Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

This is the Key of the Kingdom: In that Kingdom is a city; In that city is a town; In that town there is a street; In that street there winds a lane; In that lane there is a yard; In that yard there is a house; In that house there waits a room; In that room an empty bed, On that bed a basket - Of Flowers, of Flowers, A Basket of Sweet Flowers . Flowers in the Basket; Basket on the bed; Bed in the chamber; Chamber in the house; House in the weedy yard; Yard in the windy lane; Lane in the broad street; Street in the high town; Town in the city; City in the Kingdom - This is the Key of the Kingdom; Of the Kingdom this is the Key. The thingness of things and how just touching the solidity of life is enough reassurance. It must be, it has to be. What's the point of all this seeking when we already have? A couple of guys turned up at the house today - returning Oisin home - oh how wonderful to have him back!! - but at some point in the conversation they began talking about the arms...

Storytelling is interesting isn't it? We do it every day, all the time. We tell stories. And the greatest of our stories is ourselves. We create narratives by which we allow ourselves to live and then proceed to live it. Should that narrative be attacked successfully, that's when we become defensive. Or at least if perceive the threat to be real. Sometime back, i wondered, if there were commonalities between creation myths - and it was difficult to see what a Blackfoot First Nation myth would have in common with a Chinese one. They are in fact so different, you'd think we came from differente planets. But the one thing that marks us out as human beings is that we need to tell stories. We have myths in common. We love telling stories - and the day we cease doing that is the day we die. Our stories sometimes live beyond the grave - it's what we call immortality. It is the only way we can be immortal. To have our names and stories remembered. However, the sad thing is that...

Yesterday...it's been a sociable and domestic two days. Ghin loves feeding himself - here are the results - and Oisin helped make salad for dinner. We raided the garden for fennel and nasturtiums - and he helped make the dressing. He loves cooking. Today we baked chocolate crackle tops for the last day of school. I really felt it yesterday as we stood in the sunshine and talked about our plans. Where would i find a school where i not only knew every child in Oisin's class, but every child's sibling and every parent of each child. This school is a precious place and the ethos is unique. I felt so held and loved by everyone who said that they were going to miss us as we were going to Singapore for sometime. It simply isn't fair. Life here is good. I talked to Julia today about the Marxist conspiracy, how Singapore had the death penalty for drugs and how while being on holiday there was good, the six month stay might be something quite different. I loved my family, but the...

I've been reading a friend's blog and she's so honest about what she's going through - down to the naming of names. And it's great. Good for her. Sod the asshole who deluded himself into thinking he deserved her and more. I wonder if i give the impression that all's well, because even though yes, all IS well, there are times when it has been so bloody hard. Last week for example was excruciating when i suggested that we try again only to have all the reasons why i am such a waste of time rehearsed to me once more. Since i KNOW i'm NOT a waste of time, that was a waste of time, but why did i have to put myself through it again? The fact is that i'm an eternal optimist. Put it down - or up - to being a Saggitarius and being ruled by Jupiter the most Tiggerish of planets. Put it down to my upbringing in sunny Singapore. Put it down to the wonderful friends and support i've had. But after awhile i begin to think, yes, there's stuff that can be salvag...

If Gordon Brown lived in Shakespeare's England, he would have been carted off to the village square, shoved on a very large pyre and burnt. His coronation in the Labour Party was met with the worst flooding in the midlands since Noah. Tomorrow he will be PM. Talk about bad omens. On top of that, a very ugly MP from the Tory party has defected to Labour. When they say that politics is show business for ugly people they must have been thinking about him. When they say beaten with the ugly stick...I know i shouldn't say such awful things because i have two young sons who although are very lovely now have all the time in the world to evolve into scary beings, but bejesus, you should see this guy. If entry to the Labour party was a beauty contest, he'd be patted on the back and be told to apply for Extreme Makeover UK. Or told to wait for the next remake of the Lord of the Rings. Chief Lord Uruk Hi. See for yourself: Quentin Davies Uruk Hai It has been a busy week thus far alrea...

It was a weekend i floated around in. Yesterday was chracterised by waiting around for Peter to say whether or not he'd turn up - he wouldn't because he was too tired to drive - and then just meeting up with friends. At about 10.30 Liz called to say she wanted to go for a walk - which we did. Although that lasted about 20 minutes - most of which time was spent shouting at Jarlath - who was running off on the steep, muddy and dangerous slopes of the Crawfordsburn forest. After that i headed for the Arnarchists Plot in Eglinton Gardens. There saw loads of people whom i hadn't seen for ages - but without the alcohol and in bright afternoon light of Sunday, everyone looked tired and worn down. I could see it, that tidal turn from twenty to thirty beginning to sweep in for so many of them. Some were in paying jobs, others leaving for better paid ones. Others for different parts of the UK or Ireland - in search of new beginnings. They seemed tired. We seemed tired. There was litt...

It's 1 am. I thought it'd be later. I spent the evening watching the documentary The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair . Then it was The Trail of Tony Blair , followed by a Dispatches on what Gordon Brown would be like as PM. It has been yonks since i watched anything on politics and it feels like i overdid it. The hypermasculine world of politics - it's the only game that's going in town and i think we deserve better. Ritualised combat which explodes into real war - discussions about fighting which then lead to fighting. I nearly met Lisa today - but she took awhile appearing at the markets, so i went home instead. As i drove back, i realised that i wasn't bothered about being alone. Yes, the logistics of it were difficult, but the metaphysics of aloneliness wasn't at all worrying. Of course, technically i'm never ever alone, with Ghin attached to me, but it would have been lovely to have the company of a husband, someone with whom life's little journey would...

Here we r 2day fter mkts n jus chillin. We oftn hve picnics in de gdn. apls 4 1 hnd typg. Hve Ghn wth me. :-)

There are whole ellisions of time that slide without me noticing. I try and remember what i had for breakfast yesterday - or what i cooked for dinner the day before. These thoughts escape me. I rack my brains to recall them and i finally do - eventually, but i have to try hard. I haven't been to the supermarket for two weeks - i had bought enough to sustain us the last time i went. So we have been sustained on yoghurt and vegetables. And the silences...i never managed to clean the house to satisfaction this week. I have taken a whole week to recover from the party. First the physical recovery and then the emotional one. I've just about done that now. I can tell because i'm uptodate with the laundry finally. The laundry is a good gauge of where i am mentally. If it's uptodate it means i'm ok. If it isn't, i'm slumping. Yesterday Lisa and Tilly followed us round Belfast. We were looking for an old bookcase to convert into a Transformer base. Oisin has so many ...

Mother - i am a mother of two. That sinks in - it seems that i am so unprepared for this. The amateur mother. There is no knock off time for being mother - and ultimately i think i wanted so to try again because i am a mother. A mother with a family. It's not so simple. A friend tried councilling me yesterday, saying, you sound clingy and desperate and if i were him, i would despise you for it. I am not clingy and desperate, i just live in hope. Where i see possibility, he sees only the negative. And i just wanted to give it one more shot. Stupid and weak maybe, but not clingy and desperate. That's the last thing i am. And should i be despised? I don't care - nothing can make me feel pain if i choose not to feel it myself. He has no kids and so he doesn't understand. He managed to piss me off yesterday. How dare he tell me that i was clingy and desperate. Fucker. I may be many things, but i am not either of these. The evening slides forward on translucent clouds. I'...

Ghin is starting to crawl on all fours. He began doing this about a week ago. I thought it was my imagination when he got up and stayed up a few seconds. Now he does a full scramble across the bed - it's a wobbly acramble though. It reminds me of baby turtles, newly hatched as they sputter towards the calling ocean on their wee flippers. They're all movement and urgency with no technique or style. That's Ghin. Sometimes he also involves his head and sometimes he just keeps going, even though it's clear he'll not be going anywhere - unless he plans to bore a hold through the headboard. Had a wobbly three days myself. I had been on a steady up over the last week that i didn't expect to be where i was again. Risking the pain of rejection when i suggsted we try again. And like a fool i did it and as sure as night followed day it came. BUT BUT today we went to the park and of course it began to rain - and as we came home, for some reason, i felt, despite the hair blo...

Just been going through other blogs. There must be people who spend hours on theirs to make them look so cool. Here's Oisin with his birthday present from Mama. It's the newest Transformer, Metroplex. He was completely wacked this weekend, and went down like a ship at 6.30. Ghin on the other hand didn't sleep till 8.30. And i'm about to clean the house.

Was reading this article on casual sex and surely the last thing casual sex is is casual. It is fraught with unspoken rules - as many as regular sex and certainly more than if you're in a relationship - a straightforward relationship of course. But what strikes me about everything these days - whether its about people looking for relationships, working, fighting for a so-called cause, tearing families apart, or trying to put them together, is that they need to do work on themselves first BEFORE they screw up other people's lives. Take politics. Today i heard this professor droning on and on about what he thought about what was going on in the West Bank. Oh my god, if i've heard it once i've heard it twenty times. Almost 20 years ago i stood in the streets of Oslo while the convoy which bore Arafat and Peres for the talks whizzed them through town. People gathered to watch and then everyone applauded when they came to a decision. Except the Norwegian who brokered the dea...

Hey there...i was trying to get Ghin to do his crawl and give me his fetching and coy smile but it didn't quite go to plan but the results were still pretty good. We.ve just emerged from a bath which is why be both look so wet and clothesless. I've put on this world music CD and he is entranced in front of the PC. Can't wait 4 WOMAD in Singapore.

I was meditating on my anger as suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh. Embracing it and trying to understand why i was so annoyed. Was it because i felt like i couldn't control the situation? Partly, but it was more than that too. Then a quote from de Mello arrived. It goes, "What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?" He also goes on to say, "Never teach a pig to sing - it frustrates you and annoys the pig." Wise words indeed. And that has been my problem. Even if the pig says it's a unicorn, or aspires to be a unicorn, it will still sound like pig and acts like one. And if it looks like a pig and walks like a pig, then, it must be a pig. So don't be thinking it's anything else. And there's nothing wrong with being a pig - pigs are lovely, they have sweet faces and make very good bacon. They love to root about in a cute snuffly manner, but one shouldn't pretend that one is anything else. However, for a long time i colluded with the pig's delusion...

Now it is time that gods came walking out of lived in Things… Time that they came and knocked down every wall inside my house. New page. Only the wind from such a turning could be strong enough to toss the air as a shovel tosses dirt: a fresh field of breath. O gods, gods! who used to come so often and are still asleep in the Things around us, who serenely rise and at wells that we can only guess at splash icy water on your necks and faces, and lightly add your restedness to what seems already filled to bursting: our full lives. Once again let it be your morning, gods. We keep repeating. You alone are source. With you the world arises, and your dawn gleams on each crack and crevice of our failure... - Rainer Maria Rilke Ghin now sleeps for a good two hours if i let him in the morning. Usually we're running around, getting Oisin to school, waiting for him to finish school. So this Sunday, without Oisin, i'm letting him have his time. I feed him around 8 am and then he sleeps. I ...

It was such a soggy start to midsummer. It has been. Floods all over UK and on a personal level, the party didn't happen at Stormont - but our place. It was not what i wanted, particularly since the cleaning up after that was going to be monumental, but Oisin would not have it postponed - so i took a deep breath and prepared for the aftermath. But first, there was the party to prepare for. I had bought bags of cakes and drinks and sausages - my plan was to rip them open and lay it on the picnic benches of Stormont. There was going to be no decoration, no cleaning up, no preping the house. Since this was out of the question, the house now had to be decorated and cleared - i did this for a couple of hours after i dropped Oisin off. Balloons were blown, streamers strung up, tables cleared away and drying laundry shoved away behind closed doors. I also bought, for good measure four tins of silly string and 50 party poppers. What the hell, i thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. Let...

We did the supermarket waltz for the first time in ages. I had clean run out of food since i hadn't gone to St George's Market on Saturday and the situation was now intolerable. Last night Oisin had noodles with fennel from the garden. Tonight i had to do better than that. So i relented and offed to Tescos. It was bedazzling and bewildering the sheer variety of trash you could get. I came out after spending £80 - a ridiculous amount of money - simply because the place is filled with shite that i'd never buy if i went to my regular shops. Like what you ask? Like Starscream, Transformer number 289. Like pureed babee food - three types - just for the heck of it. One savoury, one fruity, and one in a box dessicated. They are a waste of money, i know that, and i buy it. Like two cartons of six pack innocent fruit smoothies. Like an eight pack muller yoghurt fruit corners. Two sets. Like two cartons of Finest yoghurt - cos it sounded so delicious. Like super smelly cheese. All be...

I have put both babies to bed. Belfast was innudated today - literally - and we revelled in chaos. I loved that the carpark behind Marks was flooded. Out came Oisin's welly boots and he splashed about in the murky waters. As we got to the entrance, the store was closed, and it was bemusing for us to see the staff standing behind closed doors, keeping the floods of people who were desperate to be allowed to buy their chicken rotissere and ceaser salads out. Oisin and i called Peter up to day that we had been flooded out of the house. It was a trick, of course. Peter was deeply concerned and suggested that we use newspapers to mop up the water. I never understood this. Everytime he spilt something he would put a newspaper on it. It was very strange. On more than one occassion i walked into the kitchen lined with newspaper. It seems that the washing machine had overflowed. What was wrong with using a rag or old T-shirt? Newspapers??? Chaos - it is fun to be caught up, be a spectator i...

Belfast under 25 degs... the traffic churns, like the traffic that did all those years ago. When i was a girl, lying in my mother's room in our flat in Toa Payoh, listening to the traffic and thinking, imagining - wishing it was ocean. I would watch the cars park, the long transparent fingers of light from the headlamps stroke the backwall of the room. Car after car as the evening light faded so quickly. And then traffic still churning, like the eternal sea. This weekend was better, much better. The wrench less painful, the returning less charged. Peter stayed the night and had breakfast with us. We could have had everything, i find myself saying, as we play at happy family. This is why he had to leave, because it was too painful to have us here, happy and then having it cruelly negated by reality. Ghin sat on my lap as he fed him with tiny spoonfuls of milk from his cereal bowl. Oisin was all chat about the weekend and what they had got up to. We had lit the fire and said our grac...

Ghin as nature boy with Roisin - complete with bog mrytle and petrified tree... Had to include these because they were so funny.

We set off at Newcastle. Didn't know the amazing sight before us. One of the many, many waterfall pools. Slieve Donard - and the Glen River. Judith and Rorry play Went walking in the Mournes today. Oisin missed out cos he was in Donegal, playing X box when i last spoke to him at 9.30. But did i ever think that the Glen River held such promise? For the first time, i was quite sorry that i would be spending time in Singapore this summer. The waterfalls which opened to pools and pools of water and light - we swam in the pools of sacred river water - and i went in, despite the lack of a costume to be in the living stream. It's still going one day at a time, but it does discipline me to say, yes, there are tremendous good things out there. So much to be grateful for. Judith said, thank you lord. I want everyday to be like this. does it have to be everyday. Just once, just once is enough for me. Once - and if it happens again, it'll be twice. And then we can all be doubly gratefu...