windthread

i was very dissatisfied about yesterday's Goat post.  it really didn't say much.  so, i'm thinking, Goat by goat.

This is Sunny Ray.  pic taken last month.   Son of Ginger, brother to Cinderella.  first batch born here,  April 17th.  Although we haven't sent dna info to UC Davis yet,  it's almost a sure thing he is Gideon's.   His color and also his temperament.  Loving, peaceful, engaging.  Because of these things he would make an excellent herd sire for someone.  You can see his "horns".  these are scurs, deformed continuation of growth after he was dis~budded. 

Sunny Ray got sent to live with the Big Boys the day that Snowbunny was having a very difficult labor in August.  What i have learned since then is that he dealt with his Fear by racing around the doe/kid pen displaying all instinctive buck behaviors he could imagine at 4 months.  I hadn't gotten used to those Buck things yet and found him totally intolerable and half way through the delivery,  grabbed him out and put him in with the 3 mature bucks.  Since then, he has spent his days as a Wether would there, a castrated male.  Which is as a companion to the bucks who pretty much receives all the attention that a doe would get if one was available.  All the vocalizing commands…move here, NO!, over there, no! here,  snorting and the sneeze/spitting, the constant attention.  It's taken these months, but i no longer have the same response.  They are simply being the best that they know to be.   And if he were not at the bottom of the "pecking order",  his behavior would be exactly the same to a younger buck or a wether.   He escaped castration because his testicles were too large for the ring size bands we had.  It was supposed to happen later but later didn't come.   Maybe it's karma.   But he's worth keeping whole, again…his Willingness.  That goes a long way,  goat or human.

i need to regularly take him out from the buck pen and let him experience that sweet side.  he needs to be handled,  he needs a bath.  he needs his hooves trimmed.  he needs regular and individual love to be the herd sire i hope for him.   So, this is Sunny Ray.

 

 

 

 

i was going to put words to each of these pics but it's too much.  so, just the pics.

ok.  this is one afternoon.  November 30, 2012 in the BackFront. 

What am I DOING with these goats?   Answer:  I don't know.

Acey said this to me about her experience with goats many years ago:  " They often seemed to me astonished or vexed by things I could not decipher.  They have such a mix of herd instinct and utter anarchy."

So…i milked for a while when i had to give the 9 little boys away to the world.  but just enough to ease their mothers, but also find out that i could easily get a quart of oh so GOOD milk per goat, milking only once a day.  This is a LOT.  But what i decided was more important at this time was to establish relationship with them, individually and as a herd.  So, this is what we Do.  When you want a goat to do something and make it known to them, the reaction is often " WHAAAAT????!!!!!" Screaming and running away.  and if you stand there, just stand there and wait, maybe 10 minutes, the goat will come back and say " ok, What?".  there is no immediate "obedience".  Goats are NOT obedient.  So, for me and for them, i needed to work at making the request and response as smooth as possible.  I need them to be as trusting of me as they can be.    People really make no sense to them, i think.  Food and Sex make sense.  Babies make sense.  but, all the rest?, not so much.

and then, add to the mix the fact that my daughter, to whom these Goats belong, has been incommunicado for a while.  like totally.  UN accessable.   so the other part of the I don't Know. Having returned to school full time, working full time, maybe she is having Second Thoughts?  I don't know. 

So…we live our life here waking up and having a Day and when it gets dark we go to sleep.  to wake again when SunRise turns the world coral/copper/pink glow.   What i do know is they have changed me.  Out there is Them.  in here is Cloth.  Somehow, moving back and forth between feel very very good.  But….who knows.

and last, here is the  cairn so far.  the round thing is a copper float from a livestock water tank.  Birds came the other day and ate the chrysalis.  i have planted garlic there.

 

 

the one that has been on the wall all this time…just the weaving and the scrap of wing. 

What if i somewhere put one of the little faces, the eye scraps and what if i stitch somehow to connect them, like an arc of stitches, and what if these can represent Dreaming?  whose dream? the Butterfly's?   the Face's?  maybe even the Cloth's?

What if these can be a series?

waiting till it is warm enough, till the fire catches hold.  waiting till it is light out, a little at least enough to see the stitch of the wind and i just hold the cloth…it is so

soft, light

and again, i watch what happens when i hold it to the lamplight.

just journaling these moments this morning of almost winter

so,  i began stitching a slight strand of Wind.  near the bird.   then, for whatever reason got caught up kantha-ing the entire piece of Sun.  all day.  finished about 4pm, put cloth on wall, and knew it wasn't at all right.  took it down and REMOVED all the kantha.  back up on wall and there, some how atop the pile of scraps in the basket below,  …WIND…  .  and this morning, i am looking, really wishing there was a way i could leave the thread strands loose,  not stitched down at all,  leave them Exactly like they are in this moment

 

i realized how many eyes i live amidst…these are just a few that watch me

Jude Hill

and when i was working to get to a face for this Grieving cloth, i just kept trying .  and ended up with this little pile, which now go in the eye basket.

 

after all this,  here is what it seems

after all of it.  the fear, the grief, then anger, then grief again,  what is left at the end of all that

is

where you were.  Showing Up.  Facing what you know.  Loving the World.  but, also, an understanding of the vulnerability of it.  the Willingness to accept that as part of the Whole.  ok.

Looking.

every thing is here i think.  only one "black" bird, but representative of the possibility of a flight of black birds.   or maybe none.

now what.  What has changed since this?:

how can it be depicted?  is it "formed" enough to be depicted yet?  does it need to be?  What if the "face" remained empty?  What would that "say",  and is it what has actually happened. ?.  IS there a different face now,  really?  Where is the Grief?  is it gone? or is it compost?, simply accepted,  made room for in this time being?  So many questions.   Getting up from here and walking over to where it hangs on the wall,  i think, the hair.  just work on the hair, that is to me the connection to Wind,  to stuff that Comes and Goes of It's Own Accord,  shaping the world i live in,  shaping me.  OK, so the hair.  ok.

 

 

listening to On Being  the interview with Brene Brown on Vulnerability.  stitching clump grass on the cloth, thinking about the Cairn,  thinking about the Goats

how hard it is to just say NO to         holidays     .  How hard it is to just say NO to so many things, and still be able to say YES to so much.

i understood something over in Spirit Diaries about  my cloth making, about filters, personal symbols.  i understood it in terms first of the latest cloth

how this division,  some kind of horizon,  rim,  of Earth and then above Sky, with the figure standing, another division, Vertical amidst Horizontal.   and  suddenly this was connected to a longstanding symbol of     ~cairns~ 

and what perfect timing.   i knew i need to create a cairn.  Solstice comes soon.  This has been a challenging year and continues so.   This cairn.  yes. 

so i began bringing stones from around and as i was picking up one from the Magdalena Mountains, as it happens,  Something said  STOP!    i looked and there,  so seemingly carelessly attached is a chrysalis.

and what is on the figure's head…..a butterfly.

so here we have it. 

it's supposed to rain tomorrow but maybe there will be time and if not, then Thursday.  It's been a long time since i've done something like this.  Such a Long Story.