windthread

ahead of myself, beside my self, over and behind my self.  slowing down.  breathing.  

maybe it was because i was so sick?  and then miraculously wasn't anymore?  but i got all carried away by Jude's beautiful spare room and almost began dismantling the book shelves.  but then, overnight, reason prevailed.  it might be a wonderful experiment, i can see that.  but now is NOT the time.  the Goats will kid soon.  i need all the time i have to be ready.

today and yesterday were the work away from home days.  and today was way more than imagined.  Alz B was NOT good.   i arrived as the decision to change her catheter was being made. Yes.  do it.  and we did.  what should be urine was like pancake batter.  really.  it was worse than i have ever seen.  worse than i would have ever imagined.  THAT finally done,  Ann the Bath Lady from Hospice and i bathed her.  we washed her hair.  we washed her whole self, using the wash cloth to stimulate her skin.  we lotioned her, we balmed her lips.  all the while, she was "unavailable" except now and then, during the catheter change and i would say…Squeeze!!!, Squeeze my hand!! and there would be a weak response, but yes, a slight squeeze.  there's more to this but this much is enough.  Then it was the Old Cowboy who i had called ahead of time to find out what he needed from the store and when i got there he said he didn't think and really needed 3 more things.  i'd already gone to the store.   wha.

but then home.   5 days ahead.  they should be "mine".  we'll see.

and while i was almost foaming at the mouth in delerium about getting RID of all my books and shelves, i wondered what i would do then with my clock

 

and in these two days away the Chatalpa, which is a hybrid of Desert Willow and Catalpa has begun blooming.  it was almost done in by that Horrible Hard Winter but not and is blooming.  this time as a bush.  i will give up on the tree idea.

and so you know a little more about me, about how i am, this has been just outside the front porch since that day of rain.  it soaked the wet just inside the front door on the floor and i had hung it on the railing.  Wind blew it off and i have passed it, i don't know how many times, thinking PICK IT UP! but i haven't.

 

OH!!!!! AND ABOUT COMMENTING….  typepad helped me …. i think i know now how to check for lost comments and i will, every day.  i found many…many great comments in their spam folder. and hopefully have released them to the post they belong to.    They, typepad, are doing their best to make a new plan but in the meantime, i'll look, every day.  so…if you don't see your words, check again…hopefully i can free them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but…in this space, before i set out.  About that huge dead Russian Olive out back.  people say they don't understand why i don't cut it down.  it's been dead for maybe i don't know, maybe 8 years?  for a while, new shoots came up from the bottom but the Goats took care of that.  but i was sitting here staring at nothing this morning and just listening.  Boat-tail grackles.  they just "come by" sometimes.  no regularity.  go look and there are 3.  two interacting…..great displays of sound and feather. Posturing.  the dead tree is perfect for watching.

 

and since i have the camera in hand, i once again photograph my house

one end clear to the other.  this is    it.  no more, no less.

 

Later………………

 

 

i LOVE…like in huge NEON ,  LOVE…see the word in HUGE PULSING NEON…love waiting for cloth.  love feeling like nothing was going to happen, nothing, and then Suddenly…….

Wind had come in the window and blown her head off and her body was dangling and i went to repin those and what was down behind the basket but that little blue orb from …when???? and how the ripped cloth got pinned back so it was like an arm and putting the little blue orb there…

is she offering it? or receiving it?  either way,  just….eeeeee…………………..

before there could be an urge to hurry to get the book, The Woman Upstairs,  having just finished reading it…i told you i was a fast reader…i want to say that i would retract my glorious and always hopefull hope about novels.  and i admit, it's been so long since i read a novel.  so who am i to say, but don't rush out because i got all excited.  it's a wonderful novel.  she is a wonderful writer.  

but it's not about making art for me.  Bummer.

So.  O KAY.  that done for another ten or fifteen years give or take, i am going to go stitch.

Love, 

ok.  it's almost 7p.  a lot of thinking.  and i will send the book along, Julie.  anyway.  and some things just floated through the air here, of their own accord: More to "go" on.  info.  floating info.  the person to whom i was married for 10 years has been dead now for 8.   We were an extremely unlikely pair.  all we had going for us that was obvious was that we were beautiful together.  as in, pretty.  nice to look at.  

and somewhere along page 187 of the book in question,  i thought:  Why is what i Make so important to me?  because it is my Story, that has no story, really, but begins/ends/begins/ends day unto day, never complete in any way at all, but somehow it's my story and i need to tell my story to myself.  i need to.  so i Make stuff.  to show myself.

myself.  my very singular interior self.

but then,  by showing "YOU",  by showing this depiction of my interior self to You, i am asking………Can you See me?   and then over time, what i then want to ask is Can you see me enough to know me?  a little?,  some?  

and really, since the book was so much about Love,  i thought about that person i was married to.  How i was so sure that i did not want that connection.  that i'd left what i'd left and done what i'd done with the single urge to "find the basic equation" and to

make art.

but he said something to me, whenever he could see me waver.  he said

"i know you, grace"  and he would look directly at me.  "i know you."  Sometimes he would also say, "i'll be your best dream and your worst nightmare", which in fact he was, but  it was the  I know you that i wanted to see.  

and the Goats were feeling close up this evening

and here…a single bindweed.  that gets no, as in Zero, water.  kin to morning glories, it goes to sleep at night.  closes it's blooms only to open them in the morning.  i forgot to take its pic this morning.  maybe tomorrow. 

 

 

guess what's here?

no, not her.  i just wanted to put this pic here.   i'll find out later sometime, why.  my granddaughter, Alyssia.  Now 24, the mother of a 3 year old son.  how'd THAT happen…?….

this is what's here.  UPS woman, yelling at the Goats, sticking the box through the slat in the fence and whirring off in a puff of dust.  That was quick.  Nice cover photo.  and it might not be at all what i hope it is.  but what really caught me, really, was how badly i thought Terry Gross faltered with the interview.  so many things she could have asked, but seemed instead to beat around the bush so to speak.  and i thought, something here makes her uneasy.  and this was good, to me.

i'm a fast reader, especially with my still virus damaged brain,  i'll be done with it a day or two.  i ordinarily take hardbound books that i buy to the library for their shelves.  but…instantly thought:  If it's really good, why not send it Around?  to Us?  we could all write in the margins, put sticky notes, scraps of photos from magazines that relate.  ?????  whatever…………

be back later.  i am stitching the Jellyfish Bride

not a lot more needed…  and while stitching, i thought how it might be that jellyfish marry themselves….??

and look what she's wearing today…maybe i am marrying myself today too….funny what a good bout of Flu can do…..

 

 

thank you all, each single and every one of you who came to wish me well.

there were hours when  there was nothing to do by lie there and wait.  sometimes i didn't want to go all the way to the bedroom 

so i layed on the futon couch and watched the woman on the cloth that i recently bought from Patricia.  

and this late afternoon there was a shift.  i went to the store for water, toilet paper and goat pellets.  came home and watered 

i am SICK.  like, so sick.  Flu.  all last night on toilet with a bucket in my lap.  all day today sleeping except to go feed and water…which required sitting down inbetween almost every movement.

so.  Tomorrow??? 

i have gone back and tried to find Minka's comment that i'm referring to and can't and that's a BIG lesson in making notes of things.  anyway, Minka….correct me if i'm really off:  the comment was nothing huge, but a simple statement about nearing retiring and having always had people "say" she is an artist, and just now, thinking she needs to think of herself  in that way.  Minka:…right?

and it was a neon comment because that has been very much on my mind all along with this commitment to document for 365 days, and then now looking at how it's already into the 70's, this year's days and it seems like the Writing is on the Wall.

and then, she commented with the link , on Day 72,  the link to NPR Terry Gross interview with Claire Messud, the author of The Woman Upstairs. A saga of
Anger and Thwarted Ambition.    many things in that interview….but i only got so far today.  this is going to go on for a while i think.  the author is talking about "sacrificing everything for your art"…and Gross is at first interested in how the novel is "fueled by anger…"  and Messud's response is that she feels it's about "the interior life.  the relation of the interior life to exterior reality.  she goes on that "we all have interior lives that don't break the surface."  and goes on to describe her love of one of Chekhov's stories, a character who said "what is most important to me nobody knows about"  it is invisible …then has the revelation that that's true for everybod. around him also.  All of us are walking around with what is most important to us unseen.

Messud says of her protagonist that she does some art, but she doesn't think of herself as an artist.  and goes on to say "many of us set out thinking there will be a time in the future, and then suddenly we find ourselves at a moment when we have to acknowledge that the future isn't infinate.

all the above is misquoted and maybe even paraphrased a little….Please forgive that.  you can go to the interview and read it correctly.

but what has me about all this is exactly where i began.  how i was thinking 74 days ago about what a large part the "Unforseen" seemed to play in my days.  and how i wanted to understand that more, to "partner up with the Unforseen"…which means…Accepting it as just How It Is.  

but now, i'm thinking again.  Wanting to understand More.   i guess the idea was on Day l was that i might learn something and even MAKE SOME CHANGES.  but i need to see the big picture.  this above brings me closer.  

And it is a real response to Minka's words.  She is thinking of BEING an artist.  to Herself.  and i guess i want to talk about that some.  

Gross says "part of the novel is about how selfish and self-absorbed do you have to be in order to be an artist and what license does being an artist give you to be selfish and self-absorbed, because if your art comes first, what are you sacrificing for your art, other people, your relationship to them?

and then a little while later Messud says  "i don't think its ever figured out, i think it's a balance that anyone is negotiating and renegotiating throughout a life".     WHA AND ACK.

I DIDN'T WANT HER TO SAY THAT.  i didn't.  but i have ordered the book.  i am looking for some steppingstones across the river.  i "retired" going on 6 years ago.  and retired to me means something very different i think than to Minka.  but i don't want to get stuck in detail, in minutia.  it's the IDEA of it.  i thought i was going to become the me that i had been waiting for.  At that time, i was still thinking i was going to be a

writer.

write just one single book.  guess what the name of that book was?….The Care and Feeding of the Private Self.  as Jude would say…Ha.

jump to the chase.  when i realized that didn't know what that meant,  i gave it up.  there was a big Blank Space.  then, i found SpiritCloth…i began making Cloths and i DO know what that means.  to me, cloth making IS art.  and even though i have a Lot to Learn, the question is, then, do I consider myself to be an artist?  do I sacrifice for my effort to make art?  is that necessary?  can i be satisfied with compromise?, as i have been all along so far ….OR….am i at that point….of acknowledging that the future is Very Finite….it's just around the corner.

and this is what i did today after i cleaned Allen's house:

i reconfigured a dress for Alz B.  she is inclined to take Off her shirts and that is not ok at the Old Folks Home.  so they were wondering if long dresses might make it harder to get naked.   this took a while.

and i added ONE SINGLE SCRAP to this cloth that i

love.

Day 75..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i will need to go back and copy down the original comment of a couple or few days ago that Minka left on an OLD post,  but on which she commented just the other day.  She had gone Back.  and as it goes, her train of thought  (love that image, a train of thought,) is timely.  for me.  and today, she left an additional comment on Day 72 with a link to a Fresh Air interview, NPR, Terry Gross who interviewed a woman who wrote the book The Woman Upstairs.  

ok…this is the prologue to maybe a post tomorrow.  and in the meantime, this is what i did today aside from cleaning someone else's house, going to check on Alz B in her son's absense and making a delivery of requested items to the old Cowboy.    I cleaned my purse.

the other thing i did

take a pic of the rolled sheet of copper that i unearthed yesterday.

BUT.  did i sew?  

No.

 

in order to be Totally Impressed, you would need to compare these two pics with the ones from yesterday.  Otherwise, it still doesn't look "lovely" at all.  But in reality, this is 3 constant hours of sorting,  and dusting away inches of the earth that Wind set on the shelves.    and on everything ON the shelves.  i sorted screws, nails, bolts, washers etc etc etc out of that dust and into dusty jars.  but at least now, they are not all just in heaps.  

behind the first pic is the small place where the new kids will spend the nights.  in it still is the  fold up metal bed frame, the Fan, and two garbage cans with alfalfa scraps.  these need consideration for place during the next few months.  i think the alfalfa will just be added to the Giant Great Compost bed.  turned under.  The wooden shelf on the left is really quite nice.  again, Dusty, but nice.  i think i'll see if Marti wants it for her new garage in Albuquerque.    it's a great shelf.  but the truth is, the more shelves i have, the more shelves i FILL.  working toward a Spartan environment out there, this one can Go.

and here is everything that can GO.  like , AWAY.  some is for the Thrift Shop, some the dump.  in the next day or two i'll load it all in Sunny and deliver it.

FOR ALL OF US,  who are mothers, have a mother, have had a mother, will mother, want to mother,  are worn out of mothering, ad infinitum, ….a Wild Rose Bud,  incorrigable, wildly beautyfull and well…what it is.    After a few years of feeling very Mother~y  this year i am back to feeling just my Self.  Both are good.  So to all of Us, Happy Mother's day and Happy Self day.

Love, me