windthread

so…it's all invisible basted enough to hold its place.

and…can you see the "aura" arcing over the top?….

right now it's just three rows.  stand just some distance away, it's really not visible.  OR maybe it's just that it's that time of day on the wall?  how much more i will stitch this aura i don't know.  AND, will i continue with the same color thread?  OR change it?

and as i stitch, i think about what seeds look like.  how can i represent seeds?  because what keeps repeating is that this might be what a garden's Dream looks like.  some kind of Science.  some kind of Physics. 

so.  here we are.  and it's not at all that i didn't like the First Way, really, but that it didn't seem to be able to Breathe.  ok. 

and today, i "see" a large circle of stitch.  i printed it out and used the top of the small sauce pan for the circle on the pic.  and then….,  Mind said…make lizards and birds on that circle.  and i drew them on with pencil.  nice.  but as the day went along,  ……, No.  Wait, stuff says.  ok.  and i am roasting green chilis for the green chili stew.  there are a few ways to do that but tonight i choose the easy way.  and as i am scraping off their skins, feeling impatient, suddenly i remember something. 

I remember being in Oregon.  not so long after i had bailed on my previous life, looking for something that Made More Sense.  and i am remembering, clear as a bell, driving over the mountain pass from where i lived to where i worked 3 days a week at a residence for elderly persons.  i have NO memory of how i found that job, got that job.  but i did.  and i drove maybe 50 miles?, maybe more, i really don't know.,  through a mountain pass on Forest roads that only had numbers and i would have to memorize the terraine, memorize the shape of a very certain rock to know where to turn.  and often i would have to stop at some point and put snow chains on the tires. and i remember how i sometimes didn't know then What On Earth i was Doing????? and would feel so Lost.  and then i remembered how i dealt with that.  i would describe to myself, Out Loud, exactly everything i was doing.  Details.  like:  i am driving soon past where all the sheep are.  they are on the left in that pasture and when i get to the second post, i will honk my horn and they will startle and RUUUUUUUUN.  for just a minute.  then stop.  suddenly.  and begin to graze.  then, there will be the two trees that make a V.  turn.  and then go.  over the mountain.  to the house where you work.  where all the people are waiting for you.  and make some money so you can pay Sandy for your place on the mountain, buy gas.  eat.  feed Lucy and UnaMoon. 

tonight, i remembered that.  because i was feeling impatient at peeling the chilis.  it didn't come in small details but as a Large Remembering.  that said…"when you don't know.  or, are impatient", tell yourself aloud what you are Doing, and Why you are Doing it. 

and it worked.  i peeled the chilis and made the stew.  i washed all the dishes and put everything away.  i made the fire.  i am writing this.  all this this evening so i can begin anew in the morning.  with nothing left over from today.  begin anew.  because stuff has begun to Circle Around and i want to be ready.

 

 

 

 

 

 

this morning:

this afternoon:

and this is on the wall.   it's been collecting scraps for a while now.  and calling my attention.  to me, it's a place where Unforseens hang out before they show up here.  my thoughts are very much with this one.  i will need to do something i've never done before, need to minimize the use of the ground cloth if i can.  it's the only piece of it and so…that word….precious.  maybe it's time to deal with Precious.  wouldn't you know.

and then….look!  maybe it's like that movie Field of Dreams…build it and he will come.  but here, stitch/pin it and they will come. 

fed X.  and only 2 days since i ordered them!  and then…..

the WIND is blowing so hard today….went to check on Buckwheat and he actually stood Still so i could take this pic of him.  a First.

so…two really good Unforseens.  

 

this has been on the wall for years.  since Jude's Cloth 2 Cloth.  i've looked long enough.

it's going to be taken apart.  how much?  i don't know.  what will happen next?  i don't know.

see the little box stitched there?  i'll miss that.  but…..

~

went out to feed Goats and my gaze was caught by a Shape.  i'd been trimming and raking yesterday and in the raked pile was this branch.   how perfect it is in the Alz B vase that nothing else was "right" in.   a beauty Full Unforseen.

 

it's been some days.  since th e 26th of January and really before that i have been thinking so much about how i use that expression "barring the unforseen, ".   And i'd been thinking a lot about it because it seemed that the scale was weighing heavy on the side of the Unforseen recently.  more than usual.  so it started me really thinking about what i mean by that.  The Unforseen.  and how i say:  Barring it.  WHAT??? and then the days of Wind came and the Unforseen was everywhere.  and then, i went up the mountain to Janet's house.  all empty now.  all     Left Behind.  and i thought more about how this should not have been unforseen.  It was a day she could have imagined coming.  she never would have acknowledged that because of the kind of woman she is.  but in her own quiet moments,  i think she saw it coming very clearly.  and what did she DO?,  she loaded everything up and LEFT.   the things she couldn't squeeze in the moving van,  she abandoned.  i think, not without some grief.  she loved her life.  her Stuff.  a lot.  in a really beautiful way.  and i said before that Janet had been my Heroine all the time i knew her.  even before the Unforseen caught her unaware and she had to find a new life.  She just took a breath and Did it.  and became a Master of Just Going.  i think she was 60 something then.  like i am now.  and she created yet again a Home for herself and her animals.  She learned how to live as a single woman with limited means.  She spun her wool and wove her masterpieces, toward the end, teaching herself to use local plants to dye.  I could write a book about Janet.  but what is important to me in the moment is that when her unforseen was so visible and present in her life, she just left.  she just moved on.  i think she is not looking back.  i'll find out.  but she above all, lived her live so FULL y and with such Determination.  and when that wasn't working anymore,  she moved on.  Just Going Janet.

so…where am i going with this????  i'm really not sure.  we'll find out as i write it.  ok. 

i am going to Partner UP with the Unforseen.  I am going to deliberately make a relationship with it.  Take its hand and Just Go.  Partner up.  i will no longer think in terms of barring it.  and i got this far the other day…i guess a couple days ago and i had a phone conversation with Dee, Dee Mallon.  I'd wanted to call her and speak directly to clarify something i'd said over in Spirit Diaries Forum.  and i listened to myself talking.  she is good at asking questions and i heard myself answering them.  and later,  i thought about my life, how, really, it has always been In Response to the Unforseen but i just never acknowledged that. 

a while back, my granddaughter mentioned that she couldn't get a book she wanted on Kindle.  i ordered it for her and it arrived  2 days ago.  on an otherwise blank page, two things:

Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, "What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?"  Bodhidarma said, "Empty, without holiness."  The emperor said, "Who is facing me?" Bodhidharma replied, "I don't know."     …………..The Blue Cliff Record

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.    …………Marcel Proust

and i thought how a thread of conversation with her appears today, having fragments of thoughts, scraps of thoughts with threads connected and dangling.  how so much, i can see more and more clearly how cloth making to me is no different than living a life.

and i woke to some level of consciousness the other night, night before last to be exact, having dreamed something that brought back the scene with my father, when i was in probably 10th grade.  and i won't tell the details, but i was in a moment of Just Going with my 14 yo self and my father looked at me and said: "Who do you think You are?"  and stopped me dead in my tracks.  i can feel the sting of that moment as clear today as it was in that moment.  and i think my life has been looking for that answer.   and when i awoke to a level of semi consciousness, what i call the Narrator [ which has occured at a few times in my life when i especially needed clarity, a kind of Voice,  that gives  Meaning that i am unable to see myself]  said:

you are a Dharma Bum.

……………and i sat on the edge of the bed and cried.  no tears, no sound, but that very internal crying and i thought YES!!!!  i am!!!!!!  a Dharma Bum of Just Going. 

and i feel really really good today.  like, Really Really good.

stitching on the crows, i accidently stitched through the cloth that is backing.  but….HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THIS?  i want to make a whole cloth of just black thread.

and, here, Finally, because of so much Unforseen in the past few days,

i did it.  this morning.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there is no pic here.  it's too Windy.   there is conversation about Wind, here and there.  right now, the Reality of Wind.  Harsh.  Insistent. Cold.  Throwing sand everywhere, in our eyes, making them tear.  in our ears, making them ache.  Wind.  a harsh wind.  i waited, hoping Wind would quiet, but it didn't. and the Goats had been IN Wind, all day.  lying low to the ground where the experience of  Wind is less.  but now, late in the day,  they mill around, not quite knowing what to do with themselves, no place being comfort~able.  and to go Inside before dark is alien to them.  so, i go out to feed, clutching the grass hay flakes to my chest to prevent Wind from taking them and sailing them into shreads before i get to the Goat bowls.  no easy thing.  and i dump the water bowls because there is a film of sand and scrap across the water.  fill with fresh but as i fill i watch the same repeating. 

today i work at the Old Cowboy's.  cleaning his house, emptying his buckets of spit from his "chew". discussing his new flat screen TV and how postage has gone up YET AGAIN, one penny.  he keeps his home at about 80 degrees.  and then, i go to the grocery store before home.  Both these places are out of the WIND.  home again and this tin box is COLD.  and i start a fire and wait, as above, already said, wait a while.  hoping Wind will decide to rest.  go back into the mountains.  quiet.  Not.  and accuweather does not mention wind tomorrow.  or the next day.  so tomorrow i will go shovel the little round balls of goat poop into the wheel barrow i think.  hang around with them.  We will all be glad that things are Easier and mill about with each other and make sounds.  and  then, maybe Thursday i will go steal those chairs.

 

 

 

an outside No Freeze apparatus for Goat water.  one in front, one in back.  this required that all the water lines under the house be dug up and reconfigured/replaced.

almost finished. 

those two words are really what's on my mind today.  but i haven't showed you yesterday yet.  and it was yesterday that allowed the Unforseen to rise to the forefront today.  so, yesterday:

the herb garden

watering inside the tree nest she had created

her house.  to me, the most beautiful house in the world ever.

her bedroom

the cheetah in the fireplace

her daughter, Clellan's (who lives in Spain) chair.

kitchen cabinets

i love this house.  i have posted pics of it before.  it's a very old adobe in Magdalena that has slowly slowly been design mended to be so totally and completely uniquely the home of my friend….who does not live there now.  only comes now and again to water the yard she has so equally Care~fully created.  being here with her is a real gift.

from here we went over so i could meet Ann, the other goat woman.  they live a few miles out of town.

she has two does…Nubian… and one buck.  both does are due to kid in April.  This meeting will need to be it's own post.  but it was very very great.  full of promise.  and then on the way back, we stopped at my other friend Janet's house.  Janet was in her late 70's and decided to go back from whence she came…Minnesota.  her home is empty now.  for sale.  cheap.

Janet's back barn where she loved and cared for a small herd of mohair goats.  almost every year at the New Mexico State Fair, she won the blue ribbon for her wool.

back of  her house and my friend Fancher.  this depicts something that has always interested me. what we see here is dried weeds.  Friend Janet has been gone only a year.  prior to that she had all manner of plants, bulbs, little vegetable garden areas throughout.  for all practical purposes, the land has forgotten all that and given itself over to weeds.  hmmmm.

she built this pond.  it had fish and lily pads

one of the rain barrels.  about 3ft tall

a small house, behind her neighbor's house.  a mother in law house.  very common here.

and what might land me in jail.  there are two of these aluminum beauties.  left behind back by her barn.  i want them.  like, really WANT them.  she is gone and maybe uncontactable.  do i just drive my truck up there and take the chance????  it's theft, in a certain way, but in some other way, hmm.