Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Rainbow drops - can't beat them... Oisin's work: The Rain fell and Leafy was Very happy. How sweet is that? Aren't i gorgeous? Watching the Midsummer bonfire... Hee hee hee... in the driving seat... Four more days to Singapore. I am being asked to bring the most bizarre things. A flat cap. Sponges from LIDL. Clothes from Oxfam. Garnier anti-frizz serum. Last night i had dinner with Linda who is decamping from Northern Ireland for England. Wiltshire. I was asking about Stonehenge school for E- Stonehenge school how cool is that? I'm looking to get some pottery pieces for Jac and Melanie from Benburb. Those incredible mugs - in turquoise. I'm favourite colour. I'll be going down on Saturday. After i collect the meat from Alan's. It'll be a busy last four days. Peter is selling his car. A milestone, as it were. After this we shall be a one car family. I shall enjoy the challenge. What else...i had so much i wanted to say, but have forgotten. Mustnupdate the...

I am reading Simon Critchley. I do not understand very much of what he says, apart from the idea that an anarchist politics is a sound one. I agree with the man, although, i have to admit i came to the same understanding from a very different route. I have read his eposition on Hume and Kant, about n times and not understood it at all. Philosophy is a result of a dsiappointment with religion and politics. Ethics are about shaping an integrity in this cynical disingenuous world. Activism is a response to this. It's a bit like Camus, which i must admit i only read twenty years ago and very superficially. Suffice it to say, i cannot agree with his deduction. I advocate anarchism now because from where i am now, it is the only so called politics which places responsibility in the hands of individuals but requires them to consider the whole from a Zen position. Look at reality, says anarchism, and tell me what you see. Tell me what do you see with your heart and with your mind. Tell me,...

Today is Oisin's birthday. His seventh. He is in London, at a Dr Who exhibition with Peter. When i last spoke to them, they were in Covent Garden having pancakes. While i know i chose to stay home and not bother with the trip, i did have a pang of envy there. At home, i feel a wee bit like Cinderella. Albeit i do have my little prince as company. We were awake at 4.30 this morning, as the travellers left for London...and at 5.30, i heard a programme about the Desert Fathers. The young men they were, even if they were called fathers. The same fire in the belly as Bhudda when he left for his search. The same fire in the belly that inspired Che Guevara. The same fire that i see in the eyes of the young men and women on rallies and protest marches. The same fire that lit me. It's hard to acknowledge that the fire's different, you know. It's like defeat, but is it? Is it defeat to say that it was youth, really? Or that it was me being young. And there's nothing wrong wit...

I am aware of the prat i sound like in my last posting. When we were kids - i'm sure even now - people who had been overseas and complained about the heat and/or acquired bizzarre accents were seen as pretentious gits. In addition to complaining about the heat in my last posting, people need to also know that i HAVE acquired a bizarre accent. It is so bizarre that no one knows where i am from. I have been from Canada, Australia, America, England - and sometimes, i am from Donegal. Occassionally, i am from 'Northern Ireland'. I have never been pinned as having been from Belfast or Derry, because although it is Norn Irish-ish - it isn't specific enough to be an identifiable geographical area. I have never been told i sound Irish Irish though. It is something i could try to work on. Previously, when i went back to Singapore, i used to be able to affect a reasonable Singlish type thing. But now, even though i can still do this, i sound bizarre to myself. I know i'm putt...

It's so hot tonight. How i will cope with Singapore... it has become hotter and hotter in Singapore over the years. I may have left it only ten years ago, but the whole region has changed incredibly. In many ways the success - or so called success of Singapore - has been a disaster. Whole countries look to it now as an example of how ex-colonies can succeed given the will and the draconian laws. So what's a few political prisoners and decimated forests? We want to have your shopping centres and your patterns of consumption too. We want your GDP, your skyscrapers, your phony rhetoric, your short sightedness, your overcrowding. We want that. That's success. Singapore is like colonisalism's Frankenstien's monster. Stitched together from a hodge podge of cultures and economies, from the fragments of civilisations, and given a shock of independance, which it didn't really want to have, it woke up and began lumbering towards the waiting world. And now, it's really...

It feels as if i have wakened from a weekend long dream. And i dreamt of incredible things. The Lord of the Rivers brought me to his secret places and i was honoured in every way a man and woman can honour each other. On Slieve Donnard, i watched a raven family test the winds. Up here, here where i struggled to arrive, they were gods. Flying from peak to peak, stone to stone, corpse to corpse, laughing at my efforts, taking me along with them in their soaring flight. On their backs the whole sky was carried. Everything had made them happen - and that everything had made me too. They gave me encouragement. Fly they said, we will teach you flight, as we teach our child. You can learn together. I lay back on the heather, closing my eyes to open my heart. Trusting, i let my spirit free, i was a falconer commiting her bird to the heights. There, i said, flinging my heart to the emptiness that awaited it; my heart was not told twice. A magus' trick to throw a stone and watch it turn into...