ashes

 

his ashes are under this. the person i believed in. who asked me to believe in him.
i think he was sincere, in this asking. i think it was real.
but
then...he couldn't follow through.
When someone can't follow through, who do you
blame?
there is no blame.
but there is, always, some kind of truth.
it is the forever looking for the real, soft, loving truth that
has worth.
i think of Jude's being. she is talking about this.

 

thank you, all

 

for responding to these things
that are actually small moments that become days that become a life~time

i am very interested lately, well always, but even more lately
about how there are only really just moments.
in that post, a moment in a photograph
a cloth
a string of thoughts put into words

thank you, each of you, for responding

creation myths

 

 

we are evolving. not finished, and so i feel like i can continue with my own interpretation of creation.
this cloth is one that i was compelled to make when i first came across Spirit Cloth i think last November.
i had never done anything like it before.
it is autobiographical. you can see my toe in the
capillary fringe which is a true scientific term for a layer of earth/water/oxygen here in the Rio Grande
Valley of south central new mexico. if a being, say a tree, bush, or a woman, can make contact with it's
root, it can live.

the second photograph here is of my granddaughter and her son. visiting. sleeping.
this granddaughter was conceived in my daughter's own creation myth at her age of 16. i voted for abortion.
the 16 yo daughter was quiet and in her myth, the featus, (who is the sleeping young woman in this photograph)
stopped moving for a day or so. we were quiet too. then, i received a phone call from the daughter from
her alternative school. she had been in choir class and singing and opened a piece of Fleer bubble gum
which had "fortunes" on the wrapper. the fortune on her wrapper said something very close to: "you can have
what you want if you want it". she called, to say that she wanted this baby. that she had felt lost when
there was no movement and upon reading her bubblegum fortune and realizing she WANTED this baby, the baby
(the sleeping young woman in the photo) moved.

22 years later, the baby girl sleeps with her own baby son while visiting from the navy in San Diego. She
has a husband. She has a life. She has a baby boy.
She has taught me a huge percentage of what i hold of value about living. She is magnificant.
and when she saw this cloth i made,
she asked for it.
i have made a ton of things. and this is the first thing any of my family has

asked for.

a creation story

 

in the beginning, there was cloth
j.hill

just wanting to look at where the day got to...i began at 8 am. it's almost 12 hours later.

in the beginning

 

 

am thinking, the beginning is where ever something begins, or is thought of as beginning, so

who would have ever guessed...one thing led to the next

 

monsoon season

 

rain
cloth line: left 2 weeks onion skin in Sun
right trumpet vine, exposure to air
black/white dog
the rug after laundromat

seams

 

last late afternoon and on into the evening was disorder in the hood. there is a relatively (very) new
person on the road that is quite the nightmare and was being what she is best at, a nightmare, and
doing this with my across the road neighbor Margie and when these things reach what feels like Critical Mass,
it is my job to Witness. I have to sit on my back steps and listen, be ready to intervene if necessary on
Margie's behalf, somehow...i can't imagine what exactly that would be, but....and it went on into this
morning with the visit of the local sheriff's deputy and again, i am sitting on my back steps, in case.
Then
i go to work to the moderately dementia'd person and end up spending an entire day taking her shopping and
then there was a GIGUNDA STORM
and all the while, all i can think of is
cloth. so here i am, and i want to put Manya's words here because they made
All The Difference In The World

"it is the trickster who lives in the seams and all the inbetween places and it makes me happy to think we are making a house for him. it is worth cutting up an expanse of cloth, just to stitch it back together again to make that
inbetween space where he likes to be....
inviting the agent of chaos..., no?"

these words are very important.
and i look at Jude's post, the picture of her beautiful aqua mom, and i think of what i responded to in that
post of her beautiful aqua mom and then her beautiful aqua stitches

and i think...it's the trickster, and better words yet, even
the agent of chaos
that is really totally NECESSARY
in a woman's Life
and if i have no role model, then...more important, even
to watch my Self very very closely....

chrysalis

 

butterfly 2 a

 

ok. big storm coming...It's balancing on the Rim of the world at this very moment and will roll down from
the West any second... barometric pressure, whatever that is, is sensed as changing drastically

which is appropriate to the day.
I am uneasy, restless about this patchwork. maybe because it comes right after the Cloth to Cloth and the
Spirit Cloth. i think so. there was just a natural FLOW then and now, there is this challenge.
I spent much of the day trying to figure out how to patchwork a lizard and it didn't work, lizards are all
curves and i made 3 cloths and 3 lizard cut outs and .... nope.

so...i sat.
a while.
but wanted to
sew...which is what i have done every day now for what? 2 months?
so
back to butterfly 2. how can i make this..."me?" eeeee......
so i went to the shelf and took down the bag that has scraps from a woman i know...the bag called Probably
Will Never Use
and riffled through...hmmm. flowers. ok.
and here we are.

patchwork butterfly 2

 

a quiet process. stopping to look a while at each step. talked to self, things like
"okay, this goes here, pin it. and again. good."
dogs lined up and watched, listened.

i am just going to let it all rest here for a while.

patchwork butterfly 1

 

how interesting a human being is. and i speak of myself because i am most familiar to my self...and a further
episode of Weaving Selves Together:
Beast Workshop. a simple pattern for a patchwork butterfly.
and what ensued was startling. a small chaos of just 8 small pieces of cut paper. how big? square or
rectangle? the ruler supposedly making reliable measurements is not. what one would assume to be the
same is skewed. work work work to make a correct paper pattern of 8 pieces.
close enough.
choose fabric: left and right must relate. this is hard.
cut pattern pieces, see that they fit, stitch, press seams flat with iron, stitch bands etc etc etc
all the while running back and forth to Jude's peaceful little video where everything is exactly as it
is supposed to be and referring over and over to the printed instructions............

i can feel the neurons clacking in my brain, like they are just a little off, like when the truck is "missing",
something has shaken loose

so, finally, the 3rd body is fat enough to pretty much cover the flaws and here is a
patchwork butterfly.
Who would guess this would be such a challenge?

and then i dream and am restless all night waking many times, getting up, looking at that butterfly, and i
suddenly understand something that has been such a mystery for so long. it is crystal clear.
and i am aware for the first time really of how i have either resisted or been unable to follow a pattern
all my life. i don't know which yet...but it's true. and i refer to Pattern in neon. like in living, like
how i took off and wandered and chose the last 21 years of my life, all free form...no pattern at all...

very interesting, all this. today i will try it again.

neighbors

talk about perfect............
the horses got loose. 5 of them.
running up and down
back and forth
shrill sounds

as always, they are
FREE
do they run
for the mountains?

no.
up and down the road....
shrill whinnying
and it's almost dark.

me. a beast

deanna said
we are all beasts.
this has snagged me, sure as a lobster.
what would i look like as a
beast?

a beast

 

for a long time into this beginning, the running commentary in the mind
is: i don't want to do this. i don't want to do
patchwork...cutting things, ironing down seam allowances
and i don't but keep going in the spirit cloth way
and then, thinking of the bird that got blonde hair, i
remember saying i am not good at whimsy, but appreciate it in others.

whaa
whimsy, and i think i can't but keep going
and
here is a baby goat.

for Kellie of Spirit Cloth Workshop

 

 

 

 

these are some....

a helper

 

a cloth

 

continued on.
invisible baste
small details around the letter of intent and the surrendered dress
i have now, not a fabric collage, but a
cloth

 

a perfect morning

 

long slow female rain last night. if again tonight, the toads will rise up.
rust and onionskin drying on the little cloth line

i think this is it

 

Wind. Wind flows out of the Unknown that is always somewhere out there.
the Grasses found their place and don't know till i push publish this post, if they can be seen?

or this

 

a friend

 

in between
looking here, writing, thinking, i am finishing watering. it's dark so i take the flashlight to see if i've
given enough water (hose) and ta da, look who is glad that i did this.

1988, Ann Arbor, Michigan

 

in Michigan, it was salamanders. some skinks, but not a lot of lizards. Salamanders. all my life.
in 1988, i knew that something was shifting, that no matter how hard i tried, things that didn't make sense,
wouldn't.
and when i didn't know what to do in those days, i drew a self portrait.
here, a lizard. that said, go.
it's been a long time since then and many things have occured, and
here the lizard is again and this time says
stay.