Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

We're sitting by the outodoors pool, in swimming costume, Peter and Ghin and doing laps and i'm doing the blog. It amazingly HOT. As usual the media are in they're we are all going to die scenario. Instead of being able to appreciate the hot weather for what it is, especially after two years of real shite and a wet and late spring, they are whinging again. We don't know when we'll see something like this again and because they aren't used to this, of course they're highly suspicious and even the weather is up for criticism. The hot weather has as usual brought out the worst in the dispossessed and miserable. Unable to do anything or go anywhere, stuck in a place which they are unable to get out of, they turn, like cornered dogs and lash out against those whom they perceive are weaker. They are victim and bullies at the same time, and anyone is fair game. Today three drunks in a pub or on the front porch of their tenemant, wrote a letter to the police threate...

I don't understand people. Why in the wide world didn't they say they liked Michael Jackson while he was still alive? This mad outpouring of tributes - to what end? Ghin's starting to wake up. Sigh. Have to go... PS have found my camera...

It's past home time and i'm waiting for a lift from Peter. I would chance running home but my ankle is really hurting. I could take the opportunity to work, but having done so the whole day, it's not really what i'd like to do. I'm going to do a bit of planning now, that's what i'm going to do.

So sunny out there and the windows and doors are thrown open. Ghin is coughing - he spent the whole night doing so. I rubbed Tiger Balm on him and asked his great-great-grandmothers to help. At 5 am today he stopped - entirely. It's not so bad now although he still coughs a bit. But not as violently or frequently. I am hoping the good summer promised materialises. We're not going to Singapore, and Ma and Pa are coming here. I have about an hour and a half to clean the house before i head for work. I think i'll do that - and water the plants, of course. I've finished digging the entire spiral but i can't take any photos cos i've misplaced the camera. It wasn't working very well in any case, so i suppose it was time for it to go. Peonies nod amongst the cut but undiscarded hedge trimmings from last winter. I'm using them to stake to stake the seedlings and veges which i'm growing on the other side of the house. They're putting on inches everyday no...

I have started digging the last sector of the garden. Progress is being slightly impaired by Ghin who insists on using whatever tool i am working with at the moment. Changkul, rake, pitchfork - whatever. He also stands in the freshly dug bits preventing me from getting on with things and then whenever i lay another stone/brick, he'll 'hammer' it - which consists of taking a hammer and literally hammering the new stone/brick. It's ain't happening with any speed in any case, but soon, very soon, i will have laid the last bit of garden. It was very beautiful yesterday evening. Raining has been on and off all day long and i was forced to take a half day on account of having to collect Oisin from school. Peter was in London and so - i had to get Oisin from school. The school itself looked so fantastic. There's an incredible atmosphere there now. People coming and going and being busy - parents fetching and sending the kids. I seem to have picked up from being so tire...

I've misplaced my camera somewhere. It's really annoying. On the other hand it has lasted this long - my camera, which surely is a record. I've used it a lot too. It was not one of those things which were like fad type toys which i bought and then promptly forgot to take out, dust and so on... I was thinking of new love - it is not soft and warm, it's actually violent and warm. It also belongs to those who live in their yuff. See if someone came up to me and offered me new love on a plate now, i would have to pass. I just don't have the energy anymore. It would be like someone giving me a puppy. It's very nice but i think perhaps you'd better find another home to rehouse it in. And i'm just being honest. I'd have to say, we need to just cut straight to the chase...all this (and i'd wave my arm) this is all very good, but this stage passes and then what...what happens after this stage? I'd imagine i'll have to watch Oisin and Ghin go throu...

It's raining. Summer rain that is warm and soft. Like new love. New love... last night i was lying in bed and recalled the first time i lay in bed with another. How wonderful that was...I realise now that this blog is a public record after all. It is not my real self. My real self, my real diary would go on to put that down. Because it is a blog, that will be secret. And it is right that it stays secret. It stays with me. A fragment from the past that will always remain mine. I could pick it up perhaps and turn it into a poem - distance myself from it. Disown it slightly. Embellish it a little, or disparage it - it's very fashionable to disparage love. Especially love that doesn't work out. But i can't disparage it. All the love i have had has been simply wonderful. If i have nothing i regret it is this: the love that i have lived. I feel especially privileged, that despite the wounds and the tears, the disappointments and the heartaches, i loved. I loved. And i know th...

I was doing the laundry which was backlogged by about three and a half loads and when i dragged up the baskets to the bathroom i passed the bedroom and there were the two boys, sitting on the bed and looking intently at the compendium of Horrid Henry which we have. Ghin was listening intently and Oisin was reading intently, one word at a time. They looked so beautiful in the evening light, being with each other. At that moment i understood what real happiness was. So i grabbed the camera and promised myself that i would remember this moment - and most especially the feeling that went beyond the photos - the photos only a momento, a souvenir of my happiness. This photo is to typical of the two - Oisin in the background, quiet and observant, Ghin up front, right in the lens. He has been photographed since he was no time at all - and is utterly at home in front of the camera. My boys... i still cannot believe i am the mother of these two incredible woodland creatures. Big hugs... Are we d...

Gardened all evening today. And am wondering where the boys have gone to. I told Peter to go and get a table and set of chairs of the garden and they have no been gone for almost three hours...hmmm...so, i have been left on my own for a bit before the madness of tomorrow begins again.

I ran home - again. I ran home because i am definitely addicted. I managed to shave off 15 minutes. How is that possible? I have a theory - it's because i knew exactly how far far was and did not hold back. So i shaved 15 minutes off. It's good. Now that the running has started i can see how well linked it is to the thinking that takes place - or the possibility of thinking. Today, i swept up all my diaries, books, notes, etc and went outside to sit in the sunshine and plan. I'm not sitting here any longer, i thought, and just went to the picnic benches that surround the office and sat, beneath a rowan tree that was buzzing with bees and wrote, a dreamt and planned. As you know, i have been trying to simplify my life and looked at the things that i could cut back and there was nothing i could cut back. So i then i decided, ok i will do these things, but i will do them with simplicity and beauty. And this will certainly slow me down. Anyway...it's an experiment. Shadow h...

I ran home from work today and then with some prompting from Oisin, i cut the boys' hair. Oh dear... It was a bit of a disaster. I think i shall have to take them to the barber's tomorrow. Sigh. I spent the morning in Eglantine Gardens, enjoying the sunshine and chatting to friends. It is a community garden and i first went to it about five years ago. It was little better than a dump and there was a fire, some very drunk people (including myself) and lots of chatting and laughing. The anarchists were young then. The anarchists i knew. Although i was told by a Spanish anarchist that there were no real anarchists in Belfast because we did not squat. Even within anarchism there are pecking orders, oh the irony of it all. It's a bit like when i went to see this conversation between Gerry Ar and Gerry Kelly during some feile, and at one point there was this rather distasteful section when GK was have this weeing contest with Ger Ar about how many people in Ballymurphy got lifers...

Sometimes i surf the net looking for the meaning to life. Honestly. I do this. I don't type in meaning to life, but look up things like Shamanism. Or Mystic Poetry. Or Feminist Expression. Or Goddess Spirituality. I am looking for answers.  I have not found them yet. I have found websites though and talk at length, in great detail, about aliens and their relationship to the person writing on that website. Or websites which people put their art on. There are websites of people trying to sell all kinds of things. Once a man put his wife up for sale. I think i recently heard that someone was selling their virginity on e-bay. I read this book by a man called Peter Kingsley. It is alright. His style of writing is poetic at first and then entirely tedious. There is a photograph of him at the back of the book. It has put me off the book entirely. It's funny isn't it? How a photo can influence what you read? I am especially interested in the journey to the dark side. In the way tha...

Oisin lost his two front teeth three weeks ago. Here he is showing them off. He is also eating pancake, which might explain the rather gruesome looking bits in his mouth. Ghin is having his bacon with eggs. And toast. His favourite breakfast. He eats only the yoke of the egg ... Peter crashes out on the sofa next to Oisin... There has been no entry because i am tired of hearing myself say that i am tired. And that is indeed what i have been saying over the last three weeks. While there are things that i'm really pleased about like the garden, there are also things which i am less pleased about like the state of the house and the routine and the various email accounts. I feel as if everything has been backlogged and my head is a giant logjam. I've not run regularly since Rome - actually since i sprained my ankle - and work has been going crazy. There have been hits and misses with the media, but that was always going to be the case with the state of the news. I do wonder that ho...