Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

The last week or so has been hectic and it looks set to be even more so in the days to come, culminating in the elections themselves of course, but i have really enjoyed it. It started off slowly at first, but the reality of being in the elections has exploded and i sit here, tuned into Ghin's little groans, surrounded by bits of paper and memories of the day before, exhilirated from the activity. The picture is of Ghin with Pa in Cafe Renoir's where we are waiting for the Green Party bus to show up. I dipped into the flickr site, but Peter hasn't uploaded the pictures as yet. Pa has been regaling me with stories on the campaign trail. It's a small party that sets off - just the family - on ours of course because all attention is being given to Brian and Ciaran's campaign, but it's still very enjoyable - and the most enjoyable time i've had with the folks since they've arrived. So he tells me about how there are 30/40 people who go campaigning with the P...

"Within the next twenty years, unless we make substantial changes in our ways of doing and being, we will soon find ourselves on a planet managed according to the principles of bereaucratic rationality and economic growth which have been grinding themselves into the face of the earth for the past 150 years." - Peter Timmerman It's 2.40 am and i've just done the early morning feed. Amhairghin woke between them, showing how you can never plan for anything when it comes to babies. But i like this. I like the spontenaeity and chaos of the infant. And talk about spontenaity - it's tomorrow and we have just canvassed Comber, Newtownards and attended a Green Party press call. The people in Comber were genteel - the people in Newtownards harder, colder, bursque. Pa said, you've got yo have a thick skin - even PM gets told - he waves his hand here. Lee Kuan Yew's picture got moustache. So you've just got to be thick skinned. The best advise i've received. B...

Finished Justine this morning and swooned with the concentrated intensity of the writing. It carried me, over and above the sleepy roofs, but just beneath the stars, their smoggy beauties dulled by the cold dark morning that murmured like a drunk dreamer stirring within the confines of the sonumblent space. The cars silenced, the trees silenced, my son, quietened too. Just myself, naked in bed, with a book that had flown me, magical carpetlike to Alexandria and back. How gorgeous life was when i had completed it - how everything seemed more alive. All the lovers, all the disappointments, all the hopes - like tiny fireworks, flickering, tickling the secret clay vessel of memory. All made true, all made bearable, celebrated, beautified... Been trying to get the man from PA now for the last half hour and he isn't off his phone. I've just written a rather impassioned article for Green Politics and here it is. I was going to do a sensible one, but decided against it. Not after Liann...

Requests and questions have started coming in through the mailbox. Groups, individuals, etc are asking me what i think about water charges, rate hikes, women's issues...it's both fascinating, terrifying and deeply exciting. What pulls all this together for me, i must now ask myself. The green party's all well and good, but it's still far too male. Must it continue to be male to be mainstream? Could i start lighting the female fuse in it? I googled ecofeminism and Starhawk's name came up. Suddenly, it all coalesed for me. My art, spirituality, politics and life - i live this way already - in touch with the earth, certainly in my head. I struggle to make it real in parts of my life - especially the parts which continue to be thwarted by competitive, hypermale thinking - it's now a question of translating it to my politics and communicating this. How do i communicate that stones have songs to teach us and we'd do well to listen to them? That our development is ...

Yesterday an 18 year old voter called to say that he would be voting for the Green Party. I was delighted. I think we definitely have the youth vote, if they did register themselves. I was speaking to a likely voter who said that he hadn't registered because he was sick and tired of the stupid politics that went on here. I think that people my age are the highest non-registered voters. People who are younger may actually see Northern Ireland as different. The last ten years has brought a possibility which we are finally beginning to see in these elections. And the bankruptcy of parties in tackling the most pressing issue of the day - living with integrity - has been revealed. I was thinking last night, as i fed Anhairghin, that the term Customer Service was deplorable because it commodified people. It made those with money arrogant - expecting and demanding service and those who received the money subservient and resentful. Customer Service should be replaced with mutual respect - ...

These are the cotton diapers. They aren't as soggy as i thought they would be. I cannot tell you what a joy it is to change diapers now - i no longer have that horrible nagging feeling that i'm contributing to the landfill mountain that lies at the entrace of North Belfast. Here are CNY pictures from Aurelia. It has been so busy with us in the last week that i completely forgot to take CNY pics of ourselves. Have to go now. Wish i could update you about the events here, but Amhairghin's on my knee and it makes it hard to continue writing. I might do it downstairs on the laptop instead.

Thought that i'd update the photos. I've been doing the bits of the blog i've been able to do downstairs where there is no connection to the digital camera. So here i am upstairs and here are the pictures which i've taken in the last week. My favourite must be of Oisin and Amhairghin. As i type this, Amhairghin is balanced on a pillow on my knee, breastfeeding. If an opening appears in the Olympics for breastfeeding i'd think about attending the heats. I've breastfed in every conceivable angle at this stage. On the radio is a documentary about William Wilberforce who abolished the slave trade. That kind of zeal is so inspiring. I will not rest until i abolish the slave trade. If we could have that same zeal about the use of oil or climate change....or saving wildlife or local food... In the next blog, there'll be photos of Aurelia and cotton diapers...

There has been a mighty kerffufle in the airing of the Green Party Rev Billy video. It has gone straight to web release - which is supposed to be rather hip and trendy. It has already received 900 over viewings on the YouTube site, which isn't too shabby. I like it. I think it gets across the message ibn a funny and engaging way - unlike these other parties which don't get any message across, apart from it'll be more of the same nonsense. Today i'll be continuing the quest to get the children's savings accounts open. We went down to the co-op bank yesterday and were told that they had to send away to get the accounts approved of. It will take two weeks. You could have seen the tumbleweed whistling through the reception. I thought that accounts could only be sent away to be approved off in plays called "Stagecoach" or at the time when stagecoaches were used. This resulted my mother entering one of her "In Singapore this would have never have happened.....

I sent Ma and Pa out with Sandra and Oisin three hours ago and they're still out. Postering. It's an awful day and i'm feeling worse and worse about it. I didn't go because the baby was crying. I can't wait to see Ma's face when she returns. Jacq sent a whole load of pictures from CNY. Very sweet. Aurelia with various unknowns appeared fragrant and poised - smiling gaily. The cotton diapers arrived today. It seems you can put the dirty diapers in the bag for a week and not suffer consequences. Gary the Blooming Bottoms man was very serious when he told me this. So it probably isn't a joke. I can't wait to the see Ma's face when i tell her this as well. We celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday evening. There was steamboat, pau yue and even tang o. I had requested tang oon as well and that was great. Very delicious. We exchanged oranges and regaled Peter and Marie with new year stories and legends. I see where i get my love of story telling from - be...

Watching the news as i blog here. Bernard Matthews the turkey farm in the centre of the bird flu case has seen a slump in sales. Of course he has and i hope he closes down. The inhumanity of it all is breathtaking in its audacity. Peter and Oisin attended the memorial service of another Oisin yesterday. It was the stillborn son of a friend. The baby was already eight months and had to be delivered by C-section. These are the moments when either faith fails or upholds you. Questions become insistent or evaporate. Resistance, as they say, is futile and yet acceptance is impossible. But accept we must and all words are insufficient to fill the gaping wound which is as cruel as it is random. There is a beautiful website dedicated to thie child. Reading the tributes and the superhuman wrestling his parents have jotted down made me weep. The campaign starts in ernest next week. I'm a bit disappointed thatg there isn't more about wildlife in the manifesto, but it's a bit late now ...

More pixes of Aurelia, Jacq's babee...say ah!

Pa is extremely excited and has decided to stay on - with Ma, sigh - to take part in the campaign. Pa has texted all of Singapore to tell them that i'm standing for the elections and everyone has said that this is a good thing. It's quite sweet really. He has also told me that i look very cute in the election poster. Cute. That was the effect i was going for, definitely. Today we stopped off at Panini's in Holywood and i dropped by Heidi's to show her Amhairghin. She was delighted and had heard that the birth was really really quick. It's fantastic the way word gets round here. We both agreed what a good thing home birth was and it felt so good standing in her lovely shop, surrounded by good things which were loved and known by the person who had ordered them in. That's what a real place is. It reminds me of the Lian Seng Ah So's shop at the bottom of the block of flats, where the Mrs lived out her days on a three legged stool, watching the passers by as she...

I'm sure if you've been following this blog that you're wondering what Strangford is like. It is one of the most beautiful coastlines in the UK and is home to thousands of Brent geese during the migration in the autumn. My platform reads something like this: In addition to the Green Party's agendas on climate change, the economy and the peace proecess, I will work hard to: Ensure that rural communities and the environment are strengthened and improved by securing the livelihood of farmers and farming, championing sensitive and intelligent planning, and creating symbiotic links between the city and countryside. Call for an education system that meets the needs of local communities and the well-being of the children it serves. Safeguard the integrity of unique Strangford countryside and the wildlife that depends on it through an independent environmental protection agency and better designation, protection and monitoring of wildlife sites. Improve personal and road safety...

Have registered as the Green's Strangford candidate. It has been a quiet day, but it's been spent getting the leaflet and press release in order. Have to go now...

Here are two photos from August. Mama and Oisin and myself and Jacq, already blooming with the babies we had in us. He has finally settled down and i'm going to do the same now. He had a fussy night, feeding and crying in short spurts. I think at this stage we expect them to settle. I have to not expect. More lessons in Zen.

Justine is a beautiful, supine book. I read it in the coils of the night, between feed and sleep, by the low light of the night lamp, my baby cradled in my arms, long after he has dropped off to dreams with his half opened mouth lax against the trusting skin of silence that envelopes us. I read, not daring to breathe, as i saunter through the filthy, mean streets of Alexandria, going deeper and deeper into his world of poisoned love. Of love which is full of tears and pain - a gothic love that occupies drugged out bedsits that are smeared with blood, semen and tears. Dusty, tired, layered sadnesses, disguised as hope, sitting forlorn in the photoframes of our imagination. I do not desire this world, but i am captivated it. I admire it the way i would the alphabetitised lorongs in that border the east end of Singapore, where women sit with men at tables strewn with masticated bones and beer rings, under red lights and neon signs that advertise hotels you rent by the hour. What is that ...

Pele, goddess of volcanoes It seems that after five weeks new mothers tend to snap. Last night Amhairghin woke four times and found feeding difficult. I found myself very close to that edge. What was he crying for and after a month shouldn't he have managed somehow to settle into getting used to the breast? I don't mind the crying - but when he keeps slipping off the breast and yelling whenever let down takes place...what's that about? surely he knows he has to expect this. I know he's only a baby...it's irrational on my part, i know...i really shouldn't read Oliver James' Affluenza . It's rubbish really. Contradictions and the rants of a grumpy old man. I find what he has to say about mothers and children particularly useless and what happens to me is that i tend to relate what i read to my life and before i know it i'm going through the possibility of having postnatal depression, when i clearly don't have it. I could do without it. I was planni...

I don't have a picture of Amhairghin for today because the camera isn't hooked up, but it will arrive when i've done so tomorrow. (I've uploaded him now...) In any case, he looks a sight. He is now covered in baby acne - a red splotchy affliction due to hormones which have been passed over by myself. It looks dreadful but it seems it's pretty normal. My poor little baby!!! I didn't get him weighed this week, but he should be over 9 pounds. There really are two people which need to be thanked over this month - Pa and Ma. Ma has done all the shopping, cleaning laundry and cooking - today we had cheng pi kuat and tomorrow Pa is making fatt choy (hairy fungus with shitake mushrooms - will take a picture for you to see this chinese delicacy.) It has helped me recover and bond with the baby - and while that has been stressful, it is nowhere nearly as stressful if i had to do it myself. So hooray for Asian wisdom. Confinement rules! Update on bird flu - the vet who dia...

I have such ambitions for the coming year. Walks in Ireland in particular are high on the agenda. Discovering this place before it is completely ruined by developers and the crass nouveau riche. I don't even know if they are rich. They certainly have lots of credit and there is no shortage of people wanting to loan you money on daft APR like 19.9%. I'm not very good at maths but even i know it theft at those rates. How could they be allowed to exist? That and the house, as well as helping the Steiner school get it's PR act in gear. Plus there are any number of friends to hang out with - most of them female - in fact all of them female. There are a couple of guys, but men have fallen off the radar, with childbearing and childrearing. Having spent most of my youth in a convent, being friends with women is what i do best. I find that men are never interested in you platonically. I can think of only two exceptions to the rule. It's very disappointing. In any case, as my mot...

That's Aurelia at two months, Jacq's baby. It's up here for all our rellys across the globe. She's absolutely gorgeous, isn't she?

What is it about babies that they stir in the heart such feelings of tenderness and longing? Have i ever loved the way i loved when i hold my sons in my arms? Did i ever understand what it means to fear until i had children? I am reading Justine by Lawrence Durrell now. A novel you must read in bites because his prose is so thick and heavy. It seems to be woven out of the dense green smoke of the opium parlours of Alexandria itself. Durrell was a civil servant (Anglo-Irish it turns out) and lived a rather messy life. It's a life that i don't particularly admire in my middle age. Lots of status but little soul - an invention of soul - it's a great invention, but i'd rather live the real life of someone who threads soul through their reality. Peter showed me a bit in O'Donaghue's Divine Beauty - it had a passage about Amhairghin - quoting the poem and talking about the Celtic consciousness - about inhabiting a world which was multidimensional. It was this ...

Unbreakable, O Lord, Is the love That binds me to You: Like a diamond, It breaks the hammer that strikes it. My heart goes into You As the polish goes into the gold. As the lotus lives in its water, I live in You. Like the bird That gazes all night At the passing moon, I have lost myself dwelling in You. O my Beloved - Return. -Mirabai This poem was posted by Prema, a friend as a comment. It is heartachingly beautiful, like the Shiva poems by the female mystic Mahadevi. Poems like this can be tasted on the tongue, they create a synthesia which allows you to inhale seasons, or feel colour. I love them, best of all. It is Imbolc today - the coming of the lambs. Brigid, the bright goddess finally wakens and walks the land in her maiden form. I love the goddess. She has blessed me with everything a woman should be blessed with. When i leave her earth, there will be few questions which will be unanswered. Even now, there are no regrets - i have lived life to its fullness, tasting the sweet ...