windthread

ok.  Keeping  Clarissa Pinkola Estes'    Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times   close at hand,  reading and re~reading,  sitting on the raft,  looking and thinking,  i thought about what is needed now.   for me and for the  sense of myself(ves) in this world. 
after so long, i will repair the little stool:  replacing the broken  and weaving a new seat.  it's perfect for the raft.

i bought a new pry bar.  i have needed one for years since the other one was loaned and never returned.  they had 2 at the hardware.  this one was more expensive, but it is black and looks very serious as a tool.  you can see Deb Lacativa's cloth…..

a better pic.  the minute i opened the envelope and took them out,  it was like watching a slideshow of cloths they could become.  I LOVE HER CLOTH.   and no, it is not natural dye process, but it is, to me so totally ORGANIC….it is what things FEEL like.

and inbetween every thing, i stitched.  it's working.  it is how i need it to be.  i am now even farther along…halfway through the lightning.  the weight of the stitching is as if there were another layer of cloth.  perfect.  no added image but rather weight and substance.  just like it is outside here.

lilacs are beginning to bloom

and while sitting, looking, the mystery of what happened to the Side Oat Grama seed i scattered was solved.  look on the cross bar of the gate:  eaten.    i normally don't have quail in this acre.  the dogs keep them away.  but for Side Oat Grama,  they took the risk.

so…, yes.  risks.  taken,   consequences honored.  but at a point,  the immediate Moment takes precedence.  you might notice that i have left the hypenated name along the wayside.  i am back to the way i was when i first came here. 

ok.  for sure, one self woven in.

 

 

i need a minute.   someone has died. 

Extended family.  but, still being a Tia (spanish for Aunt) in a very intense Chicano familia,  i need to attend.   i can let go of them, but they have not let go of me.  and so.

We give our

WORD

we keep our Word.  

 

there are still so many really wonder Full comments and thoughts on that last post, but i wanted to get these pics put here this morning incase i get pulled by the current again.    i had thought i would have a Saturday and a SUNday all to my self(ves) but it turned out to be the total opposite.  

but i also was rocked lovingly in the words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes that MO gave us the other day… the essay  "Letter To A Young Activist During Troubled Times.  you can find it in its entirety if you google,  or, Mo, if you are reading, maybe you can send a link?    there is one place where it just is,  in printable form…?????

this was Friday evening.  and i saw in this pic that i have Kantha skin.  but what i wanted to say was that this is the point in "kanthaing" for me that is ecstatic.  when you have gotten far enough to begin to feeeeeeel the substance of the stitching,  when suddenly, it has all changed energy and form.

and even more, later.   the cloth is upside down.  am working top to bottom.

and then reading the CPE essay for the hundrith time,  i had an URGE.  i ran out, just at first light and hauled one of the pallets over to the mirror chair, to where there is a mason jar with things in it from Wendy Golden Levitt  that sits in the grasses there and the lizards can see it.   This is my ship.  This is my desert raft and i found a branch and tied some dyed indigo cloth on it for the flag. 

and then the day ran away with me and by the time i got back out there Wind had flattened my flag.

this morning,  first thing,  stood it back up.   will do some work later to make it more secure and while out there

i saw that the little Native Plum is blooming like crazy

and that the Hollyhock that the fence fixing guy ran over with his truck 4 times in a week….. could care less.  a few smashed leaves, but i heard her saying  "so what". 

i will come back here later today and also go back to the previous post.  

i'm thinking the name of my Raft is      Hey Ho.

 

 

 

 

 

and does "stuff" somehow love us back?  is there reciprocity  of a subtle kind?

i go to the local Walmart to get Cinnomon Swirl Bread for the old Cowboy i take care of.  i walk  through the craft department on the way to check out, past a table with bolt ends $ 1 / yd.  last year i saw a yard plus something of this.  the label said made in China 100% cotton.  i walked away, went back, walked away went back.   Why do i really really love this piece of cloth?  

the pale green is the original.  the variations from the Indigo Vat

this is the last from the Vat, just tossed in when it was cold, on my way out yesterday.  left some hours.   But, back to the original question.

my summer uniform.   it was HOT yesterday.  first day of 2012 i got to go back to wearing it.

Jude's cloth

 

the days,  the awake time followed by dream time followed by awake time…., the days have been different.   First there was Those Wind Days and on monday when i got home from working, i looked around out there.   Stood just outside the fence that doesn't exist right now and took this pic of the house.  in the next weeks,  there will be changes.   some of the trees will remain just skeletons but probably again, i won't cut them down because the birds like them just the same,  leafed or not.  We'll see.  and close to where i'm standing with the camera is a square tub that i dragged over from the property next door that is presently abandoned.  it's nice and doesn't leak.  hand made.

and then yesterday,  was  surprised by how vulnerable i was to Was,  the cat that lived with Jude,  dying.  i am ordinarily better with death.  but not this time.   so i began the kantha.

it will fill both side panels.  to what extent,  i don't know yet.  will it go     through    the  grasses?   the lightning?  on the other side,  through the   Deb Lacativa mystery,  the Glennis  buddha window?  Or, up to them,  around.    i am just going to stitch and find out.

and i stitched down one of the black birds,  leaving the cloth that i said i wouldn't because it is too prone to Fray.  Will see how it holds as the cloth goes up and down from the wall.  i want to leave it as is if i can.

by Friday it will be 80 degrees.   i need it to stay.

 

 

and last, but not least

will take a few more dips to achieve the desired depth.

i want to put my face in the vat.

i want to GET INTO the vat.

it happens like this Every year.  all these amazing blossoms.  and beeeeeeeeees, SO many bees and this year, wouldn't you know it,  orange and black butterflies.  MANY.  the first time for this.

and a few dark ones

every year.  and then, most years, there will be WIND.  sometimes Wind and a last freeze.  and all this to no avail…except for the joy and sustenance of the butterflies and bees.  Somewhere there will be apricot blossom honey.   Beginning tomorrow afternoon, they say there will be 4 days of Wind.  40mph sustained flat line and 70-80mph gusts.  there will be no apricots for the Indigo vat.

and clearing the porch in anticipation of the WIND,  Look!…can you see, down behind the rock?

too soon, i'm afraid.  unless she finds a very sheltered place.  by the end of the day,  this was empty.  she'd left. 

and this is Good

stitching along the edges of the Spirit tree, the Ghost tree.  defining it more.    more stitching tomorrow and through the days of Wind.   also,  i am finally ready to start the Indigo Vat in the morning.  everything is in place and waiting.  i'm nervous.

 

 

Mary Oliver is sick.   so, as a way to love her, to Pray for her,   i think now and then i'll just put her words here.  this is from  House of Light

Five A.M. In The Pinewoods

I'd seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there.  They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp tassels of weeds.  This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them…I swear it!….

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees.  When i woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

 

the first lizard and one peeking over the stone

one on Moth Moon

the least photogenic.  the cloth that the stone is, shreds with even the most care Full needle and the stitches of the legs disappear into it.  but somehow, that's ok.

in the future,  there may be many more of this scene…here, a room, but,  more of this figure and Things.  i love it a lot.

so this is today.   Five.  and good timing.  i have put it back up on the wall and will Look.  the rest of the week will pretty much be absorbed by Alz. B.  Everybody else is gone.  One skiing in Idaho and the other running up and down the California coast in a train.   so, she and i are on our own.  but it's a perfect time for a break…to see if more is needed or if we have It.

Thank You Everyone for your patience with this cloth.  Seems like it's been going on forever.  The Boro class is April 28.  I would like very much to feel some sense of  completion by then.  We'll see.

 

i think this is it. 

with some changes

this is directly on the Cloth.  no more fooling around.  the first, that thread for legs and tail is obviously too light.  so…the tail i couldn't change,  but the legs i touched with sepia Pigma Micron pen in the second pic.  and i gave a thread eye.  and also, a line down the back with the pen which i'm not sure what to do about…if i try to stitch a line there it would change things too much.  so, small dilemma about that. 

BUT ……..  this is good.  the right size and the right "visual weight".   i will do another but with different leg and tail threads that will be more distinct. 

also…didn't add a separate head this time, but shaped the rectangle of cloth enough to define it.  i will get better at that the more lizards i make, i think.  so if this really feels ok, after this initial burst of happiness,  i will be able to have as many lizards as i had originally envisioned…for sure in the stones, but also other places…on the tree, in the grasses and most of all…by her.  

OK.