Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Well,i did it. The hoovering is complete and i have a very long snag list which i'll go through over the next few MONTHS. Yep that;s right. Months. At least it's done. It's as clean as it can be with me working through this entire bank holiday. OMG

Listening to Pink Floyd Radio on Last.FM. A great combination of that period, including the Doors, Jefferson Airship, Hendrix and weirdly enough, Genesis, which makes you realise that Phil Collins was taken as a serious musician before he began being Disneyfied. Literally. I have cleaned the fridge, disemboweled the medicine cupboard and sorted the washing machine area. I've made a start on the final section of my cleaning epic the cooking heart of the kitchen. Everything has been lumped here. If it wasn't lumped here, it was dumped in the conservatory, which i will have to do before i begin the hoovering and finish with the moping. It is 12.30. Sigh. It is a beautiful day. I promise that i will NEVER do this again, although i could not imagine doing this with the kids running underfoot. It had to be done you know. In many ways this was the spring clean. It took about 3 days really. And i suppose when all is said and done it wasn't THAT bad. After this i'm going to go t...

I had hoped to finish yesterday and just couldn't do it. Not because i was working round the clock, but because i got so fecking tired and BORED after a while. I managed to mend one pair of trousers in front of the TV. I'm going to get started on the fridge area after this blog entry - and then move on to the cooking area. Then the study and then hoover the place. And the hoovering will put the final cap on it all. It has been a COMPLETE AND UTTER WASTE OF A BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND. And i am never going to do it again. I had a dream the kids came home yesterday, and then i saw two friends from Exeter as well. They visited. It seemed so real. Read about Daniel Day-Lewis. I can't imagine what it must be to live a life like that. Strange and filled with names that are real to you but also everybody else's public property. That kind of strange forced exhibitionism, demanded by the marketing maniacs to make their thirty pieces of silver from your pound of flesh. Vultures and ca...

Managed to make it to the ground floor of the house. The house only have two storeys sounds less impressive, but i did manage to rearrange the boys' room, give it a good tidy up, and managed to do the hall and living room. A few trips to the dump are now necessary. And charity shops, of course. But i've also created a schedule which tonight i will spend a few minutes giving consideration to. Oh Massive Attack, Unfinished Sympathy.... takes me back... But anyway, now i'm at the kitchen. I also fixed the curtains in the living room that were constantly coming down with a few screws. I'll also be doing loads of mending tonight while watching Blue - the film with Juliette Binoche about a composer whose husband dies and is utterly lost, until she discovers that he has been having an affair. Then she recovers pretty quick. It's a fantastic film. About redemption and hope, and reality, most of all.

Listening to last.fm.... such a wonderful thing to behold... Six Music and Last.FM I have sorted Ghin's clothes - actually there's more room than i'd ever imagined. When i decided that ten jumpers and twenty T-shirts should be enough it was easy enough giving or putting away the rest of the stuff. Many of Ghin's old clothes are also Oisin's old clothes, so it was a double trip down memory lane for me. I saved a few pieces. Pieces which Ma sewed for Oisin when he was up to a year old. Some stuff we got back from Singapore and never used because it was too cold in Northern Ireland, i have packed FOR Singapore this time round, so we won't have to buy any stuff when we get there. I smelled some clothes - to check if they were clean before i gave them away, and then to smell the boys, because i could smell all those years back. I sorted through Oisin's cupboard too, and discovered the bag with his clothes from 5 - 6 years old. I made this bag up two years ago, wh...

Listening to Manu Chou today. Good anti war speech at the end of the video. Watching Gladiator and Lord of the Rings yesterday. OK, bits of it. I'm in the middle of still tidying the house. I decided to sort Ghin's clothes yesterday. Big mistake. After about a third of the way, i lost the will to live. We need to sort it out so that Ghin and Oisin have cupboards that now take their clothes. For too long Ghin's cupboard has been the underwear drawer of mine. But now. With his legs a little longer, and his clothes a little bigger it ain't sustainable any longer. Well i don't know what i'll do. Stop watching TV might be a good start. Just had some eggs and coffee. It's funny. That's a typical Singaporean breakfast in many ways. The coffee is even from Sumatra. It is the BEST coffee i've had here and since i have had to ground to espresso powder, the truth is that you have to use espresso in an espresso thingy. It's smooth and beautiful and tastes li...

I began watching this video with trepidation, but ended with tears in my eyes... because so much of our teaching, education and life governed by others is the exact antithesis of the intuited observation of the individual, its place in society and then our own truth in this life... What the entire purpose of this modern world now is to drum our individuality - and therefore our sense of ethics - out of ourselves. Mankind is an inherently ethical being, just as animals are born knowing how to migrate,feed, make nests, when spring and summer is, how to find food, our gift is our sense of ethic. What is right and wrong, and how to feel that. And everything today drives that beauty from us - for what? To suffer under the yoke and pleasure of one of the awful seven sins. And why? Why do we do this to ourselves? That for me is the question.

Ghin is running down the stairs. This blog is at an end. We went to see Charlie and Lola. No pictures were taken during the play, but here we are getting ready to see it. They're a great set of photos. Oisin took the ones of me. Ghin is Mr Photohead. He loves his picture taken. And is utterly at ease in front of the camera. He mugs for it and insists on being shown his picture after it's been taken. Oisin's face has changed utterly since i began this process. It's far more Asian now - you can hardly see any Irish in it. And with his short hair... he's beginning to read a lot more - and easy stuff, but loves to read. And he is really such a sweet gentle boy. Ghin is utterly different. He now calls people names... mostly Buttface. Which he thinks is the funniest thing ever. My beautiful children. After that i went to have a wee drink with Gary Prescott this guy who is cycling round the UK and Norn Ireland to raise money for RSPB and other charities. It's pretty am...

I was running in the forest today and was thinking about the phrase untrammelled beauty and thinking you never hear of something being trammelled... except in Shakepeare... and then thinking that its cool, you know trammelled beauty. That's what makes something beautiful, the passing of time and decay and all this life about us. A blank sheet is not beautiful for very long. Planning to be at Kelly's Cellars tonight. Where we can pretend to be United Irishmen. The fast is coming along really well. I made some proper espresso at work and then went for a run after that. And it felt like i was flying. So much faster, so much lighter, so much more happier. So i'm definitely continuing with the fast. Will continue this later... lunch is over.

Amazing version of this song.... It seems to come from deep inside a soul memory...

Listening now to And So I Watch You From Afar. It's playing at another festival that's taking place on the same weekend as Willowstone. I've heard about these guys and it's interesting music. Loud and guitary and critically acclaimed. Here's another one of their videos. And her they are again. I first heard about them about six months ago. Anthony said his son was like their official photographer. They're the next big thing and they're going down in history, he told me. They're music is very loud, is all i can say. I can appreciate the artistry and the precision that's going into that sound, but yes, it is a wee bit noisy. Anyway... I began thinking about the future - not the distant one, but the one where Ghin goes to school. And we have to start preparing for that. Ghin screamed and yelled in the car back home when he was trying to get us to buy him his own sweets. Share, we told him. Share. Nope, he wouldn't have it. I want my own packet. Go b...

Listening to the Stop Making Sense concert on YouTube. oh You Tube what would i do without you? I'm also reading new bits of Lao Tzu's The Way of Tao. Its the sort of book that you read and allow to percolate. I'm only hoping that i am young and old enough to put its teachings into practice. It's a practice that relies on discipline, self containment, contentment (to be truly happy while things rearrange themselves around you), and being alert. It is one of the most difficult things i've ever done. To be aware that i am practising an awakened kind of non-interference, and to be present for those who are present. It's not easy. It seems that the world is in some sort of muddle. And the bits that aren't muddled are extremely precariously placed. This realisation arrived when someone asked me would i ever return to Singapore. I said, not Singapore, but that part of the world, maybe. But then i thought which part of that world would i return to? Everywhere is a...

Here are photos from the last week... Sunday we went to the museum, after Cafe Connors'. There was this mask thing going on... and this was by far the most spectacular mask... Oisin had a field day... As you can see... And that's Ghin with Mary, happiest with his scissors... As you can see, as well. Oisin is a masked Venetian carnivale stranger... Very Cassanova...makes me want to go to Venice again... Ghin kinda ruins the suspension of disbelief That's him as Napolean, recently i've been thinking the way he behaves is ever so slightly Napolenanic. Cool dude meets Napolean That's mommy... I love this photo, even though its just after he's poked me in the eye Phantom of the Opera... Then on Monday, they went to this thing called cardboard cities where there was all this cardboard and kids could make anything they wanted out of them. It was REALLY impressive. Oisin had a great time putting his recently house building skills to work. He created a fort which you cou...

I'm a chillout music junkie now . Listening to all this plinky plonky music. And very often these youtube pieces are accompanied by pictures from nature. Stunning gorgeous one, ones which remind me why i have been incarnated on this earth. So that i can see, smell, touch and feel this beauty. Gorges, beaches and fields, mountains, rivers and lakeside cottages with lonely stone churches or weather beaten furniture. Dereliction, use and love - places where the eternal is evident. Where passing is not terrifying, but part of its beauty. Where death and life dance in that duet and we witness it - in the setting sun, or turn of the tide, or the falling leaves or fading blossoms. The past makes way for the present and the present the future and when we step back to observe this, we are blessed.

Listened to Robert Miles' One and one and all the dancing and being happy and falling in love and knowing that everything will always be alright came back to me... The sky isn't always blue The sun doesn't always shine It's alright to fall apart sometimes, mmm I am not always you And you are not always mine It's alright to fall apart sometimes Chorus: After all is said and done One and one still is one When we cry, when we laugh I am half, you are half The heart isn't always true And I am not always fine We all have an angry heart sometimes Repeat Chorus) Look how far we have come One and one still is One moon (one moon) One star (one star) I love the one we are One thread (one thread) One line (one line) Let's stand still in time One moon (one moon) One star (one star) I love the one we are One thread (one thread) One line (one line) That runs through our lives Repeat Chorus) Look how far we have come One and one still is one ah Oo

I'm so sorry i did not have my camera with me today because the Waterworks was utterly transformed. Some of the transformation slightly questionable... like the blue water... however, the other transformations were magical. Like the giant ribbon hoop things - bright pink, spring green and lemon yellow. Jugglers and stilt walkers. Stunt skaters and BMXers. Lots of ducks. We brought a BBQ and we had BBQ. Everyone was so nice. Kids, everywhere. And music. And it was sae. It felt very safe. And while it was crowded it was also pleasantly so. In the picnic area we were frequently one of the four or five families there. Ghin and Oisin and Lucy enjoyed themselves. And Peter seemed to as well. The weather was ... i do not remember a day like today - for years. Maybe we had one day last year like this as well... hot and clammy and at the end of it i wanted to jump into a cold bath. And it felt GOOOOOOOD!!!! Everything seems to be going crazy. People are showing their funny white legs and ma...

Photos from Botanic last Saturday... We now get strawberries all year round, so it doesn't matter, but there is something very special and precise, perfect, about eating strawberries in the summer. It was definitely the hottest day of the year yesterday - so far - as i went for a run in the forest. I probably inhaled about six green fly and swallowed a few more. It has been a year of extremes. From the extremes of snow and winter, to the intensity of the spring blossoms to the ransoms which seemed to come out of nowhere and fill the air with the scent of spaghetti bolognese. And then the insects. Everywhere too, birds. There is a song thrush that lives on the first downward slope i my route sings in this rhyming couplet. It sounds like its reciting Shakespeare in iambic pentameter. Or Malay pantun. I kid you not. Yesterday people seemed to be yearning for something. I was greeted an unusual number of times by all sorts. Fellow runners, cyclists, people doing maintenance in the park...

Found this lovely Youtube video - sayings from Hildegard von Bingen's Wisdom of Women . The music is repetitive, but the sayings are luminous and inspirational. I love Hildegard... who couldn't? Clearly a woman who was a mystic, who could see the seen and unseen simultaneously, who believed in the sanctity of life, who loved all the gifts she had been blessed with. I cannot believe that we do not know more about her in popular culture. And the thing about her is that she wasn't an extremist either. Her world was a beautiful one in which the arts, cooking and healing flourished. She wrote music, knew about herbology and left recipes which we can still follow. Her life seemed to be one where nothing was wasted, but never ran short as well. Why she is not included more in writings on 'spirituality' when we get quoted Meister Eckhart ad nauseum, is probably because she is a woman and he is a man. Yesterday i made some Chinese herbal soup from the backbone of a chicken a...

I'm finally reading the Journey to the West. It's a really horrible translation that i have, but that's all i have.... actually i don't know if it is a horrible translation - because i don't know the original text, but it is a bit stodgy and i wish it was more fluid the prose... anyway... it has to be read in small pieces. Like toilet reading. Previously when i read it as a child - the comic version, of course - it was just a rip roaring adventure. Every issue... it was fantastic... i suppose it's the closest we'd come to in Chinese culture to the Ramayana - it even has a monkey as a central character. Now it appears to be straightforward Bhuddist propaganda. With some John Bunyan and Carl Jung thrown in. But this reading i took away that contrast between the prose and the poetry. I don't know if the whole thing was written in poetry, but in this translation, the switch between the two is striking. Prose is for all the bits which Monkey - and everyone el...