i referred to as Vibrations. and it's funny, not ha ha, that they did not come from a Thought, but, rather from a thread. Nance had sent me a skein of thread as a gift. it's from Christine Mauersberger. i knew that she was offering things like this in a shop. but i didn't pay any attention, really, thinking what i have is good enough. but, Nance sent it. so…yesterday, maybe from anxiety, i pulled a single thread free and just began. Can you see it here? kind of curved back stitched marks??? different directions? crossing through the edges of the face and into the adjoining scrap? and i just DID it some how…the first set and looked and then continued and these came to portray the Vibrations that i feel surround everything???? and when i was finished for the day i thought that i had come to some kind of Personal Symbol. Finally. after all these years.
part of it is just Going, but part also i think is the complete pleasure in using this thread. it's 70% silk and 30% cotton. it's a beautiful off white, perfectly off white. and how it goes…through the needle into the cloth and leaves a mark, but not a Line. and i am thinking about how this thread could be put into a dye pot.
So, i say: christinemauersberger.com Hank and Spool Thread #5
now, off to the Goats. Maybe, just Maybe i can get some pics.
the day began innocently enough and with something i've never seen before. the Giant Sage is filled with mating ladybugs… and i took that to be Auspicious. and then, i Waited.
i'm not good at waiting. waiting can mean that you have time to do various things until something happens. but for me, it's a kind of edgy thing. i find it hard to focus on anything but the thing that is being waited for. i got an email that they were planning to be at the first destination at noon. which would have brought them here, most likely no later than 2:00. Well, waiting took till 5pm. and trying to improve myself, i stitched. and maybe because of the waiting, maybe because of all the Not Knowing, i stitched things that just seem to come from somewhere or nowhere…i stitched vibrations. what?, yes, vibrations. and then, they got here. in the middle of the most amazing storm…lightning, Thunder, WIND and all from the East which never happens in the summer but was and through half of it there was a Rainbow, glowing glowing glowing and it took us two and a half hours to load Buckwheat . He was crazy and wild and had no idea what we wanted him to do and we had barracaded that whole end of the place with wood and fencing and wood and fencing and wood and fencing and left only the tail gate of their truck open with a pen in it, next to the new doe Marina who was calling him and he wanted to go there, but it seemed so Ify to him that he couldn't and he whirled and spun and ran and then would stop and let me feed him peanuts in the shell and his appetite was undaunted, but he, oh he….did not know what he really should DO….
and this doesn't really tell it all. it was Intense. but in the end, he was in the pen in the truck, muttering things to an entirely NEW DOE who will be his very own and although captured, not unhappy at all.
and Julie, yes. i will miss him.
i will miss him in a very particular, very certain kind of way. i am marked forever by him.
and by the time it was all said and done, i had to take this pic with the Flash. it's not True to color, but both of these, still, are very interesting….
and it's late now. the WEATHER is still happening. Still THUNDER, still WIND, still STORM. so i am going to go lay down. Sleep. if we are all still here in the morning, we will Just Go.
today was an odd day. i couldn't Place myself. anywhere, really. nothing i could put my finger on. so i went out early to water and to check how deeply my watering goes. the cucumbers are suffering. is it because i am not watering deeply enough? or is it just the sudden and then prolonged Heat? and while there, over in the garden of the Child Buddha, i hope you can see it, but a single DILL plant. how amazing. i haven't planted dill there in two and i think, three years. this seed waited. What to think of That?
and then, glancing over at the Cairn, in this crevase…Toad.
and more stitching. the Butterfly's body got put. no need to wonder now. Butterfly.
and tomorrow, Buckwheat hopefully goes off to a new home. This is the first totally independent decision i've made about the Goats. i hope it is a good one.
this is my Post Office. it's where i go when something is too big to put in the 16 box Neighborhood Box Unit that is at the end of the road. how it's done in rural areas where there is no home to home delivery. i get a little slip in the keyed box that tells me i have a package. the hours have been cut in half. sometimes it takes me a while to get there.
just inside the door
Our beauty Full new Postmistress. when they cut the hours, Debbie, our forever postmistress went to work in Reserve, NM so she could have full time hours. and now we have a new person. i forget her name. i'll find out and remember this time. i told her this morning that i'd like to put her picture here so people can see who receives their packages. you can see, at the back of the pic, bottom right, the shelf where the package waits for me. and you can see, by her face, how people ARE, here. Open. Good. Glad. sometimes her daughter comes to work with her. sometimes her daughter's friend too. they do stuff outside on the cement infront of the P.O. because it's the only place where there is cement anywhere around. once, someone brought their kids with pogo sticks because of this.
isn't she just Glowy????? her name is something like Ikea. i'll find out for sure. it's important.
