Book hangover

It has been an odd March. Cold and dry and hazy. Yesterday i felt so tired. I had been having very vivid dreams lately. Like last night i dreamt i went to the moon. The night before a friend phoned up sobbing because he had killed someone in a car accident. I think it might be the book i was reading.

So....one of the reasons why i don't read fiction is the same reason why crack addicts should stay away from crack. Once i get started i can't stop. You'd think this would get better with age, but it does not. If a book is really good i will forsake everything to lie in bed turning from one side to another in order to avoid bedsores and the book will be completed come hell or highwater. Non-fiction is much better - i can regulate myself. But fiction. Dear god. For this reason i have promised myself i would not read trashy novels because life is too short.

I just completed Kate Mosse's Labyrinth. This story about Cathars and the Holy Grail. Persecution. Carzy Catholic zealots and corruption. But the main attraction was of course the Holy Grail. There was also the loving depiction of the French countryside. At the same time, weirdly enough, there were all these documentaries running about the Plantagenets and Eleanor of Acquitane... and of course i have been reading about the Holy Grail then finally i have been doing the saints. The ground was laid. Last week i basically came home, and after prepping all the school stuff i just read and read...and yesterday i completed the book.

The Holy Grail was a ritual that could prolong your life, in this book. Make you young again. Or extend your life. But as with all these stories with exposes at the end, it was the telling that was interesting, the conclusion was alright, but the telling was good. Chick lit with A levels was the Guardian's verdict. I'm sure that Ms Mosses would have been delighted with that review.

It has also made me want to visit Chartres Cathederal.

Awhile back i wrote something about happiness, novelty and desire being red herrings.  I suppose what i meant was that if we look for happiness directly, and worse thinking that it will happen through things like novelty and give full rein to our desires, these things will not bring happiness. Happiness it weird. I have discovered it comes most genuinely when we are not looking for it at all. It happens when we are following our destinies silently and without fuss, despite the complete absence of the promise that it will bring happiness.

But also fixating on happiness means that when you have other states in your life, which we will, we will miss the lessons they afford us.      

I cannot believe that it will soon be Easter.

So, what's next?

Well today is of course Mother's Day. My sons have been very sweet saying that they have been thinking about doing stuff for Mother's Day, but i told them, please don't bother. Don't bother because everyday is like Mother's Day to me. Oisin says he is knitting something, but it is unfinished. Don't worry Oisin, you can give it to me when it is ready.

Sooo... gratitude, it is also weird thing. When i find something to be grateful about, which i can now do at any moment and anytime after years of suffering stupidly, i also find that i am able to do nice things. Is gratitude supposed to be like this? I have no idea. But it works something like this, because i feel gratitude, i feel relaxed and then i am nice and do something nice. And then it makes me feel grateful again. It also enables me to walk through difficult times. Gratitude is a practise, a discipline. To see the good even if there maybe no good. In fact gratitude can even manufacture goodness out of thin air. That has GOT to be magic right? It saddens me to think that i have not spent quite a lot of my life in this state. Well, learn from my mistakes eh?

Later on we will go to Ciarn Woods where the Forest School will be held for a walk and the recce. I can't wait. After Easter I will go for the Easter conference in England - which is the gathering of class teachers from around the UK, then we launch full on into Forest School during the summer, THEN it will be May Day followed by the holidays, Singapore and Angkor Wat, here we come.

Then it will be Class Three!