Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Sometimes i catch myself getting old. And i don't mean the usual physical signs. Creaky knees, failing memory, white hair in ever increasing strands. No i mean in attitude, especially the attitude when i just want a comfortable life. I question myself then, does it mean i have given up? Does it mean that i no longer want to try new things? How horrible is that? I do want to try new things, its just that sometimes, i can't be bothered. And quite often those new things are so highly overrated. When i used to go to festivals, i would have to force myself to have a good time. I never saw the point of shoving and pushing yourself with millions of others to a band you could hardly see and i hardly knew. It was ridiculous. Travelling - now that's interesting. I love it when i am travelling, but i can't be bothered to arrange it. Does that make sense? I'm now of the opinion that if you can't see what you need to see in your own backyard, then there's no point travel...

These are pictures we took at the cafe this morning. Most of them were by Ghin. Except these of course. Peter reads the morning paper. Goofy mommy...i tumbled out of bed and put on something, thank fully... Gimme, gimme, gimme... Ghin now has a really amazing vocabulary. He'll tell us Let's Go, and Come on now. He is extremely independent. And holds pens, pencils and utensils with extraordinary skill, as if he was born to do this. He orders everyone around. he refuses to let anyone brush his teeth. It's a real pain. Decoration in the office - just to brighten things up a bit. My seedlings on the window sills. I transplanted a whole load of seedlings last night again. Today, there is sun. In quiet moments like this, i am complete. The sun, it shines on my shoulder, my arm. It alights warm, enlivening, quickening. It unfolds the cold fist, promises new life. Today, there is sun. It has been cold despite the sun. In Newcastle we huddled in and out between hotel and car. Despi...

Have you figured it out yet? This is the Bone House - a summer folly in Co Armagh on the Caledon Estate made of the femur bones of cows. Just for the heck of it. Talk abouut scary. A lonesome hellibore glows in the light of the late afternoon sun in a derelict farmyard. We were looking for barn owls here. Cool dude! Cool dude eats an egg. Decoration at the Steiner Fair My seedlings... Two eggs...for breakfast. Ya Kun kaya style. Yummy. I've included pictures from the easter Festival here. They're the more abstract ones i suppose. I just did it because i was fed up not having pictures. I have had lots of oppotunity to get great shots, especially of the boys growing up, but just too distracted to do anything about it. I should have done something on Mother's Day really. It was such a fantastic day. We had such a great time and it was doing something simple. We watched the Apprentice last night and there was something a bit pathetic and out of step with the times about it. ...

I have slipped for Lent. Wheat, chicken, duck and sugar. The biggies i have managed to stay off from - alcohol, coffee, tea and the meats that i do love, especially Alan's bacon! There are only two more weeks to Lent, so i'll just hang in there. It is different blogging in the middle of the night, but because i fell asleep when putting the kids to bed i had to wake up to do the household chores. I found this beautiful quote recently. It was about service...how service is part of the poetry of life. That really does resonate with me. Service is something which i have come to delight in - i'm not saying i'm a skivvy, but i now look at doing things like housework as part of the warp and weft of life. Which is just as well, since we don't live in Singapore and can't afford a live-in maid. I suppose we could get a cleaner, but really, for a few hours a week, for an activity which grounds me, why should i, i say? What was the beautiful thing i did today? My run in the...

There's no doubt about it, the world is in a pickle. Today the greenterati gathered at Nick's Warehouse in Belfast where we wrung our hands and beat our breasts at the state the world is now in. Peak oil, food crisis - v bad - organic farming being the thing that will save the world. Oh i simplify and mock... It was a Slow Food evening. Slow Food is one of those things which seems to have begun as a middle class rebellion against horrible fast food and has evolved into a semi-political movement. I can't quite tell if it's an NGO or a grassroots thing. A club or a networking group. I think it is all these things. Patrick Holden was there talking about the importance of organic farming and getting people more plugged into growing their own food supply. It was with a clear conscience i listened to all this of course as you know my food supply is mostly very local and i am growing my own vegetables. In fact most of yesterday evening was spent transplanting seedlings, Mr Hol...

A friend of mind has written to me about the Ramayana - about how Rama is a wimp for treating Sita so badly. It does show that Rama is mortal after all - he is not without fault - and it shows how prevailing patriachal ideals were too difficult to overcome in the writing of this tale of archetypes. I'm sure that most men don't think Rama is a wimp. If they were given half the chance they would have done the same. Sita - what happens to Sita? She has to wait for Rama and endure the constant harrasment of Ravana... If She resists him - but is we think of Ravana is a double of Rama, what is she resisting really? Then when Rama comes to rescue her, he insists that she walk through fire in order to prove her 'purity'. She does that and she is then welcomed. After that they have twins and he banishes her because he can't really forgive her. Rama is holding on to some kind of ideal of love which he will never find again. Rather than accept that their love has changed, he h...

I love the Steiner reading group. It's v cool. We discuss all sorts of things - aging, power structures, the state of the world's economy, Jade Goody. I promise you it is less random than it seems though. It also gives me great comfort to talk to people who are thinking differently - who are interested in being in the flow of life - in being flexible reeds. I love that. So today... something quite magical happened when i decided to think about beauty - or do one thing that was beautiful a day. Everytime i thought about doing something beautiful, all i needed to do was to put on a different lens. And this happened several times yesterday. I was running through the forest and thought, what is my beautiful thing...and i saw a swan, i saw the mist over the water, i saw the cyclists on the towpath, i saw the sun dancing in the trees. Beauty is there all the time. I also did the school's notice board, updating it as it were, and i drew these little fairies helping chicks to hatch...

Here are photos of the boys installing the tadpoles. I don't know if they're going it - the tadpoles - and even if they do make it where are the frogs going to go once they've hatched? They'll end up splatting on the road. Or in some neighbour's backyard entirely disoritentated. Reintroductions, they are more pain than they're worth...but i didn't say that. So i came home today and the house seemed empty - although the car was there. I walked all around and didn't find anyone. But everytime i went into the kitchen i heard the sounds of voices. Like the sound of a muffled radio. I found them in the backyard spalshing about, dumping quantities of mossy things into the pond followed by the spawn. I had already expressed my reservations about ths flipping tadpoles in our pond, but of course i don't really count for very much. Who am i? I'm only the PR officer who works for the RSPB, that's who. Don't mind me. Today was another one of those da...

Oisin accepts a container of frog's eggs from Wayne. I don't know where he's planning to put them. I'm going to suggest the school, because i don't see the frogs being very happy around Barnett's Road. I may be wrong. This shot i included because he looks so like Peter standing there with his hands in his pockets and observing someone else. How scary is that? Oisin helping Wayne out.. Did i tell you that Peter started growing a beard recently? He did, he did. Everyone in Donegal was wearing that hat it seems. Here's Joe on his tractor with it. It must have been really manky by the time Peter got it back. These are two funny pictures of Ghin. We went for the holi festival in Belfast and came back with jalebis. Of course Ghin loved the jalebis and refused to let them out of his sight. We thought he was going to give one to Oisin when he left the table with a plateful of them. It turns out that he had wanted them all for himself and sat in the corner with his b...

I took the bus to Derry on Saturday afternoon. I was so tired - i had just hoovered the house, transplanted more seedlings and was feeling a bit sorry for myself. Life was an enedless stream of chores. There didn't seem to be any more differentiation in the landscape. It was all one massive ice field and if there were valleys and peaks some sort of snow blindness had made innured my eyes to them. The bus was only half full, the dubble-bedekered sort. The people on the bus were all yuff, or the first of the tourists - students from other places, Germans, in search of Shangrila. The relationship between Germany and Ireland is a curious one. I've often wondered why there are so many German hippies in Ireland. Sometimes the explaination offered is it is because Ireland was neutral in the Second World War. And because they were neutral the Germans felt more at ease in Ireland. Which makes Ireland a smaller version of Argentina. There is also the Irish melancholia which is infused in...

Last night it took me only fifteen minutes to do the tidy up. This is very good news. It doesn't seem awful and insurmountable any longer. It is doable. When Peter leaves for Zen i'll hoover the house. I'm leaving for Derry tonight - i'm going for a party there. It doesn't look like Peter will be going down on Sunday. So i'll come back and do the garden. If we get a good day that'll be the garden sorted for St Paddy's day. So this party in Derry. I won't be drinking, of course. It will be a real change for me to go to a party and not drink, but i do feel that i want to do this. The last time i was off the booze for such a long time was when i was pregnant. Honestly, it was not so bad. It was also not so long ago. So this year is a year of voluntary simplicity. The seedlings are coming on beautifully. I need to thin them out. That's what i'll start doing now actually. I've also decided that from now on i am not going bore myself rigid with...

That's how it felt this morning. When i came down and everything was done. As if someone had pressed the reset button. I am so relieved. All it took was two hours. And it took two hours because i had let the laundry get on top of me. Ah well. Life is great again. I'm trying to organise a holiday to Rome now and am hoping that Natasa is going to be there when i do go. The last thing i want is for her to not be there. Rome, the Eternal City. The buildings, the galleries, the affogioto, the chiantis. Piazzas, fountains, beggars, football, and ruins. Roma. I love Rome. European capital cities are spectacular. They have the huge old structures which evoke imagination and possibility. Even when they have collapsed they are still poems to architecture. Man built this when they were at the apogee of their belief in themselves and God. There was a balance there. The sensible was the manifestation of the supersensible. Perhaps that is why so many buildings in the past are the beautiful c...

I know seem obsessed with tidying up - i probably am a bit. But it is so depressing when i work hard all day and all i have to show for it is a wad of press releases and a hacking cough. However, after sitting down and coming up with this new schedule, it became very clear to me that the only way i was ever going to get on top of this mountain of housework was to do a bit everyday in the evenings. And even as i did the dishes, i thought, i need to remind myself to wipe the kitchen counters and the hob as well. If these things are done every day then the other things - like mopping the kitchen floor and changing the sheets become a little less daunting as i don't have to do the daily chores in vast quantities and the one offs aren't a long list of one offs... Listening to Late Junction and it's been ages since i've done that. I do feel wide awake and i would attribute that to the coffee, tea and alcohol leaving the system. I now no longer depend on these to keep me awak...

I have finally come up with the scehdule which sees me tidying the house at 2230 at night. But it is the only time i can do this - anyway, as my children will tell you, that is what i do do...i wake up in the middle of the night to clean the house. This just kind of makes it official. But i have also put down on paper that i need to put the kids to sleep and then start doing other stuff. It is now official. We'll see if it works. I will just have to set my alarm. Ghin sleeps most soundly from 8 pm - 2 am - this means that i am most likely to be uninterrupted if i do things at this time. It is just a question of staying up and not succumbing to the temptation of sleeping. I can sleep later. I have also decided to sleep at no later than 2330. This means that i will get at least 6 hours sleep. And i have worked in an artists' date every month, on a Sunday. I might up it to twice a month, when i can find the time. So wish me luck. Hopefully this is me getting the rest of my life in...

After emerging from the haze of the period, i'm now totally overwhelmed by the number of things which i have to do. I feel as if i'm standing in a terribly messy room and going - now what am i supposed to do first - except that the terribly messy room is my head and everything is saying - DO ME FIRST!!!! Work is actually managable - it's just everything else that's crying out for attention right now. I have begun one of my lists again - and it does not make easy reading. The thing is that i'm so fecking tired after the day's work that i can't find the energy to do anything when i come home, beyond cook dinner and collapse in front of the TV with the kids. The truth is that i need to spend another three to four hours doing stuff everyday if i'm to get on top of everything. And i have to do this everyday. Typically, i'm thinking, i need to escape - so a holiday is starting to look really appealing. Possibly a holiday in Rome...without my children or fa...

This evening, Ghin was messing around with dinner, so i said to him have some of this. Sausage and Tigger pasta. No! he said, as usual. And then, i automoatically put the spoon in my mouth and before i knew it i was chewing the forbidden substance. Argh!

Here's a video of Ghin playing with a pop gun. My question is if Oisin never was obsessed with playing soldiers, would Ghin have been interested in guns too? A weekend has passed and it's beena week and a half of the Lenten fast. I did break it with the odd slice of pizza and the bowl of cereal with sugar, but by and large - the big things like coffee, tea, alcohol and meat - and bags of crisps and blocks of sugar, i have managed to retain. I aso have not had cheese and biscuits - well i had these biscuits that Ghin made yesterday, but that's because he made them. Of all the emotions to be with sorrow is the one i find most difficult. Just before my period it arrived. This feeling of deep deep disappointment with everything in my life. It is not the first time it has happened. Normally what i do is either get angry or get weepy and feel sorry for myself. And this time - i sat and wept and accepted it. And i just kept quiet. And there was a real physical pain in my chest. A...

It's here - that time of the month. In my twenties, i used to attribute such things to it. Being a goddess devotee and all that. I still am a goddess devotee, but probably a little less zealous possibly. My period... When i first had my period, i remember being asked by my grandmother to draw some lottery numbers. I remember it was Sunday and the family had gone to Jurong Country Club. I was feeling a bit sad that i couldn't join them in the pool but instead had to sit about with Mama. She took out a piece of paper and began writing numbers on them. Then she tore them into ten separate bits and crumpled them up. Choose four numbers she told me. I don't remember what these numbers were, but she told me she would buy me 4-D with them. It's good luck. When my mother told Mama that i had my period, i was boiled black chicken soup. I do not know what species of chicken this is. But it is smaller and it's skin is black. They double boiled it and i had to drink the essence...

The thermometer has fallen to 0 again. Certainly not the right time to fall out with your home heating oil supplier, but is exactly what i did. I looked at boilerjuice.com to see what the prices were and they were about £10 less than Hylands. So i said i would go with Boilerjuice - you know the economy and all - so first they tried to tell me how crap boilerjuice was - they won't deliver till five days time - and then when i said, no it's ok, i'll go with them, they said Well it doesn't matter anyway cos you would have to pay up front like you would with boilerjuice. Yes, i said, so. Well i have it here that your check bounced so we have to collect the money upfront, so that doesn't matter. You'd have to pay upfront. And the TONE he said it in. It was the consumer service equivalent of You're smelly and anyway i never fancied you. I was incensed - for a start, this was five years ago and the check didn't bounce. We just didn't get round to paying the...

I tried to get some writing done and at 3 am Ghin has awoken because i am not in bed with him. He's now lying on the safe eating chocolate pancakes. Human beings really do live in the moment - i think that is what our problem is. Objectivity is constantly needed. But how can you be objective when someone is being insulting or rude? Anyway, it doesn't matter. As usual Ghin has asked me a question and being a human being i have entered the moment and been delighted by him. I have begun drinking the spice seasoning for masala tea on its own. It's a mixture of cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, ginger and cloves. And it is lovely. Really warming and refreshing - it makes me think of Singapore. It's been so busy at work - and home too. I really do need this quiet time. This space to think. Tomorrow Peter is picking me up early from work - i'll work through lunch. Ghin is growing up so fast. Much faster i think than Oisin ever did. There's a deliberateness about him that rem...

I barely slept last night. After coughing and then worrying about the photocall today. At about 5.50 i looked at the phone and turned off the alarm. And decided i would get up. It has been futile worrying about the photocall. It either goes well or it doesn't go well. Either way it is what it is. Yesterday i made some piklets for breakfast. They are sweet mini pancakes. It was a big breakfast. There was also bacon, yoghurt, boiled fresh eggs. Ghin had one pikcklet and two eggs. I tried to discourage him but he wasn't having any of it. So i fed him the second egg and he didn't eat it all - just the yolk. He loves the yolk. He calls it the yolk-ert. He has his own names for things. Yoyyipopos - lollipops, pancake egg - eggs done sunnyside up, cos i do them in the pancake pan, thomas egg - that's a softboiled egg cos he gets it in the thomas egg cup. He also does this really sweet skipping thing when he's excited. It's a cross between a dance and a jump - when the ...

After all my self pity this morning, i was once again proved to that we do have a normal family life and we spent the entire day together. It was lovely. We had breakfast together, then lunch and then we went to Ikea and then had tea there. Simple, mundane, almost banal, but the simple, mundane and banal are so infrequent in our lives that they are remarkable. The boys are now driving around in the carpark of Stormont hotel. Peter lets then take the wheel and they spin around the carpark. I'm expecting them back soon. I said that i would do the hoovering, but i felt the overwhelming urge to blog and organise my life. So i promise that will up everyday to blog, to show up. It is scandalous that i only blogged nine times in February. That's really awful. It's awful for me...definitely. So, tonight - i must hoover the house and clean it, even if it does kill me. Then i must get ready for next week. Food, clothes, things, etc. Then i must list all the things i need to do and do...