windthread

it's sunday night.   will keep it short.

everyone,  almost,  came today but the highlight was that Pickel came.  He is  Alyssia's family dog.   a Boerboel.   4 years old.  140 lbs.   

it WAS possible that he could have come all along,  but it would have taken a lot of concentrated work on all our parts before and no one was up for it.   Tay is a territorial and possessive dog.   

when they were down in the fenced in A yard,  he was off leash and could run around.  Otherwise,  leash.   They walked the entire fence lines.   Day one of learning your space.   he peed a lot.  good.   He is used to chickens,  roaming neighborhood ones,   ducks,  cats and guinea pigs.  Pays no attention to them.  Boerboel have ZERO prey instinct.   He was interested in and excited by the Goats and they were interested in him,  leary,  but not afraid.   There will be a few more leash times and then he can be free.  I'm glad.  i would have liked it to happen when Tay was "here".   He's BIG and it's a happy thing for him.   i would never choose this breed but he is perfect for their life in the city,  visits to the Hill.    Life goes on.

have put this off,  over and over.   but need to at least make a commitment to it,   so the Cloth can go forward.   Here,  then,   has been ,  since the beginning of this cloth,  since before it had its  "purpose",   the appearance of 2 of the Essential Beings.  another is in the top right….in the tree branches.   Both have the same       form.    Not the usual,  but a kind of elongated form.   I have made these marks,  symbols,  on things since i began drawing and especially when i was making the fiber figures…the angels and "dolls".   At one point i was calling those,  Essential Beings     and thought about trying to get a copyright of the "mark"  which is ordinarily in ink and a simple amorphous Eye which spirals out,  usually two turns and then,  into 3.    to me,  they represent the Essense of things…maybe energy forms,  in their most essential composition  .   I imagine them to just  "be there"…. all the time and then when " needed",    they "come".   I have no idea really what i mean by that.    I have never asked mySelf or Them to 
"explain".     But…here is this one…and it seems to be uhhhh,    engaged      with whatever is going on here.   and tonight i was thinking of how Tay will   be "portrayed"  here and realized that before that,  i need to spend time with these Beings.   and how this one was made with thread.    very different than a single line of ink.   

B Garden.   there is dissaray.   it looks exactly how it's been….alone,  to itsSelf for the last couple months.   I righted chairs,  landscape pots.   some wire trellis'.    the small patch of clover has exponentially grown.   ?    .    Crepe Myrtle in the big landscape pot is full of new leaf buds.   Maybe the fig?   Yarrow is lush.   Everything is covered with pine needles.   Most of all,  the Soaproot.   Many.  Most beauty full,  their rippled leaves and i think how they will create those slender stalks of flower that appear lit with fairy light in the dark….     B Gardem is remembering itsSelf.   

i missed Tay who would have placed herself with whatever stick just up the hill of it,   watching as i did whatever i did.    3 crows circled,  the wind chime tinkled with no wind,   but i missed her.   her physical presence.   and that's how it's going to be.   

the second day of Sun.

and

rumblestripVT.com

March 1 there was an email telling of  Orphan Wisdom being in California…Malibu,  with  Die Wise and Reckoning,  on March 12.  yesterday.     Stephen Jenkinson who i have followed at a distance for many years since reading Die Wise.    He said:

"Dying is the fulfillment,  not the end,  of life.   From a young age we see around us that grief is mostly an affliction,  a misery that intrudes into the life we deserve,  a rupture of the natural order of things, a trauma that we need coping and management and five stages and twelve steps to get over.

What if grief is a skill,  in the same way that love is a skill,  something that must be learned and cultivated and taught?   What if  grief is the natural order of things,  a way of loving life anyway?  Dying can be and must be the fullest expression and incarnation of what you've learned by living.

How you die is the proving ground for the cradle and the grave,  for every conviction you may have about justice and mercy,  about the meaning of life,  about what love should look like and what it should do."

what love should look like  and what it should do.        use the word    can.   What love can look like and what it can do.

I called Alyssia at 7 something Sunday morning.     i said…maybe don't bring Emrie.    That urge to ….shield.    When they got here,  just moments later,   Emrie said      Mom asked me.  do i want to come?  or stay home.   I wanted to come.    There was a light rain but she stayed at the fence while Alyssia pulled Sunny Ray to standing by his horn scurs and into his "house",  the calf hutch,   settled him there.    before they left,  we stood.   We said some things about how Lucky we were to have loved him,  to have been loved back by him.  She saw a tiny rainbow  from raindrops  in the paint of the car.   For Sunny Ray.   

He quietly breathed his way Out and Into the Next.   it was a gentle death.    

What all this is turnig out to be,  all this dying,   is

about love.   

the stone,  the shell.   Deb's Thread.    the unexpected.   but They knew.   

Plumcot.    down at the Big Gate.     A while ago Jenny prunned Her.   Alyssia and i were a little startled.   But look.   In all this "weather",    look at Her Sincere and Fierce love of Life.   Her multitude of  love blossoms.   Each with the possibility of ripening into a succulent fruit with a stone pit seed.   My heart can barely hold the Feeling of Her …standing there,  in Her place,   in the Rain.  Blooming.     I want to talk about the oh so so Beauty Full metaphor Peggy Mc G  gave me,  Us,   a while back   about   being a pixel.  i took it so much further,   how we are All pixels in the Big Picture.  and further,  further but i just am not ready to do that yet,   to give it what it needs,    the telling of my sense of pixel~ness,  but i was stopped in my tracks,  seeing Her….down down the road Up,  just there.   Carefree Way flowing like a little river behind Her.   

this Cloth Belongs to Tay.    i'm not sure what that means.   But i am sure of the statement of it.   This Cloth Belongs to Tay.

i at first thought to draw her standing.   Facing.     but sat with that a lot and it wasn't how it needed to be,  OR,   wanted to be.  I wanted her uhhhh,   soft.   Gentle.   maybe even a Gentle Day Tay.   ??????   OR,  maybe that's just for today,  a hard day of so much MORE RAIN,   Wind,    a hard day to find space for feeding Goats….just a hard day    and i thought how she would always be there,  just near,   watching me.    She was always watching me.   Often just lying a way back,   with a few sticks.   Watching.  Just Being There.   

i stitched more leaves.   i need MORE leaves.    the light through the window was so dim,   it was hard,   seeing where the needle might go next   and i remembered some of why i quit this kind of sewing….because the light was so Not Present    

i can use the battery for the table lamp but then it's not available for anything else,  incl.   phone.   gets used up.   and this battery i used today is  failing.   it's one of the ones i love most and it's failing.   They are no longer available.   So….not a great day.  But

i drew her.    

She comforts me.      and i Love her.    I will finish this Cloth for her.   For Us.     Whatever that might mean.