windthread

it's got me going

on that same wall, near the Shell Woman.   this being, when i saw her in an old, like 1950's Natural History Publication,  struck me instantly as being  "just like Me!"  there were several photographs of her.  i forget what kind of monkey she is.  but i instantly and totally identified with her.  and, really, not just her eyes, but her nose, her smile too.  but the feeling of the eyes…     What IS it?

so…just some thoughts about eyes that i don't want to forget…:

When eyes meet eyes ~ We are here, together, fully present to one another. 

I see You.  You see Me.  like the Mocking bird today, trapped in Fiona's Palace.

if we do  not make eye contact, or if we DO.  What's the difference?????

You are like me    our similarity   =   relationship           back to eye contact

lizards

Feeling eyes, sensory eyes…as in grass clumps  

Awareness ~ Acknowledgement of me to you, you to me

Seeing Coma's eyes.  i instantly knew Jude Hill, or something about her

Appearing in the Other's awareness

I am.  You are.     WE.

Coma's eyes again, eyes that see        internally?   an inner world?   a world of sensing?

so much that we see is symbol only, is not at all what is presenting in the moment??????  what about this???????

 

 

 

 

i identify tonight as the Beginning of my present self.   actually, it was sometime at the end of October, 2009….but i didn't really realize it fully until November. 

some time around then, i dared to make my first comment on Spirit Cloth.  actually, it was the first comment on a               blog           .   and  i remember saying that i knew my life would change.  and this has turned out to be true.  Truer than i could ever have guessed.

and over time, i have watched as things have woven together from long long ago through the days to the present in the form of cloth making.  the other day, when i took that pic of the three things on the wall  "for Helen",  i wondered about it.   Why did i do that?  hmmm.  and then today, i knew. 

i found this piece of shell at a yard sale in Ann Arbor Michigan  around 40 years ago.  it was in a shoebox of Free Stuff.  little bits of broken jewelry,  buttons.  i couldn't believe my eyes.  but i also didn't ask if it was some kind of mistake.  i just set it on the card table  when i paid for other things then picked it up and left.  holding it…just as in the pic above. 

it has been in many places since but always near.  most recently, on the wall as you see it in that pic.

today over at Magic Diaries,  Jude talks about eyes.   since i can first remember, which was when i was maybe 3,  i have had a thing for eyes.  everything has eyes.  eyes of a sort.  but eyes.  i have drawn eyes more than anything else all my life.   eyes are where Life shows Itself.  if you look for eyes,  you can know things about what is happening. 

there is that reflection of light in a living eye.  if the thing is dead, it doesn't reflect.  i remember studying this in dead things i found and buried when i was very young.  i studied this.  like a scientist even though i was a very young child.  i have always been interested in what Life is and what is  non life.  and what the difference is.  and why.

so eyes.

can?i put Her kind of eyes in this cloth?  how?  should i?

 

 

about days.  they surprise you.  i was looking at this.  the  dwindling pot of madder twigs, some eucalyptus from Herm,  walnut powder and who knows what all 

and heard a loud, really LOUD POP!!!!!!!! sound.  really, more like a BAM!

did the roof catch on fire?  did something totally unknown happen outside? 

looking,  i heard a rushing sound.  a gushing of water.  ack.  run outside and yes, pipes.   turn off the water heater.  find the crescent wrench and run to the water thingy along side the road.  turn off water to house.  ok.  stand and stare at it.  go to work.  call Paul Saavedra who is working on the home of people i work for around here.  ok.  come home, rip off the wood around that part of the  under of the house…and there,  what i think is the Event…looks like a disconnected pipe.   the Community Water Association had replaced meters with more modern ones.  they said it would enchance water pressure.  yes.  it did.  so, Paul and his work partner Chris come and yes, it IS the blown off pipe…pressure…and that's all it is.  great great relief.  this would NOT be a good time for major plumbing requirements and Chris, the partner notices the old wood stove outside and likes it and so…an exchange. 

i am wearing the Flax shirt/soon to become jacket.  i notice that it is warm.  am surprised again by this.  it isn't even layered yet, doesn't even have a lining yet.  but warm.  there are surprises every where these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it's here

barely visible.  i can't find a time of day when it appears to the camera as it appears to the eye.  but, it is now here.

this is for Helen Salo who likes details
the photograph is of one of my other selves

 

i am having a lot of feelings.

i spent about 9 hours today kantha stitching.  i'm tired.  but not so tired as to not have a lot of feelings, still.

Every day.  Every single day of my life, i am thankfull for my bed.    My bed.  which has been different through the years.  Deanna sent me a video with the music from the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.  that took me back to the bed, which was actually a crib,  in Detroit, Michigan.  when i was up to the age of 4. 

Since then, i have had many beds.  slept in them with different people.  and in recent years, have had a growing sense of gratitude for my bed.

This one, is layered futon mattresses.  when my daughter was here a few days ago and slept in my bed while i slept on the futon couch, she said it was like sleeping in the ocean.  Swishy. 

every night, every single night.  EVERY SINGLE NIGHT i lay down upon that swishy ocean bed,

i give voice to a true sense of gratitude.  i can go there, lay my self down and be assured that i will dream there till morning comes.  there is no war in my road outside.  there are no desperate people who will come through my door and wake me. 

THIS is HUGE.

i like crunchy sheets and pillow cases.  i can find them at the Thrift Shop.  i don't know who donates them.  but they are easily available.  they are the stiff cotton kind.  expensive.  i have extra.  right now i have a bed cover that is filled with some kind of stuffing.  the top and bottom are cotton.  i got it at a yard sale some years ago.  have been looking at it for a while now.  i keep taking it to the laundromat and washing it and it keeps it's integrity.  so, even when it's not uhhhh,  organic, inside, it has integrity.  so ok.  someday when it begins to falter, i will mend it.  but for now i think i will just say thank you to it. 

 

day after maybe my most conflicted American holiday and i read there are going to be 150 million shoppers out there this weekend.    i spent yesterday trying to ease the Alz. person i am involved with of her conflicted feelings about her less than satisfactory Thanksgiving.  i did this by arriving at her house at the crack of dawn to begin chopping celery and onions for the stuffing for the smallest turkey i could find which was 10.85 lbs.  for the two of us.  many of her feelings rose from her difficulty with her mind, but really, the ones that were hardest to deal with for me were from her bitterness and anger about not having the kind of Thanksgiving Day to which she feels entitiled.   and she would like to be driven into Albuquerque today for shopping.

we all have our own thinking about ThanksGiving,  Christmas.   Holidays.  she is only typical.  one generation older than i.  and probably the poster child for it all.  

but to be perfectly honest,  i don't think i can pull this off one more year.  i have tweaked my interpretation of Thanksgiving and Christmas for many years now, but somehow, even when my own family has for the most part gotten the drift,  i find myself having all these feelings again and again and again.  and somehow these two holidays seem to be the beginning and end and beginning of a cycle that continues for the next year.  i NEED to identify and then BEGIN really doing many things differently this year.  i am tired of saying, "Oh well". 

So, i don't know.  but instead of Black Friday, today is finally again Cloth Friday.  more kantha.   and a lot of deep thinking.  things have to change.

 

 

 

 

on Thursday, daughter Jenny arrived from California.  long story of goat transport.  here and then back.  too many details.  but she has come and gone.  and without a hitch!!!!  this is the first time i took a trip without going anywhere at all.  i "talked" her here and back on phone.  hours.  but she was driving the old truck that broke down big time when she moved in August.  there was fear about this trip.  but, tada  All's Well. 

AND i am back to stitching.

the colors are wierd but i wanted the kantha of the tree to show up and this is the best i seemed able to do with the available light.  Tree is growing.  in the moment, South to North, but then, East to West will come.  learning a LOT about kantha as moving design element.  a LOT.

 

 

kimono…bird coat kind of woman

hooded sweatshirts…what kind of woman is that?    an invisible woman, a camoflage of sorts.  something that says    Do not see me.

mostly the heavy duty zip up hoodies work for the life i have here.  they can "take it".  whatever it the day requires.  but there is this other thing at work now.    Don't know much about it yet, but its definately operational.

this shirt…which is really big for me, flax.  well, you can see:

this is how i have appeared in my home for 3 days now.   i switched to levis, hoodie and t shirt when i went to work monday,  and to the laundromat yesterday, but otherwise, this is the NEW me.  the shirt is a totally wonderful man's size 3XL rayon, very soft, very used.  thrift shop again.  what's going on here?????  and i have worn these day and night.  i took the shirt with me to the laundromat and while i waited, cut off and stitched up the collar rim.   

in my other life, the one before this last uh, we'll say, 16 years,  i used to wear all kinds of interesting clothes.  and in reference to an unfinished conversation with Cindy at Handstories, they were "feminine".  eccentricly feminine, but yes.      then there has been this last Chapter.  but a new mood is coming on.  kiMOODie.   looking at the kimonobirdcoat,  a lizardcoat woman is MAYBE rising up.

this shirt is beautifully made.

the pockets are fine, attached seperately inside…not sewn on to the face of the shirt.  and deep.

and……………there is an inside breast pocket

wandering around in this, i was thinking of stitching it from the INSIDE out.  lining, or creating an inside of probably the various pieces of cloth i have dyed in the last year.  in parts where real warmth would be needed, like the center back, parts of the sleeves,  i would use the raw silk noile.  other parts that i need to be lighter can be the muslin.   i would not take it apart, but cut pieces and stitch them in.  piece it together.  After that,  see what marks that made on the outside and  that would be where the lizard, the raven probably might appear…..    and now,  a hood.  what to think??????

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is just a Saturday night thing.  just thoughts.  but a continuation in clarification for self, really of the Why post. 

nance asked a question, or, posed a thought and then disappeared.  the Plus and downside of email.

but what i did immediately in response was to take this pic from the frame it shares with a pic of my daughter at age 3 that lives on the glass shelf of this computer desk along with the Dalai lama and Chenrezig.

how does this apply here?  not sure yet.     but i have had a love affair with cloth, with what cloth IS for longer than i was aware of.     this pic is from an issue of National Geographic of a girl in Darfur.  maybe, what?, maybe 7 or 8 years ago?  could be more.   has been right here, in my life everyday ever since.  part of it is her.   the story was about young girls raped and escaped.  finding refuge.  i see it everytime i look at it in the same way as i saw it the first time.  look at her dress.  how she sits.  look at the place of refuge, this chair.  her eyes.  how her body is ready to spring…away, if need be.

cloth.