Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

You know what has been most incredible about the Steiner course? What has been most incredible is that i have just been blown away by how totally fantastic each session has been. I have NEVER EVER come away from class going, so that was a load of boring old shite. It has made me think, re-evaulate, expand, relax, investigate, deeply deeply challenge myself, try and see the world from the other side of the kaleidoscope. And it has you know, in some strange way made me a happier person. A sillier but happier person. But also things in this strange crazy world make sense. And i'm no Moonie. My natural tendency would be to stand back and go, uh-ah, and just pick holes it in, which i still do in class. Nonsense. Rubbish. What ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME? But also there are things which i go, that is so fucking RIGHT. Just last yesterday in the Storytelling seminar. The woman who gave the seminar was a force of nature. It was a real privilege being able to attend the class. It was truly a ...

We are now waiting the imminent arrival of Jac and her two kids. To prep we went to Forrestside and got some leg of lamb. I was looking at people and wondering the lives they led. What strange lives, and i felt a bit disconnected, a bit distant, like i couldn't for the life of me understand why i kept on comparing myself with other people. Anyway, we had breakfast at Conor, went to the Asian market, of course, went to Forrestside and then got shoes for Oisin, Crocs for Ghin, just three pounders from Dunnes, the lamb and when we got home i seasoned and prepped it and then thought about the weather. And now i must think about my course. I have to finish the essay on child readiness by 10 June, as well as an essay on the planetary types. I watch the film on BBC about Ayn Rand's effect on the Collective and the influential people, like i don't know Alan Greenspan and other Silicone Valley types. I also thought how much Ayn Rand sounded like Ahriman... anyway, that is beside the...

It has been an incredible weekend. Really it has. Sometimes good people do bad things, intelligent beings make stupid mistakes, and that we can regret yesterday today. Anyway, what is the learning here, i have to ask myself? Humility at all times. And to know fear, that is awful. And to ask for the grace of time. And feckin pray. After some self flagellation in good old style Catholic convent upbringing tradition, i read Noah Levine's The Heart Revolution, bits of it. And the bits that were important were Mercy to the self and Compassion for others. And i just had to let all the things that were crucifying me go, and say, yes, gotta be nice to myself. Just say there there and be good. Anyway, after getting up at 5 am, on Sunday morning, having slept at 1 am... i did say i was going thru a midlife crisis... I went to class and spent a bit more time with the planetary soul types. It has been good, getting my head round all this. The course is amazingly wacky, and in many many ways, a...

... my heart could break, like it could break anymore... I stood there, thinking, it doesnt matter, it doesn't matter any... And then i discovered that nakedness is not more bizarre than any other place i have been and that perhaps being alive may not be stranger, than the night inspite has been. So it is - Strange - that you could be here, inspite of all the years That i could listen, and still hear the Girl from Mars; Or possibly, even, recall, that first kiss that had come, from lips that had just played kisses on the irregular drum. And there you were standing, in the blinding light of day as i woke and and saw nothing more than the green encroaching day in the approaching starlight, that was cold and yet so real And you walked towards me, and made that incompletion Entirely Whole

Yesterday there were several bomb alerts in Belfast which i managed to miss. While the rest of the city came to a standstill, we were in driving in the opposite direction on the M2 to Portmore Lough, the RSPB's reserve. Well in the morning i was in Glencraig, giving a talk about birds, and then later on in Portmore. I only found out about the gridlock when i check FB last night. Really, bomb threats, i don't recall them at all. Which makes me think of the Breughal painting called the Death of Icarus, where there is a man ploughing a horse in the foreground and right in the back, is Icarus, feathers and all, punging headfirst into the river, a tiny wee splash, as this peasant has just missed this all, man's first disastrous flight. I had gotten up early to savour the morning, but it looks like it is not to happen, as the kids are also up. One tinkering away in the corner with Lego and the other playing on the electronic piano i got Peter several years ago. So, the silence is...

Today was a big doing day. Getting things moving bit by bit... with no passion, but getting them done. We are currently trying to get a mural done for our new campaign and finding wall space isn't what it used to be, now that Belfast is all respectable and all. Even the Peace Wall is spoken for... you'd think that you'd get something, but nah... Last night i most certainly did NOT manage to do any cleaning. How shit am i? I went home, had dinner, watched two episodes of the Simpsons akak vegging out, and then fell asleep at 8.30 pm. To my eternal shame i paid Oisin a pound to do the laundry and get Ghin changed in jammies. I think that social services will soon be after me. It's character building, will be my defence, and also he asked me if he could do any chores. No more procrastinating t'nite but. I'm gonna have to just get those bedrooms sorted. I think the ashcloud is not proving a serious problem, so... I also have lots of homework to do for the course. I ...

Yesterday there was an impromptu evening meet up with a friend from The Fort on the Water. It was the funniest evening i've had in the longest time. Most of the stories are unrepeatable, because a lot of drink was involved, but two contending funniest stories were the fact - all this is true now, that Moyle District Council is twinned with Gaza, and that a goat that was used to keep tourists out from a pub in Cushendun is now immortalised in bronze on the side of a slope on some glen The Belfast Telegraph article is hilarious http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/moyle-in-northern-ireland-twinned-with-gaza-15132127.html I especially love the map of Gaza and Moyle District Council. The Israeli ambassador actually called into Coleraine to mek a complaint about this. And the DUP were furious, saying that the councillor who proposed this knew that the DUP were away during a constituency meeting and would not be able to oppose this motion. I especially l...

Hi have no idea why my blog posts are not being redirected to facebook. Ah no matter. Today is a big cleaning day, which is why i am procrastinating. Sometimes i dream i am cleaning the house. The way i dream sometimes still i am sitting for exams. Exam nightmares are the stuff of visceral fear. I used to dream that i had arrived at the exam and i forgot my ID. I would gaze at my IC and it would be unreadable, as all things are in my dreams, but i would know this wasn't my IC. Another dream i had was when i arrived at the exam centre and it was flooded... on hindsight it was more about not having to sit for the exam, rather than the exam itself. I have, to date, never understood who exams benefit, apart from the bean counters and egg sorters. I cannot, for the life of me remember even one date connected to the Malacca Sultanate and my grasp on World Politics since 1945 is hazy at best. Everything i have learned and remembered would have been done better outside the exam system, in ...

Wey hey, the rain it fecking raineth everyday. It's something else now. Chucking it down, like torrential downpour equatorial style. I cannot believe this is the summer. I can't. It seems criminal, unfair and wicked. AND i need to do the fecking laundry as well. Sigh. Well better get going, those socks aren't gonna roll themselves...

Went for my run today. It's great being back in business again. The sprianed ankle seems to have gone and the three miles keeps me sane. That and the sit ups of course. And that's all. Don't ask me to do more. It's been a busy time at work, and i need to start thinking about the sabbatical more now. However with the impending invasion of the family, things are looking very hectic. Also, to compound things, we discovered nits in Oisin's head yesterday. There weren't too many now, but still, ewwww, nits. There i sat, on the covered toilet seat, while he sat with conditioner in his hair and i combed the nits out. If you have never had this pleasure of nit picking, you will not know how weird it is. I felt truly attached to my primate status as i searched through his head and pulled out the occassional fluff, or egg. I feel like a monkey, i told Oisin, and he said, but monkeys eat the nits don't they? Well, i guess i didn't feel THAT MUCH of a monkey ok. You...

Yesterday we went to Lisa's who cooked a total fabbo meal from scratch!!! Stir fried prawn noodles... and in the back garden was this poster... ... why do you have this poster there, i asked her.... and on closer insepction it had been dragged in from the street and used by the boys as target practise. It was too funny, so naturally i had to take a picture. Tilly pointed out sadly that the shed had also suffered from the missed pellets... Here is the cooking area, i thought the colours were so lovely... The nicest thing about living in this part of the world must be the long slow evenings that dissolve into the night. If we have a good warm proper day, sinking into the deliciously coolness of the dark is also deeply cherished. In Singapore it is exactly the same all year round - and dusk and dawn occur within half an hour. Perhaps this is why Singaporeans are so businesslike. Just get the feckin thing over with. Here part of the pleasure of summer is letting the day seep away, unti...

Thou cursed Cock, with thy perpetual Noise, May’st thou be Capon made,and lose thy Voice, Or on a Dunghil may’st thou spend thy Blood, And Vermin prey upon; thy craven Brood; May Rivals tread thy Hens before thy Face, Then with redoubled Courage give thee chase; May’ft thou be punish’d for St. Peter’s Crime, And on Shrove-tuesday, perish in thy Prime; May thy bruis’d Carcass be some Beggar’s Feast, Thou first and worst Disturber of Man’s Rest. Sir Charles Sedley, from the Poetry of Birds I feel exactly the same way about cocks myself...

At Sakura's sushi train.... Notice Nathan's intense concentration on the food... That's what it's all about, the free lollipop... It is still raining here. Someone popped their heads in yesterday to say that they read in some weather forecast that it will be a good summer... ince the rain gets out of the way. I have lived in this bloody country for too long to know that hoping for a good summer is asking for heartache. You've just gotta take what you've got when its there and if you didn't do what you were supposed to do while it was shining then, its your bloody look out. The weed still grow, the crops still come, the birds, ok the ground nesting ones might get washed away, but life goes on. Only that we don't have a summer... BUT the GOOD NEWS is that my sister, her family and my mom are coming to visit yes, for two whole weeks, all the way from Singapore. And since it is my neice's and newphew's first time here, i can't wait to have them a...

Struggling through the Steiner text on Thinking, Willing, Antipathy, Sympathy and Feeling... which balances the two. And was just half way through breakfast, when i starting critiquing something, i can't remember what it was, and saw myself stepping back from the thing to objectify it and therefore practise antipathy. And then a lightbulb moment, ah ha, this is what Steiner means. This is antipathy in action, the act of critisicing and in order to criticise, we must lose any positive feelings for the object of our criticism, we must become, well objective - and this is a deadening exercise if you are doing it all the time. Antipathy must be balanced by Sympathy, which is in Willing, which is about doing, and that is easier for me. To do something with enthusiasm is what i do without thinking! It is weird, Peter and i are the opposite ends of that scale. Peter loves thinking, and thinking and thinking. I can't be bothered with the thinking, i need to make things happen. I'm ...

Just finished making soup for 40 people. Outside the rain and wind lash, and the beech tree makes strange misshapened shadows against the house and sky. It feels like the summer is mostly over, i hope not, but with the impending shitty weatherforecast, it already being mid May, its difficult not to feel a bit pessimistic. It seems like the party's over too. The double elections, the nights out, the overdrinking and the inevitable contrition that follows, it feels like i've now been returned to real life. Much housework was done today, including laundry, cleaning, cooking, lots of it, and then recycling, weekly shopping and then, finally, after three days - my run. The ankle no longer hurts, which is a relief. I even managed to get over the sleep deprivation, and am now back to my sleep at eight and wake at eleven, resleep at two. I think i might even get some mending done. I was thinking, i'd really like to compile a funeral song album, just in case people play rubbish at m...

I spent the whole of yesterday mostly sleeping. I couldn't help it. The kids were arguing about whether they should watch Young Sherlock Holmes or Black Eyed Peas (Ghin wanted the latter and Oisin the former, i know) and civil blood was about to make civil hands unclean, when i said, that's it, switch off the feckin TV. If you can't agree, then there is no TV. To which there was also much Jacobean type pleading, but i was having none of it. I'm off to bed i said. This was post Dr Who, which was excellent by the way, and off i was. 20 minutes later, truce was called over Evan Almighty and they put on the DVD and only emerged an hour and a half later, during which i had the most blissful zzzzzzzzz time. To my eternal shame reader, i was so in it that i didn't brush Ghin's teeth nor change him into his PJs, but just continued. You might think this was a Lethe induced condition (ie the booze), but twas not so. I hadn't drank since, oh i don't know... Friday ...

Yesterday Serena and i met at Nick's Warehouse. A truly surreal meeting. After all these years for the both of us to fetch up on the shores of the Lagan, two wee Singaporean lasses so far from home, and so very happy too. We talked about everything, and i mean everything... so 98 per cent of the conversation is unreproduceable. Having grown up in the shadow of the 1986 Marxist conspiracy arrests, and seeing how the 80s are back, we still like to observe the old ways. But that was maybe 40 per cent of that. The other 50 percent was just plain embarrassing, so, that was that. However, suffice it say we just caught up. Exchanged views about old classmates and friends, filled each other in on bits of our lives, laughed at the GEs, traded dark stationery desires (yes, i am a 40 year old Artbox fan, you can never get the correct kind of glossy royal blue) and got a wee bit squiffy. The thing is after all these years we can still talk and that must be precious. It has to be said that we a...

Last night i went for the BBC Council Dinner, it's ex BBC council members and we had a hoot. Over the years we have become friends and shared the ups and downs in each others lives. Sort of. BUT the best bit about yesterday was chatting to Aodhan about the film project, and talking about the difficuties about the visual and how my faith in the narrative is slowly crumbling. One of the best bits of the conversation though was looking at telling the story through the Ramayana, which got me thinking today about the main players in the story. You have Rama - which is all of humanity, forced to go along this journey to save Sita - who is the biosphere and all the wildlife and ecology in it from Ravana - who is greed, materialism and death with the assistance of Hanuman and Lakshamana, etc.... You get the picture. I don't think that it would be so in your face, but that helps me to create a narrative... and we also agreed that it would be impossible to actually tell a complete story,...

Had a great run with Lisa there. Thanks babe for listening to me. Be under a table rocking back and forth now if it weren't for Lisa. Anyways, we are thinking of, not only getting on with our lives but also making a film just before i head off to Sumatra and Singapore. Which will be soon. Eeek! I think i shall have to work ten hour days before i pack it in for the summer. And i've been listening to Indonesian Sundanese music to get me in the mood. http://youtu.be/HsnV8T6Q-vs And i love the atonality of it. It never lets you settle... then listening to the gongs, the brassy cool gamelan, just the depth of those bells makes you feel a cool breeze threaded through the humidity of a closing day. http://youtu.be/-7n17JYVY2k This is Bengawan Solo with P Ramlee and Saloma. Look at her move... babe! And what about him, such a hunk. Those were the days when Asia had a real movie scene... when the Shaw brothers ruled the silver screen. What the heck happened in the 80s and 90s is anyone...

I have been looking at all the satire and parodies of the Singaporean elections on line. And been laughing waaaay to much. It's terrible how gifted, clever and FREE people are. Where do they find the time!!!??? Went running again today. I've decided that i'm going to run until i canna run no more. Whatever that means. But i'm back up to the 3 miles a day and also feeling totally happy with being in the zone again. I'm gonna have to kerlect Ghin now. It has been a really sweet day. I taught 8 year olds to write haiku and the essentials of Japanese nature painting. One of them wrote this haiku Little tadpole in the pond I see you hiding Under the moss And another one wrote White daisy in the field You are dazzling And pink Isn't that adorable? I was so worried that it would be a disaster, but clearly children are best equipped for writing haikus, it is a form that comes naturally to them. They also were able to get the iambic nature of the sentences... although of...

AS swallows turning backward When half-way o'er the sea, At one word's trumpet summons They came again to me - The hopes I had forgotten Came back again to me. I know not which to credit, O lady of my heart! Your eyes that bade me linger, Your words that bade us part - I know not which to credit, My reason or my heart. But be my hopes rewarded, Or be they but in vain, I have dreamed a golden vision, I have gathered in the grain - I have dreamed a golden vision, I have not lived in vain.

It’s been a strange ol time, the last few days. There has been ample opportunity to write and write and write, but mostly in my journal, since the laptop at home is crap and i can’t really write at home anyway, not with two children going mom, have you seen my water pistol, mom, have you packed for the camp, mom, can you make me a pancake? But in the journal i have been able to cover acres and acres of meandering ramblings, naturally most of it unpublishable, however, two things have emerged, two things have come together for me. One, i so miss Asia. The other one, i finally understand Ghost in the Shell. Asia... watching the Singaporean elections has made me miss the profusion and chaos of Asia. Where everything is available, permitted and the question i Why not, not Why should? I am so tired of where everything is Why Should We here...Health and Safety, inertia, just trying to got off one’s ass is such a chore. In Asia, it’s all movement. Move or you’ll be run over by an approaching ...

On Thursday night, i accidentally ended up with my early mid summer hangover. The last time i had a hangover was a year ago, just after mid June, i think, and it was vodka. This time it was gin. I woke up at 7, at a friend's house, going, yeowzer, this is not good. But i did manage to make it home and then to work, where i spent the rest of the day mostly giggling at election coverage. However these was no let up on the media side, or meeting side, and i had to make sure i made sense to and at both. I was told by those who did not know, that i pretty much pulled it off. Things only really calmed down in the afternoon, after the run, where i then proceeded to feel very sleepy and i was disallowed coffee by roomates because they said it would make me delirious. Still, it was an amazing night. We ended up watching Cashier No 9. It is weird. Someone once said to me, are you not too old to be doing this? And i think the answer, must be yes... But no, it was SUCH an amazing night, and we...

Oisin isn't feeling well today, so i'm home trying to clean the house. Thankfully the weather isn't great so i'm not distracted by the sparkly things out there. The kitchen will be getting my full attention today. I will slowly work around it and then sort out things that need throwing away. There must be a real way of doing this, one that doesn't involve overly complicated decision making about what goes where and when and what. Someone stole our blue bin you see so our recycling has to be done manually, not blue binnally. I'm writing all this to help me focus, because so far, i've been just looking at funny postings on the internet about the Singaporean elections. It's been such an eventful year so far, if eventful is the right tight assed word to describe it. I have been horrified at the blood thirsty triumphalist discussions that have been going on with the death and assassination of Osama bin Laden. It is shocking at how stupid people are in their r...

There was a bouyant mood tonight as everyone had a wonderful day. The weather and the May Fair had put silliness in our hearts and there was a lot of laughing. Also the mood of going back to a routine i suppose made us want to have a little bit of good humoured hysteria before we returned to the routines of the day, but if one cannot be silly after three weeks of unbroken sunshine and holidays, when is the right time to do that? The May Fair was a sunny, busy, windy affair. Oisin did the Maypole dancing and has said he is not going to do it again next year. Obviously he did not recognise the privilege of taking part in this 400 year old tradition, and would have preferred to have been in front of the Xbox, or watching the Simpsons. Personally i thought it was wonderful. Fair play to the people who organised it. It isn't the easiest in the world coaxing twenty five 9 - 11 year olds with attention deficit disorder to learn the intricate patterns of the spiders web and the triple wea...

The monolithic, the unified, the facist. This is what Feyerabend was arguing against. Think for yourself. There is no such thing as THE theory which explains everything, and the only 'truth' is observation based on practise. If a theory develops, it must be adapted and changed, and therefore is no longer theory. And be prepared for such change, because it is the only thing we can be sure about. I think his most major contribution is critiqing the academia that he belonged to. It si rubbish because it is inaccessible and removed, far too much about discussion and not enough about living and finally despite being about the furthering of the self-interest of a few individuals, has the arrogance to imagine that it is speaking universally for the 'good' of everyone. An injection of humility and reality needs to occur before science as we know it as going to be of use to anyone. In fact it is no longer about science being of use, but rather not being dangerous, the way it has...

So it's back to the same oh tomorrow. In the meantime i have been totally off line. So apologies to people who were trying to contact moi. Especially Natsy, i have been unforgiveably rude. Most updates were done via the phone i have which is not the most user friendly in the world for long and meaningful expressions. But more importantly my brain was also off line, as i THOUGHT about doing things and did not. In my defense though i have cleaned the toilet and am very near to catching up with the laundry. I also volunteered for the festival of fools. For people who have never been to the festival, i do feel sorry for you. It is better than the royal wedding and a hundred more times entertaining. It also did not cost as much, gave far more pleasure and adds to the long Easter break. As act after act unfolded, i was so impressed at the skill and professionalism that was on display. This was however coupled with incredible humility and self deprecation, which made the whole thing so ac...