windthread

early this morning

an almost Bloom in the garden of the Child Buddha

Mercy has taken up lying on the little back porch, against the door.  the door from the Room.  Mercy is the one most "self attached" to me.  i am hers.

the bustier that Julie sent from Dead Horse Bay…now pinned to the damask cloth, pinned to the West Curtain.  How Beauty Full is THIS???????????????

and the altar cloth.   truly a Solstice cloth, i think.  

i was feeling kind of crazy.  i am concerned that i made a mistake…..seperating the does.  Moving the most of them…leaving the two mothers back.  i got lost in the potential error of it.  and went over and over and over all the reasons why.  at one point in the day there was a sense of not knowing what was really Real about it all.  me knowing i need to somehow Ground myself.  and i couldn't.  it's been a really long time since i have felt this sense of disconnection/confusion.  Animals are so much harder for me than People.  People you say words to.  Animals have a different form of communication.  Right?

anyway…there were hard hours.  and i stitched.  i finished the Kantha and suddenly searched for the odd threads………….put them in the Center., flowing out.  This cloth to me is about a kind of Order.  Order of seasons.  Order of Physics.  Order of the highest sense of Order .  and i breathed that in.  i needed it.

and almost as a post script, but really not at all,  i called the Vet and made an appointment tomorrow at 2pm for 3 of the baby's disbudding.  That one little red buck…his horn buds are the most prominent and he is so so so small.  i talked to nurse Cindy about it and she was ok with my changing plan.  i just told her that i am too "weak" to be a very integral part of the process.  i can't.  i feel like i should.  but i can't.  and i am now sitting with that.  with the fact that there are some things i just Cannot Bring My Self to Do.  Can't.  and looking at it….if that is OK.  or if that is uhhh, not taking responsibility.  i don't know.  but i was afraid.  ok.  i was afraid. 

i am reminded.

i am reminded of Zoe Keating….Into the Trees

you can find it on Utube.  and…….for anyone, any One at all that can't afford to get it…tell me.  i would get it FOR you.  it's the music of Just Going.

and an Old Cowboy Goat Day   with Cloth watching.

it began peace Fully enough.  Domestic Goats, Captive Goats, begin a day with quiet milling.  Peacefully.  it goes from there.

learning about what and how we Eat

What to do about Lucky Star.  she is a very Fine Goat.  a very gentle, loving Goat.  She has no need for many of the Goatly things.  What to think about her?  Now,  with this seperation, she will find an even harder passage back into the Herd.  Thinking.

The day was better.  and i remembered that daughter said things about the Three Day Rule.  Three Days and somehow, everything is ok.  is the New Normal.  so, today was day One.  and  there was a kind of acceptance.  What i am finding, with Them now in the Way Back is that they are even more a part of the Whole.  Now, out There, they are so much Closer.  This evening i found self out there sitting on the porch and just caressing whoever came.  and i found self singing.  no known tune, and just syllables , not words.  Sounds.  and as they came, to stand close and lean in, i found self singing into the bones of their skulls.  and they would stand.  so still.  with my singing going into their skulls.  sometimes their necks, too.  my mouth, not really pressing, but close to pressing against them.

Today was like when we are in Transition, in our own LABOR of childbirth.  during that part of it all, we are Sure that we would Never want to do this again.  (but that often changes).

Today was like that.  during the whole day, the undercurrent was…Only this One Time.  I Will Never Do This Again.  and really, i might not.  but then, you never know.   i had wanted to take a bunch of pics…but being Present for Them and for me and for the merging of Both, taking photographs seemed uhhhh,  frivolous.  it was Not a frivolous day.

First,  after securing all weak spots,  i moved the Herd to the Way Back.  i forgot one thing…to cover the baled feed with the tarp….so at the first moment of this, it seemed like Havock….They, having No Clue of what i had in mind, began milling.  Fortunately, Ginger listened to the furtive Come Come and came.  then dear old bitchy Snowbunny, the Matriarch and she has a collar and i hooked on to that, shaking my bucket of pellets and by some Miracle,  they Came.  and that part was done.  They ran, they startled, they climbed the new Stump.  they inspected the new Shelter.

and after a point, they were ready to go

home.

not knowing that home had changed.  that they ARE home.  now.  in the Way back.

and then, right after getting them there, i unhooked the gate of the Albatros to the World and hooked the two inside gates together for Passage

put a cement block.  now, all kids could mingle.  Lucky Star came through to the Out Side.

and then, from there, the Hard Part.  I am Not a Goat.  I don't have the genetics that inform me about survival.  Caroline, Sweet Caroline,  needed to dominate.  In thinking about it now, there is some understanding.  it's all, still, about one's offspring.  Lucky Star makes 4.  Her stakes are High.  Caroline has  just 2 but in her sense of it, the stakes are equally high.  they Worked at it.  They rose up and came down, head to head.  Over and over.  BAM  BAM.  slo mo.  they MET.  head to head and both were bleeding. all the while, the babies were all in the close side of the Albatros.  Venturing out and returning.  and i watched.  not knowing.  interfere means interfere.

i looked to the Cloth.  ?????

maybe, probably, eventually, they would have worked something out.  but

i interfered.

i gathered up Lucky Star's babies and took them across the DMZ to the Guinnea Hen Palace.

so…now.  Some re evaluation on Their Part,  Lucky Star and Caroline…and it quieted.  babies on both sides making forays into the DMZ.  some Auntie head butting, some Auntie ear nipping, but, Quieting.

 and in the Way Back, i hauled a bale of bedding straw .  spread it.  maybe they will get the Drift.  but at last look, in deep twilight, they were standing.  Standing in a cohesive Herd, at the gate.

ready to go Home.  and Home won't happen.

What will they DO?, tonight???????

no pic of this.

Suddenly, i am thinking,

How do i make a Cloth of This…of this Shift of things?  What would it Look like?  Would it include the Goats?  or, is the Shift in me.  in my understanding of Just Going?  

What would this Cloth be like????????????????????????

……………………………..~………………………….and the i realize.

the date on this pic is 4/22.  and in THIS MOMENT this cloth, this Cloth, is just to the right of me.

on the Curtain.  and i haven't looked, like Looked, like really Seen that, until this moment, 10:26pm,  June 22.  2013.   

a very quiet day.  somehow, felt like a "free" day.  i'm not sure what i mean.  but like an Extra day.

taken late, with available light.  many stitches.  kantha begun.

this loose coil of fencing with dried bindweed.  i like it a lot for some reason.

this is odd.   i don't often take pics from this direction.  maybe that's part of it,  and maybe it's just the Moon?  but when i downloaded it from the camera i had a strong deja vu.  Where?  i  don't know.  Maybe Oregon?  not at all like that, but…            Maybe a dream place.  but the feeling stays.  Strong.  and makes me want to look till i know.

Tomorrow, Early, i will begin what needs to be done to make the Big Move.  All doe Goats except for the 2 mothers will move to the Way Back where the new Shelter is.  They will stay there.  Tomorrow will be their first sleep over.   The two mothers and their six kids will have that whole front pen to themselves.   

How will this 

Work

????

What will Everyone 

Think?

Will it be OK to them?  

My daughter had a really Great Place for the Goats.   Before she took them to California and everything Didn't Work:  a TON of Unforseens.  but before that, it was really really great and she would move everyone around all the time.   So, i am reminding myself of that.  and Caroline , especially is getting stir crazy in the Albatros.  The babies are playing hard and need space, need Things to challenge them…jumping things.   i have some concerns about the two smallest of Lucky Star.  so many ways they can get themselves in trouble Out in the Big Pen, but also, so many ways to Learn.   And i'm not sure there is enough Shade to go around in the Way Back from the hours of around Noon till 2.  but there's no way to know until they are there.  

so…tomorrow.

so…the floor got fixed.  that was all day.  and the weak fencing strengthened.  Finis.

and Cindy came…had only a short time, but i showed her Everything and posed a Billion What Ifs.  it was really GRAND.  she reassured me.  she was one huge SMILE about it All.   She misses her Goats and was GLAD to be here, GLAD to be of use, GLAD to share all she learned in her Goat years.  She even LOOKS FORWARD to COMING BACK…this i could tell….so….it can't get any better than that.  She will come by again in a few days or so and is confident that the disbudding can wait.  the little martians are little.  the others are OK.  i am going to  go with her judgement.  so for now, through Solstice and through the weekend,  there will be Peace.  

and Jamie and Talulah and her friend Jora and Jora's Mother came to visit the baby Goats.  after that, a short visit, because it was still Hot and the Goat babies were panting,  Talulah and Jora took up where they had left off when they were last here together.  They are a famous restruant, like the French Laundry.  they made some kind of braised fish and well…i can't think of it all in the moment, but they made it on the grill and over on the table in the Feather Grass and presented it to their mothers.

and …WORLD….HEY!….look at this.  One mother of a lesbian couple and this "turkey baster" daughter, Talulah.   a Second Mother, Jora's mother with some kind of rare M.S.  Multiple Sclerosis, age 44.   Look.  Look Hard.  Women.  their daughters.  here…words elude.  

and then…coming in from watering, here on the cutting board, this Cricket….enjoying  Life.  this cricket.  taking it's Place.  this Cricket.  my housemate, i guess.  so…O.K.  Tomorrow, Solstice, 2013 i am going to guard with my life.  NO ONE comes through that Gate.  NO ONE, no matter what.  i will stitch on the altar cloth.  i will just Go with the scrap feed mulching of the vegetables.  i will look.  Look Closely.

Paul, the workman, the craftsman, who works for Bill, Alz.B's son, who seems to more and more maybe be some kind of brother to me???,  i think about this a lot,……and you might have read some of this thinking before.  anyway, Paul came Early this morning.  i don't know exactly what he had planned to do here, the fence reinforcment?  the plumbing thing to create grey water?  the cross over flooring over the crack where the former porch and now ROOM connects to the trailer…there is a good inch plus gap??????  anyway, i don't know what he and Bill had in mind.  but i met him at the gate saying there was a change in plan.  i wanted to "trade" the floor project for making a rain/hail shelter for the Goats in the Way Back….use the particle board for the roof instead of the house floor.  Goats First, i said.  so, Paul, being the good humored being that he is, said OK.  but YOU explain it to Bill.  so, OK.   after all,   I am the one who Lives here.  so….OK.

and this is what we did

with what we could find around here, we built this.  it is attached to the road end of the trailer.  which is  my bedroom.  it is 8ftx8ft.    big enough?  i don't know.  but it's what we had to work with.  we got the "vigas" from out in Buckwheat's yard.  that took a while.  he was very nervous to have a stranger in his space,  a male stranger.  and  Goats do assign things to human gender.  we would move things around and then need to wait until he found his "querencia",  his place to take his stand if need be, like the bull in the ring.  a couple times he just smashed his horns into things…the side of the Albatros,  once his rickety gate..which held.  his response to anxiety was interesting to watch.  not so unlike some human males.  that took a long time.  then, well, no need for all the details.  but it was not at all unlike Cloth Making.  Mending.  Mosaic applique that Jude taught me.  it was 100 degrees again with hot dry Wind gusting.  intense.  but we did it.  

Tomorrow the nurse from the Old Folks Home, Cindy comes.  She is the one who appeared out of the Blue offering, …well, no, not offering, but saying yes to me saying…HELP…with the disbudding.  so…i'll wait till after that to say much.  right now, it's only Hope.  but i wanted that shelter in the Way Back so she can Look.  so she can help me understand the logistics of what is already here and what it will become soon with the  6 additional baby Goats and what will be the On Going thing with the Milking.   SO MUCH factors in.   so many times,  one good idea is canceled out by another reality.  hard to see how it all goes together to Work.  so Tomorrow will be a Big Day.

in between all this…i gave water to Lucky Star and Caroline with the bucket.  i can't leave water in there with them….the babies are too awkward and could drown…even in a small amount.  just like our babies.  so when i took water, i would sit in the straw and touch them., the babies.  they are panting,  so i don't pick them up in the day.  just touch.  i took this one pic, but they look like little martians at the angle i am at, so i gave it up for the day.

but they are all well.  all their little bellys full and round.  all Just Going in this new world of theirs.

i am having feelings that i can't put words with right now.  after what needs to be done is done,  maybe then.  but i look at this pic above and  well…  a lot of feelings.

and the pics and the words are Off…but ….ok.  You can figure it out…what i'm trying to say.  This above is the Tomatillo.  i am watering in the dark again.  taken with the Flash.   when i was watering and looking with my eyes,  they almost looked like Poinsettas.  but without the flash there was just black.  with the flash, well………this.  They are blooming.  i LOVE growing tomatillos. just because of how they Are.

O K

we are all PRESENT.  Caroline:  1 doeling l buckling.  born in the Guinea hen Palace around 6 pm.  easy birthing, strong and precocious kids….like their elder sister, Jude's Magic from last go round.  moved to the other side of the Albatros.

bad pic, but REALLY BEAUTY FULL little buck.  REALLY REALLY FINE.

the doeling.

Caroline cleans.  she cleans and cleans and cleans her babies.  they are spotless.  it's almost exhausting to watch.  she cleans them.  she consumes every speck of birth substance.  All the placenta, all the umbilicals, all the All.  CONSUMED.

this is Caroline's Cleaning.  hours.  she cleaned without resting a second.

this is at the Gate to the House Yard.  where Ramon is now.  we gave him the new copper livestock tank float that looks like a world.  it's copper.  and we hung it on Stars and Birds.  We were going to find and put certain rocks.  tomorrow.  it's his favorite place.  in the middle of everything, so he wouldn't miss anything.  nothing at all.  ok.  and my litmus test.  a little while, the kids will drink the milk.  then, at a point, i will need to seperate them and milk their mothers.  make that cheese and maybe soap.  some will need to be sold.  this is where it all becomes very Real.  we will see if i am up to it and how much i might be up to it.  do i have the temperment?  we'll find out.