Swordfish trombone

Contracted the flu off Peter and spent the last four days languishing in bed, popping paracetemol, skullcap and pespiring away, only waking to feed the baby, myself and washing, After each sleep-filled feed, i would nod off and wake drenched, but feel a little better. The whole thing has now passed, and i'm feeling a lot better. I have also, unaccountably, developed a nut allergy. Ma made some opor ayam and packed it with macadamia nuts. I had two bits of chicken and then began to slowly break out in a rash. My lips, already quite swollen - beestung, i'd like to think - became even more beestungy - and then over the three days, my hands, lymph nodes and bits of skin over said nodes developed into veritable hives - to house the bees i assume. I now have a nut allergy. I don't know how long this will continue for, or has it replaced my shellfish allergy - or added to it. I don't quite like nuts anyway, so it's no biggy, to use an Americanism.

Enough of this nonsense.

Now, here's a lovely picture of Amhairghin and his kong kong. He was weighed yesterday and was found to have put on 2 pounds since birth. I also asked the nurse about the mad crying - he does this about three times a day - going blue in the face. She said, it was either he had a hole in his heart or that he had a bad personality. Strangely enough, i found myself hoping for the latter. You just can't choose with kids can you? Will you get a sweet angel or a grumpy dwarf? Right now the stakes seemed weighed in the grumpy dwarf category given the amount of crying and complaining he does.

There he is stirring again. Before i leave, breastfeeding is tough. I used to think you pop it on, you pop it off. That is not the case. Mothers should be told the truth, just to prepare them. I also thought that because i couldn't breastfeed the last time, i was a dismal failure. It it more likely that you give up on breastfeeding than not. I won't be doing that clearly, but just so that you know, here are some of the though bits of it. 1) It's only YOU who can do it 2) No two sessions are alike 3) When the baby cries incessantly and you're standing up to carry it, then sitting down to feed it, then having it refuse you, you stand up to comfort it, then you sit down to feed it...you must burn off about 500 calries at these though feeding sessions 4) Muscular cramp - hands, neck and shoulders, especially - no matter how hard you try to avoid it 5) Leakage 6) Large breasts 7) Sleeping is more difficult on account of large water filled appendages 8) Feeding sessions that go on forever...and it does go on...But you know, like a difficult relationship that works, the results are worth it. And i should know...

Other gee gaws
Conversations are beginning about getting the construction work started as well. It's all terribly exciting. But i'm trying not to get excited.

Mother goddess
Rereading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Firebrand which is a recounting of the Trojan War from the viewpoint of Kassandra, the daughter of Priam. It's been more than twenty years since i picked it up. It's a good, if not quite Kate Chopin. However, the whole mother goddess thing i get now - and wonder if it was her who started me on the road to the goddess - it must be.

Derrida and construction
Last night Peter put on Derrida who strangely sports Peter's hairstyle, but with French Algerian panache (which character in a French film said..."I die with panache?" i can't use that word without breaking out in giggles now because it seemed to be such a strange thing to say when you're about to die - i might use it myself actually). It was so we could copy his office conservatory. It turns out that his whole house is now an office, which certainly will not be taking place in the next fifteen years here. I found it interesting that the man who has so many fascinating things about language, was mostly incoherent about love and extremely shy and private when asked how he met his wife. I enjoyed what i saw of it - with the baby hanging off me and feeding for three hours this time - (it certainly was a lot less annoying than Zizek's film The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema. I can't bear Freud and psychoanalysis, being more a Jungian myself, of course.) There were other good things in the documentary...Like the identification of the self with the one is a form of violence. That's brilliant. I may be paraphrasing him. Some stuff is pretty zen, the complete purity of forgiveness for instance. That you can forgive with an aim in mind - such as reconilication - but that would not be real forgiveness. Real forgiveness takes place without any objective or aim. You could say the same thing about love i suppose.

Real love
Real love, as the mystics and zen masters constantly tell us, takes place irrelevant of the recipient. Like the rain and sun it falls on both good and bad. I think the day we learn to love like that is when peace reigns. Finally, just to complete the thought, a couple of weeks back, in thought of the day, the contributor said that Jesus said, if you enemy strickes you on your cheek, offer your left cheek, in that way he must strike you with an open hand. The significance of the open hand is that the enemy must acknowledge your humanity when he strikes you, and when people acknowledge that in the Other, they then are less inclined to do the Other violence. I thought it was a clever reading of that detail...