windthread

it doesn't look like i got very far today

but, really, i did.      

but a lot of it was thinking.  doing some housekeeping in my mind.  i went to people's blogs,  spent a lot of time at Diaries,  at Spirit Cloth.  then, spent A LOT of time going back on the last few posts here, looking for something that i read, but didn't respond to immediately and i can't find it.

it might have been something Linda said?….for some reason, i think it was you, Linda…but

also it's so "light" in my mind…but this DID teach me to try, really try, to go through each day as it comes, not keep thinking i'll respond to that tomorrow…

anyway

working through feelings about this cloth stuff.  about thoughts about art/Art. 

and what i got to, along with those seemingly so few stitches of the spirit tree, is that for whatever reason,  THIS cloth work is working to express something important to me about myself, myself in this world, at this particular time in my personal life and in the life of the culture i find myself required to live within.  it is not a hobby.  it is not something i do because i don't know what else  to do with my days.  it is not a catharsis.

 

 

 

 

it started on monday (or before) but on tuesday i wrote something in Diaries comments about the post of tie ing in…and as it goes for me, as i was writing, i began knowing what i was thinking.

i was thinking something about a tree.  i said there, a ghost tree.  but it is really a spirit tree.  a ghost tree is different.   and then,  shortly after, i went over to Michelles in NYC and watched the first two of LatchoDrom.   and i knew.   Why a tree appearing in this?  i don't know.  yet. 

but it's begun.  kantha.          it is a tree like the desert willow here, like the mountain oak in Northern California.  slender trees,  able to accomodate their surroundings, or is it their surroundings accomodate them?  but there is a compatability.  a companionship.  an ease.

so..lots of stitches to come.  will branch through the center panel.  bottom to top.  and then, this morning,  Michelle does it again with today's post.

 

keep moving things,  taking some from one and giving it to the other.  i know it might not look like much, but it's really intense.  i might go crazy.

 

i found the little blouse.  the one that has the pattern on it that i need to draw so i can stop thinking about how someday soon, i will run out of it, use it up.  maybe that's why i lose it so often, why it sometimes just can't be found,  but then, is.

so there it is, hovering at the top of the right panel….

and it all DID start with those two thin strips of the latest from Deb Lacativa.  they made me hunt for the little blouse.  

the added strips of cloth on the upper side and top probably are not the ones that will stay there, or maybe they will, just in a different way?   as i write this, i get up and look and no, especially the dark horizontal one…needs to be light there. 

so…while all this is happening, i am somewhere in my brain holding Jude's latest words in Diaries, thinking in images.  am realizing that.  i think in images. 

and yes.  i took off  the butterfly that was there.  it is nesting in a small basket of scraps. 

so, off i go.  hopefully to post more changes later in the day.  i  ~~~~~~~~~love~~~~~~~this.

 

all

my thinking,  is always about Everything.  there's never any seperation.  somehow, for me it's all just the same whirl of thought.  so today, when i did this

it was about the cloth.  it was about what that side IS.  in contrast to the other side.  in contrast to the middle.  why?, did i do that?  i don't know.  why? will it stay?  i don't know. 

and also, while i am doing this and washing windows and stuffing cracks with plastic grocery bags, i am thinking about how the Maniac's niece is calling from Phoenix where her father, the Maniac's brother is on life support.  and all the daughters there are trying to decide what to do and if they let him go,  what then?

the Maniac himself, who is also known as my late husband of 10 years, is out under the now defunct stump of the willow tree.  his ashes.  when he died,  some of the daughters/nieces were into dividing  him up into these little vials that can be worn as necklaces.  hmmm.  no.  so…he's just out there, in the dirt.  now, what to do? * none of them know that i am going to leave this place.  what good is it, to tell them that?  hmmmm, again.  so…i suggest that i dig him up, his ashes, and we all traipse up to Jemez Springs with everybody's ashes and scatter them by the old grandmother. 

*they were thinking of bringing some of the brother's ashes here.

so, the point is………..that cloth for me,  is about a LOT of stuff….about the whole of it.  memories, today, the "maybe" of tomorrows.  if you asked me to tell you what this cloth is "about", it would take forever.

 

 

i got up last night, middle of the night, to look at something and looked at the wall…

made me smile.  Crickets are everywhere.

dawn and windowLove

the substance.   a combination of almost Everything.  the latest, eucalyptus leaves from the freezer that Hermila sent.

i always cover the door with a blanket.  never have used this one tho.  the light set it on fire.

so here's the grass leaves

after looking a many possibilities, i am here with the original cloth for the leaves.  this is some dyed from the mexican elderberry leaves.  it is rather plain.  but it's It.  so for a while, there will be nothing exciting to picture here.   just leaf stitching. 

and in between, i am finally doing what as always,  should have already been done….plugging up cracks against the Wind.  today for a while, i stuffed plastic garbage bags in the cracks around those old wooden windows i love so much but that are so impractical.  i'd taken off the summertime curtains that made me think of young girls dancing in ruffled skirts and now, for a short time,  they are just bare.  in the next days i'll cover them with plastic.  i'm going to try masking tape this time, to hold the plastic in place.  i might have to put push pins too, to hold the masking tape in place.  and then, what to cover them with this year.  ???   over the plastic.   like, curtains.   my wish is always NOTHING.  i want as much light as possible.  but then….when it is cold in the mornings,  i give in.

last evening, late, for a couple hours, there was no internet.           there was no way for me to know if it was just this computer, or this area, or if Google was down for whatever reason.    i am still working from the feelings of that….how i realized how isolated i really am,  how this computer changes my experience of myself, my place in this world, my experience in general ……. i don't know what to make of it.

 

 

 

 

sitting infront of the woodstove, waiting for that moment when the heat is "enough" ….seeing the images from Jude's post  Under Glass  in my mind,  thinking.

staring at the floor and seeing how it's time to vacuum,  and that stringy thread amidst the dog hairs.   then,   Seeing the woman halted in her tracks, her hair blowing out behind her by the wind,  stopped in her tracks,  by something,  a plant?  a snake?  something,  appearing on her path  and she is leaning down just some toward it, to see more clearly?, to be able to hear what it is trying to say?

 

i wanted to find what would work for the grass leaves.    everything is just a mess.  i am not very neat with how i keep cloth.  so i dumped out all nine baskets and

sorted.

at the bottom of one,  was this eye from a while back that i had decided i didn't like.  too dreary.  but i stuck it on the wall anyway, to remember about making dreary eyes.   then, on the floor, under another basket was the half circle of petals.       the eye is still dreary, but with the petals, dreary in a more interesting way?

and this morning, when emptying the stuff from kitchen to compost,  i had the urge to look down and there, just at my feet,  a very bright eyed maybe second year bull snake.  we regarded each other  and i was so surprised to see her all i said was…  so how's it goin?   and walked away.  came in, sat down and thought about it.