windthread

these surprises.  there are 8 of them.  began with a shred on the floor, near the chair leg.   and as soon as it was placed,  the vision of more, circling

maybe hard to see, but that's how things of Their Kind are….

i think it's going to be ok and even good.   when seen this way,  it works to , uhhhh,  begin saying something.

and look out the livingroom window

these are the Giant Sacaton grasses that are on the cloth, so i decided today was the day to begin working on them.

the light today is odd and it's very difficult to get a true pic, but here, a little of how they look.  and in stitching them i realized even more fully that grasses will play an even larger part.  there still is the Mexican Feather Grass, the Blue Grama and the Side Oat Grama.  so, thinking.

Before:

the beginning of Forever After:

and again, the Lizard cloth at the top of my Diaries Cloth is a Jude Hill.  a teaching cloth from the Beasts workshop.    but look, oh, oh, look, grace…look at what you have understood.  oh Ecstasy

what's left of the wood that isn't wet….under the tarp.  behind, the compost, where a couple days ago were many footprints, including the skunk.

both this and the pic above taken from inside the house…the living room window.  it's raining.

much of the day was absorbed by this very very small bird.  could you have known it was a bird if i hadn't told you???  i learned a lot.  the original  that is seen in previous posts was just 3 scraps of some of Deb Lacativa's damask.  i just loved it in that form.  but, as i stitched it down, it became threads, seperating threads.  so i kept at it and here we have the result.  not at all what i had envisioned in the beginning, but i will let it remain, to remind me in the future. 

 

 

right panel and 90% of middle (2 petals of the sunflower to do and a little on mothMoon)  is firmly stitched.  then, left panel: glennis' Moon window and the buddha illusion.  so…i am nearing the moment when i will be able to

take the cloth on my LAP, hold as i sew.  EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!!!

 

AND,  finally, i did do it.  the lizard was too long.  this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that stitches are forever if left on their own.  it was HARD, like really HARD to remove just these small stitches.  but…done.   and i found the old drawing from a while ago about how they need to go East and West at least, maybe North and South

they were drawn on a paper i drew my Beasts Workshop lizard as Jude taught me….  and it's interesting that i noticed for the first time that i had given the little ones   Necks?…???

 

ok.  it took me forever to find where the computer keeps this pic hidden.  but here we are.  i had posted this when i had the old Blogger blog.  am always tempted to blur out the cigarette, but  that would not be full disclosure.  yes.  and i roll my own.  only Manya appreciates  this.

this is 4 years ago now.  and yes, that is me in the middle.  daughter Jenny on the right and her daughter, my granddaughter Alyssia on the left.   it's the best and really, the only pic of the three of us or i would use another.  in this pic i remind self of two things:  first, i think i look like George Burns, and second, looking at this me, i remember a hermit crab my daughter had as a little girl.  now and then it would give up its shell and for days wander shelless and so vulnerable and just so thinskinned looking …it scared us in its exposed state.  anyway…i don't really look like this.  it was a day that for the first time  all my kids were together here.  these two and my son and his woman and my grandson.  it was a little startling, all these large people, all milling about.  and we were doing some intense remodeling thing of the kitchen/ROOM.  and i'd put on my ONLY dress, because it was a special day. 

anyway. 

they have dibs on me.  their other parent/grandparent was given to my son.  he "gets" his dad.

so, Michelle, as you can imagine,  i sometimes think it might be easier to be singular.  they are magnificant, but they are also two Women.  we will learn to compromise some things i think over the years.  and when i realized i was facing a choice of remaining here or putting in with my daughter's north california goat dream,  i thought a lot about the concept of deferring to the Next.  and it was the advent of some very good thinking that i feel is just a normal developmental stage in the life of an adult female (or male, i guess).   there isn't just this long expanse of "adulthood", where we just stay the same,  we continue changing, growing, evolving.  if we choose to.   and to me, the active participation in moving toward a "state of being irrelevant" is just Real and pragmatic.

i think i feel differently about looking at things than a lot of people.  i don't see thinking about my old age as dark or sad.  and i think it's a lot because of buddhist study which simply sees this as a given and part of the beauty of the "work" of being human.  "Every thing [is] a promise of some future something",  until that future undeniably becomes a limited present.  and to me, this is not in the slightest sad.  i think about it a lot.  my daughter and i talk about it a lot.  and i watch people i know, my own age (just entering Old) and people who are in their 80s and 90s that choose different forms of denial which end up being very hard on them and those who love them.  we last a long time nowdays  and very likely we won't be "beamed up", but will become    irrelevant, actually, as far as being able to maintain our  role as the heroine of the play.  we will need to defer.  so to think about it is a really good thing and i think the Best thing along with actually living each day with great purpose and intention NOW.  no regrets down the line. 

and Michelle, i know you know all this.  so these words are just so you know where i stand with it all and that i am open and oh so willing to explore the thinking.  the thing that bothers me most is when all this is treated like some forbidden pessimistic train of thought that descends if we let it.  but should be kept at bay forever.  

anyway….this isn't at all what i'd hoped i'd write but it's what came out and i will add more as the days go along as comments to mySelf.   and THANK YOU for being who you are and your oh so glowing relevance to my world in this present. 

 

 

it's 8:15.  i can go to sleep now. 

if

i stop putting wood in the wood stove,  slowly slowly over time it will burn out and will become cold.     it's the only heat.   it's supposed to be 7  tonight.  where should i sleep?  in my bed?   on the couch where sleep is fitfull, therefore waking me off and on and i can add wood? 

what are the birds doing, i always wonder….their thin little feet,  unlike other beings, that add an undercoat of winter fur.  birds just            make do.  i always think of them in times like this.

 

 

i woke this morning to snow fall.  thick.  fast moving falling.  and it continued most of the day.  off and on.  probably 6 inches at least.  overcast with a cloud cover.  sometimes wind.  High in the low 20's, tonight a Lo of 7.  cold.  the dogs are getting kind of old and didn't want to go out…dog door…. so i put on my boots and  got the snow shovel from the Albatros (garage/shed/building) and shoveled them some paths around so they could pee, etc.  shoveled the porch and steps.  3 of them are small and the snow went up to their stomachs.  i had put plastic on the big front window but this ment that i couldn't see the snow.  so though it will be colder in here, i pulled it all off.  just after that, like moments,  a very LARGE hawk swooped low.   it's been quite a while since a hawk hunted around here.  cat.  where's the cat…sleeping on my bed.  ok.  only one truck has gone down our road all day.  it had that very singular stillness that snow in the desert brings.  was like there was something insulating everything from sound. 

i felt all day, and on into now, like i never woke up.  like it's all still dreaming.  it wouldn't get warm in the Room so i rearranged.  Rocking chair in there, door table into the livingroom so i could keep an eye on that hawk through the window.  and later in the day i brought over the lamp that has the bulb that simulates natural light.  i stitched.  maybe part of the dream like quality was that the stitching was s l o w.   but i have gotten almost all of the right panel of the Diaries cloth stitched down.  but by the time that happened, it was too dark to take a pic.

and the phone didn't ring.  once.   usually at least a telemarketer calls and talks to the answering machine, or something political.  nada.  just silence. 

and i started reading this book.  i had had it once before, a long time ago, and read part of it.  people i work for had it on their shelf so…borrowed.  in the beginning, it says:

"It was better, I decided, for the emissaries returning from the wilderness, even if they were merely descending from a stepladder, to record their marvel not to define its meaning.  In that way it would go echoing on through the minds of men, each grasping at that beyond out of which the miracles emerge, and which once defined, ceases to satisfy the human need for symbols."      from the Judgement of the Birds,  The Immense Journey, 1946  Loren Eiseley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

today.  no doubt about it.  i will make eyes.  i will make eyes and eyes and eyes and then more eyes.  i will keep making eyes until they begin to change and then i will make eyes of all kinds.  this evening it's snowing out there.  and i stitched the flower eye onto the inside breast pocket of the jacketshirt.  and i stitched on Eye 1.  that pic is not too clear, but i leave it because the fire showed me an eye.