windthread

amazing.  i looked back to last year,   this month of August,  to see what it looked like outside then.   but what i found instead was that this time last year i was working on the cloths for Wendy's kids.  and here i am again…….     .~.

 

i don't know if this will be "right".   there was no specific conversation.  just that it would be a cloth about            Leaving               a cloth about        Finishing                    so, in my mind, it's a cloth about Continuing,   like everything seems to be these days about Continuing.   about just going.  about what's next.   and  as it seems to be for me, there  really was no fore thought,  just one day i picked up the large piece of linen from the thrift shop.   spread it out.   ripped it  and had 3 pieces.    there was an urge to tea dye but it just kept NOT happening and for some reason,   this cloth needs to be white.  well, not white white,  it's a little off white, like maybe i will refer to this white as       bone.   and then i went out to the giant albatross shed thing and found the lid to the big kettle for the   Circle,  penciled it on  and as i posted the other day while Waiting,   just began setting scraps, fragments on.   then a whole lot of just         looking.    it was still flat on the doortable.  scraps came and went, returned,  moved from here to there and some of the pieces still cause me second thoughts but truth is, none want to be taken away at this point.   so this morning they are basted in place.   the  words post and lentil come to mind.  across the top, the horizontal piece which is blank.  this is doubled so that a stick can be placed through to hold it up.  the  cloth itself is in two panels.  so a child can               walk through the Circle.   

it's up on the wall now.  so….we'll see.

 

 

 

Mexican Elderberry leaves….the summer after the hard winter.  and all is well

these pics are particularly for Helen Lee/Buzz and Drucilla who might use their Elderberry for their Diaries cloths?

the light here has such a mind of it's own…

all cloths are the same original larger piece, torn.  muslin.  just wetted and pushed into pots of Elderberry leaves,  local water to the top.   steeped in the desert sun one week, some evaporation.

on the left a green that doesn't jump out here, but is green nonetheless, and always consistent from a copper pot.

middle, in the aluminum pot.

right from the rusted cast iron pot  ……..  which in the first few days was a dusky pale violet color.  maybe i'll take it out at that point with the next batch that i'll start tomorrow?

 
 

Sun shines through the magic cloth .   Sun slides beyon the rim of the world to the West.  where they are.      and this was illuminated.  glowing. 

 

the waiting continued.  this is Sandrock.  a younger toad than the Aunt.  maybe we could say a young adult age

and then,  this is the Dude.  he is very big.  old.

 
 
the waiting went on and on and on.  so i finally let it just fill all the space and began working on a cloth.  just looking at pieces, scraps,  colors.  moving them near and away from each other.

and finally, the phone rang.  they are there and they are                all                   ok.    Every Single One of Them is just absolutely ok.

i had received a call on Friday that the daughter's truck had broken down in the Mojave Desert.  the temp was 115.   they had waited over 4 hours for a tow truck.  the goats were flat lining.   the tow truck came and another Uhaul van and skip some details,  they were on their way again, about 6 hours from their destination.   and then, i didn't hear anything more.   until today.  a short, still totally exhausted conversation, but they arrived.  and they are ok.  goats, dogs, people.  everyone is ok.  when they got there, they had to immediately begin setting up fencing, and aside from short sleep times, that is what they had been doing and were continuing to do. 

so i have had a lot of time to experience many thoughts and emotions.  to experience my response to those thoughts and emotions.  over and over.  pretty much non stop.  and i thought about what i'd written the other day, about Chod, a buddhist practice that by "targeting  our most sensitive delusions, cuts through attachments and ego-clinging without any hope or fear".   and how that is an intense statement, without any hope or fear………..and i had ample opportunity to apply these words to this situation.  there was great hope, desperate hope and great fear. 

and some time, in the middle of last night, i woke and thought about if this might be an "end of the world" situation.  like, the worst of the worst imaginable.  what if the goats died.  what if the people died.  the people being my daughter, my  son, my granddaughter, my children's father…the end of the world.  so what if this were true.                    and on the other hand,  what if  somehow they managed and were safely there.  what if after a few days it would all become a memory, a story to be told on into the years.   and how did my hope, my fear           fit            as an overlay on their experience?   it Could have gone either way,  it was 50/50.  and which ever way it went was the way it was, would be.  all the hope and all the fear would not change anything. 

so….what did i have, then.  and i realized that either way, what would be left would be          CONTINUING

just continuing.  so i have learned a lot.  and while i was waiting today, i read the Black Mountain manifesto on Rima's blog.  and believe it to be true.  and in a vulnerable state, i thought again,        What If?    what to do?  how to be?  and the answer again is to             continue.  For the Wellbeing of the Whole, as best we can understand that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and made my feather for Jude

 
 

about how i can get self stuck when i am loving a large dyed piece….but………

and then, after some time, i saw how that center strip seemed to be wanting something.  and i am once again, fascinated by how just skewing something just a very little does so much…..

 

 

this is my great grandson.  Julian Daniel Ortiz.    he is at Staples.  has his packet of blank pages and a new box of crayons.  he is approaching the check out.

i printed this pic from his mother's facebook page, so it's not the clearest, but nonetheless, you can see something of who he IS.    he is not yet two. 

beside his mother, he is the other Entity who lives where we are being magnetized.   this is who daughter Jenny will live with for the next months.    if you might remember, he is the one who skips.   the other thing i can tell you, to give you a "picture", is that he has taken up running LAPS around their back yard courtyard.  as with the skipping,  no one knows where or why he began this practice.  but he does.  and LAPS.  round and round.  he does not discuss this with anyone.  just does it.   his mother, my granddaughter respects his space and does not ask.  he just

takes off his diaper and runs.

August is the second most significant month to me.   July 31 is always like New Year's Eve.  August however is a              heavy month.    here, the word       fecund            fits.   i have traveled the calendar enough years to be ready for it.   maybe this year it will bring some different surprises?  maybe some distortions of the usual?

 

 

 

and i have company

and FINALLY…two months "late"….. 

and then,

 
 

this is how it's been and how it will be, even more for the next week.

on this day,  a Wednesday,  next week,  the daughter,  the goats,  the livestock guardian dog,  the father of the daughter, the brother of the daughter,  will be half way to where they are going.  which would be somewhere in Arizona.  when traveling with a herd of goats,  in August,  particularly in the year of 2011,  you can only travel during the night.  so….in the dark, they will be going.  just going…as we have talked about but in regard to cloth, not goats and people.  Continuing.

many Things have been involved.  the center of which has been that her truck just simply Would Not Run.  out of the Blue.  2 weeks…it was towed down here to my local much trusted mechanic and i will put a plug for him here…Rudy's Auto Repair…Lemitar, New Mexico.   and for many reasons, it took two weeks.  during which all of us, including Rudy, experienced what i guess i will just call High Anxiety.  it really wasn't      anxiety     was something else,  but that's close enough.  what was wrong with it was a great mystery and this is the truck she will need as in neeeeeeeed to drive to work and to haul feed for the goats when she arrives at her

new life

but           the mystery was solved and today i met her half way (she's had my little Honda car, Minnow for the duration) at the TacoBell just off the freeway. 

Good things have happened too.  a wonderful woman who lives in Lake Havasu Arizona has offered an overnight for them all.  this woman is the one who sold Jenny her first buck goat.   this overnight is a god send.  another good thing is that again, out of the Blue,  a woman called me who is interested in a goat and heard i had some.  well,  sorta.  but as it turns out, on Saturday, she will pick up Daffodil,  the first doe goat who she plans to breed and milk PLUS the two wethers, DarkWing and Partly Sunny.  the weight of the move lightens.

everything has changed.  that Blue House didn't happen.  the transfer to a full time job turned out to be a transfer to a part time job, no hours guaranteed.  But, she is setting out.  she and her daughter will rent a house in the middle of California for a year.  during that year, the job will hopefully transform into full time and while it is transforming, she will look for a different Blue House up high in Northern California….Red Bluff.  Cottonwood.  Redding.   this uh, interim is not going to be easy for the goats and the dog.   they don't speak english and so can't be told that it is temporary.  i do, speak english, and find it hard.   but i took out the Daughter Cloth tonight from where it has been and patted it.  it's a good, strong, solid cloth.    i also listened again to the audio of Magic Diaries and thought about distortion.  about the word distortion.  wondering.  and i also just sat and thought and thought about Jude saying something about thought catching and how tricky it is.  and looked at this pile of cloth and an image reappeared that has come and gone for the last days of two lines of very small lizards going along, just going,  one line above right to left, one line below left to right              and i caught that thought         about how stuff just goes.  comes back.  goes again   in a never ending process of Continuing.