It's not easy being alive...and so what?
Summer is over, not that we had a summer, but the air is nippy. Nippy and cold and the wind from over the lough is sharp. It's not really fair because it's been so soggy and miserable.
I'm going to be laid up in bed today because i'm not feeling the best. Why are human beings supposed to feel all these things? The ups and downs of health, moods, fortunes, etc. One minute you're laughing and the next you're being hounded by doubt. The thing is that there is no answer to that question why and our need for a why has resulted in religion, psychotherapy, art, myth, etc. Why do we need to justify things to ourselves? Why do we need reasons?
Probably because we do feel all these things...so we feel these things because we feel these things. If we could just stop the world from spinning around in our heads, we'd be so much better...but the world still spins and the best thing we can do it just accept its spinning and watch it - good bad or indifferent.
So it is one of those days when i feel that everything is slightly pointless. But it will pass. The full moon, the time of the month, the work that i need to do...missing Ma and Pa, and the kids - wanting to be there for them, but not being able to be fully. Or as fully as i'd want to.
We were watching Merlin last night and i had forgotten what a good show it was. The over arching theme that runs through it is the loss of the spiritual - how culture has become entirely empiricist to the point of being fanatical about it. I'd be really interested in getting the DVD collection of it. Must order that for Oisin for Christmas.
Ghin was transfixed but had to watch it from my arms. He seems to be having this thing about dragons recently. I collected him from school yesterday and he told me that there was a dragon in the sky and it had landed on the tree in Stormont. Mummy, look at the dragon he said, pointing to the tree. I can only assume that he was seeing an elemental - children are able to do this - so i said, yes. It is a dragon. Then he said, it's coming to eat us. No, i said to him, the dragon won't eat you. Isn't it sad that we have demonised this powerful symbol in our culture? (He doesn't say that a starling is going to eat him. Because it is a creature that we cannot see, that we have lost to our awareness - a creature like unicorns and angels - we begin to make up stories and often terrifying stories about them.)
There are a few massive spiders in the house now. One of them is so large that it makes a scuttling noise as it moves from hidey hold to hidey hole across the floor. I wonder if it is the same spider just walking around the place. It's really a pet now.
I am so exhausted today - as i get older this monthly malarkey just gets more and more annoying. It's hard to imagine that as early as in five years time i won't have to face it anymore. Or experiencing the last bits of it. I suppose i would have to grow up by then. In fact i think i might just decide to grow up next year. So i should enjoy it while i have it.
...
Ah ha, so i felt a bit homesick - as in Singapore - and i decided to look at the ST online and was not disappointed.
When is a MILF not a MILF? - when it stands for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. That must be the party PR disaster of all time. We are MILF -look on us ye mighty and despair...!!! The Straits Times with an entirely straight face declared that a militant MILF has been arrested. Perhaps there should be more militant MILFs. In fact i feel quite militant today.
Then there was an article about eating a fake Ramly burger during Ramadan. How can anyone make a fake burger? You can now get fake burgers in the pasar malams of Singapore - and just when you thought life couldn't get even more postmodern.
Asian people don't care about the rules. They don't care about convention. Nothing is too far fetched, weird or immoral.
(The postmodern does not exist in Asia because in order to be postmodern and poststructural you need to be modern and structural - Asia is timeless and Asian people weave in between the cracks all the time...We have lived for so long that our lives are like the writing on a tablet of stone which has been eroded by water over the millennia. We are lost in time. Everything has already been done in Asia - so much so that we mostly don't feel that we have to do prove ourselves or do anything. Asian people just look at Western people and feel fed up. Oh god, what have they come up with this time? Some Asian people, mostly younger ones, think the West is cool, but less and less really. It is great that so many Asian yuff are beating a door to their own cultures.)
I had to turn off the radio because Oisin was in the car when this news item came on about naked women being used as tables in Japan. Oisin looked at me and went, Ewwww!!!! The presenters then, bless their hearts said, that they had received several texts saying that people had been saying that food being served off a woman on all fours didn't sound very appetizing and that they had to clarify that the woman was LYING DOWN on a table, with the food being served off her.
That this should be considered erotic is debatable, but that this should be commercially available in a restaurant, was just a step too far for the tender stomachs of Norn Irish listeners.
Such a people are really quite blase because they've seen it all. So what if the world comes to an end? It's come to an end several times before. In fact it's about time it came to an end. We'll all just be chucked back into the big reincarnation pot, given a few stirs and we'll come back out again. The world's end is something which we've been expecting in the most non attached way possible since the last time the world came to an end. Let Shiva open his eye... bring it on.
In the West we are running around and wringing our hands like outraged teenagers and twenty somethings. Arrgh climate change, species extinction, arrrgh stock market collapse, arrrgh racial genocide...in Asia people sit like ninety year old women by the village well while the rest of the village runs around trying to put out the fire going, will you relax?
Anyway, i find myself having to turn off the radio more and more these days when i'm in the car today with Oisin.
Today i told him that i didn't want to her him talk about killing, guns or people dying anymore. I said to him, like birth, death is a beautiful and sacred thing and we now need to start respecting this. It was just getting too much. He was telling me that Yoda's head was being cut off and this was funny. That's enough now Oisin - let us now respect death. It is not something which is funny - would you find it funny if i died, i said. No, he said and seemed genuinely unhappy at this prospect, so please, let's not make fun of it anymore.
I think what i am trying to do is create a sacred space for death, as i hope i have for life and birth. Presently there is no space in Oisin's world for that. It is so damn hard being a parent...
I'm going to be laid up in bed today because i'm not feeling the best. Why are human beings supposed to feel all these things? The ups and downs of health, moods, fortunes, etc. One minute you're laughing and the next you're being hounded by doubt. The thing is that there is no answer to that question why and our need for a why has resulted in religion, psychotherapy, art, myth, etc. Why do we need to justify things to ourselves? Why do we need reasons?
Probably because we do feel all these things...so we feel these things because we feel these things. If we could just stop the world from spinning around in our heads, we'd be so much better...but the world still spins and the best thing we can do it just accept its spinning and watch it - good bad or indifferent.
So it is one of those days when i feel that everything is slightly pointless. But it will pass. The full moon, the time of the month, the work that i need to do...missing Ma and Pa, and the kids - wanting to be there for them, but not being able to be fully. Or as fully as i'd want to.
We were watching Merlin last night and i had forgotten what a good show it was. The over arching theme that runs through it is the loss of the spiritual - how culture has become entirely empiricist to the point of being fanatical about it. I'd be really interested in getting the DVD collection of it. Must order that for Oisin for Christmas.
Ghin was transfixed but had to watch it from my arms. He seems to be having this thing about dragons recently. I collected him from school yesterday and he told me that there was a dragon in the sky and it had landed on the tree in Stormont. Mummy, look at the dragon he said, pointing to the tree. I can only assume that he was seeing an elemental - children are able to do this - so i said, yes. It is a dragon. Then he said, it's coming to eat us. No, i said to him, the dragon won't eat you. Isn't it sad that we have demonised this powerful symbol in our culture? (He doesn't say that a starling is going to eat him. Because it is a creature that we cannot see, that we have lost to our awareness - a creature like unicorns and angels - we begin to make up stories and often terrifying stories about them.)
There are a few massive spiders in the house now. One of them is so large that it makes a scuttling noise as it moves from hidey hold to hidey hole across the floor. I wonder if it is the same spider just walking around the place. It's really a pet now.
I am so exhausted today - as i get older this monthly malarkey just gets more and more annoying. It's hard to imagine that as early as in five years time i won't have to face it anymore. Or experiencing the last bits of it. I suppose i would have to grow up by then. In fact i think i might just decide to grow up next year. So i should enjoy it while i have it.
...
Ah ha, so i felt a bit homesick - as in Singapore - and i decided to look at the ST online and was not disappointed.
When is a MILF not a MILF? - when it stands for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. That must be the party PR disaster of all time. We are MILF -look on us ye mighty and despair...!!! The Straits Times with an entirely straight face declared that a militant MILF has been arrested. Perhaps there should be more militant MILFs. In fact i feel quite militant today.
Then there was an article about eating a fake Ramly burger during Ramadan. How can anyone make a fake burger? You can now get fake burgers in the pasar malams of Singapore - and just when you thought life couldn't get even more postmodern.
Asian people don't care about the rules. They don't care about convention. Nothing is too far fetched, weird or immoral.
(The postmodern does not exist in Asia because in order to be postmodern and poststructural you need to be modern and structural - Asia is timeless and Asian people weave in between the cracks all the time...We have lived for so long that our lives are like the writing on a tablet of stone which has been eroded by water over the millennia. We are lost in time. Everything has already been done in Asia - so much so that we mostly don't feel that we have to do prove ourselves or do anything. Asian people just look at Western people and feel fed up. Oh god, what have they come up with this time? Some Asian people, mostly younger ones, think the West is cool, but less and less really. It is great that so many Asian yuff are beating a door to their own cultures.)
I had to turn off the radio because Oisin was in the car when this news item came on about naked women being used as tables in Japan. Oisin looked at me and went, Ewwww!!!! The presenters then, bless their hearts said, that they had received several texts saying that people had been saying that food being served off a woman on all fours didn't sound very appetizing and that they had to clarify that the woman was LYING DOWN on a table, with the food being served off her.
That this should be considered erotic is debatable, but that this should be commercially available in a restaurant, was just a step too far for the tender stomachs of Norn Irish listeners.
Such a people are really quite blase because they've seen it all. So what if the world comes to an end? It's come to an end several times before. In fact it's about time it came to an end. We'll all just be chucked back into the big reincarnation pot, given a few stirs and we'll come back out again. The world's end is something which we've been expecting in the most non attached way possible since the last time the world came to an end. Let Shiva open his eye... bring it on.
In the West we are running around and wringing our hands like outraged teenagers and twenty somethings. Arrgh climate change, species extinction, arrrgh stock market collapse, arrrgh racial genocide...in Asia people sit like ninety year old women by the village well while the rest of the village runs around trying to put out the fire going, will you relax?
Anyway, i find myself having to turn off the radio more and more these days when i'm in the car today with Oisin.
Today i told him that i didn't want to her him talk about killing, guns or people dying anymore. I said to him, like birth, death is a beautiful and sacred thing and we now need to start respecting this. It was just getting too much. He was telling me that Yoda's head was being cut off and this was funny. That's enough now Oisin - let us now respect death. It is not something which is funny - would you find it funny if i died, i said. No, he said and seemed genuinely unhappy at this prospect, so please, let's not make fun of it anymore.
I think what i am trying to do is create a sacred space for death, as i hope i have for life and birth. Presently there is no space in Oisin's world for that. It is so damn hard being a parent...
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