Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

The moronicness of governments is currently laid bare for the entire world to see in the failed policies which they have inflicted around the world in their fundamentalist insistence on implementing a system of economics which have nothing to do with people and everything to do with the GDP. The GDP, as I have understood it, was always meant to be a means to an end. It was to be ONE indicator, amongst many others, about how well a country was doing. How it became the ONLY indicator is probably due to the way it favour the richest and the most powerful on the planet. Those of us who believed we lived in a democracy thought, ok, we will vote in the government we think knows what it is doing and we will just get on with life. You know REAL life, like cooking, and looking after babies, and tending our gardens, and meeting friends and doing meaningful things. Little did we know that we had opened our countries to a pit of vipers. So, let us now think about what the last 40 or and more y...

Catching whales, JE Carl Rasmussen I LOVE Moby Dick . Love it. Along with Hawthorne, Fenimore Cooper and Dickenson, they formed some of my best memories in university. Like some many others before and since, I loved everything about Melville's masterpiece. The detailed descriptions of seamanship. The descriptions of dismembering a whale. The characters in it. Their names which now even come down to us in popular culture. The way he wove the entire story into a parable. It could be read upside down and inside out. The story around it. Nantucket! How Melville became very depressed. How Hawthorne had to tell him to hold it together. The sheer craftsmanship. The complete lack of recognition. I went on to read almost everything he had written and I loved it. ANYWAY, the reason I am writing about Moby Dick is that I went to see The Heart of the Sea , in the cinemas yesterday. I went thinking that it was about a story which was inspired by Moby Dick , but it really was a film abo...

Geek house - AR Drone, soldering kit, chess, Dr Who memorabilia, stationery pile, gramophone recordings of birdsong, Megatron, Halo Lego, and oh yes BOOKS!!! Something really weird happens at this time of year. Time actually slows down. I was running yesterday and I thought, it can't be only Monday. Christmas was Friday and now... it is MONDAY?!?!?!? Weird. So I counted and it was indeed only Monday. A weekend usually passes quickly and if it is a holiday even faster and this time of year, it feels like three weeks has gone past for some reason. Is Christmas so detestable? Well, I have been making the most of our solstice TARDIS. I have been tidying the conservatory. Throwing things out ruthlessly and most of the place has been done. Boxes have been emptied, shelves straightened out, toys displayed, our old but high adequate hi-fi-system happily refixed and ensconced in its new place. The old one which was not working anymore is on its way to a new home, ok, the recycling c...

I am currently clearing out and organising, or rather just simply tidying, literally hundreds of books and articles on the state the world is currently in now. I find it fascinating that the shock which the elite and neoliberals of the world had in 2007 and 2008, and there are so many articles so show this, has been transformed into an even more vicious grip on our lives. They have imploded - or had imploded - and taken everyone along with them. From the ruins of their delusional idea of making money has risen this hideous creature. One of war and exploitation and degradation - and all this has been documented by academics and NOTHING has been done to stop them. This is what I find most horrific. We KNOW we are being shafted big time, academics know, and they are completely powerless to stop them. Which makes me ask the question, what is the point of knowing if you aren't going to do anything about it? One zombie foot in front of the other as we head to oblivion. At least in the pr...

I spent most of yesterday slowly tidying the conservatory. It has become a complete mess. I made some progress and in the process discovered I live in a geek house. I began displaying things that were meant to be displayed like the Halo and Star Wars lego. And then there was the Dr Who stuff. Plus beside them were three record collections of bird song (yes, grammerly phoney things), soldering kit and an AR Drone. Oisin is trying to find space for his Naruto collection. In fact most of these things are Oisin's. Ghin's things consist mostly of drawings - he has hundreds and hundreds of drawings and I have no idea where I will put these. I was thinking about buying wallpaper later this year, but maybe I should instead just use his drawings as wallpaper? Dunno. Everything else, apart from the Main Lesson books I have begun throwing away. Not even recycling because they are either unrecyclable or they are in such a state that they can't be recycled. I said to the boys, look, w...

The Guildhall - don't call me Londonderry Conversations in the car as we look for an ATM in Derry Who do you think wrote that song? Um... Christy Moore No The Corrs No The Chieftans No Brian Kennedy No Republicans... Ah you are not wrong Wolf Tone No It was Bobby Sands But he was not from Derry He wrote it for someone from Derry he shared his cell with So to really appreciate Derry you need to know your Troubles history. Inside out and upside down cos every brick in Derry is defined by resistance. If there was a city in Ireland which would be the correlation to the Rebels and the Republic in Star Wars, it would be Derry. They are the people who fought when no one else would fight and they demanded that their truth be heard. And they did this for such a long time that their struggle became the struggle of the oppressed and neglected in the world. They have always had this - we are better than all of you attitude - because they have this sense of never having...

A castle on a lake - if I did not live in Ireland I do not know where else I would live Star Wars is some film eh? It is hard to imagine how the film industry was before Star Wars. It more or less single-handedly introduced the idea of the used future. After Star Wars everything had to be a box-office smash, or it wasn't successful. That was the end of the Midnight Cowboys and the Taxi Drivers. It had a weapons system named after it. And of course it spawned loads and loads and loads of collectors, fanboys, etc... all around the world. I remember when Star Wars was NOT a thing. I am not talking about life before Star Wars. I am talking about the late 80s when everyone had more or less forgotten about Star Wars. Anyway, this post is not about when Star Wars was not a thing. Because to me, it always was a thing. I am not the sort of person who goes around broadcasting my crazy love for Star Wars, but I have seen the films a fair few times each (ok, at least 20), I collected th...

Our solstice branch I managed to convince Oisin that we would go for a solstice branch instead of a Christmas tree. I KNOW that as a result Oisin will insist on having the biggest ass trees he can find for Christmas when he becomes an adult and has his own house. In fact, he will have a tree bigger than his house... anyway... the conversation went something like this. Hey, we should decorate the house today, on my birthday - it should be a Christmas tradition from now on. Yes! Let us buy a tree. No, I don't want a tree. What? What you do want? Remember we used to have those bare branches... Oh please mom... What you want a tree? Yes! Please! Oisin a tree is not traditional. *?* It was introduced by the Germans. *:(* Prince Albert brought this tradition with him when he came to England. Mom! Yes. Also it is not environmentally friendly... Mom! Or meaningful. Trees here do not stay green all year round - plus it celebrates the time when trees go to sleep. Yo...

One of the highlights of my year... Today is going to be busy. We will be getting branches to decorate the house, decorating the house, cleaning up and I am going to go and get lots of chocolate. Finally I will draw. Also before all that I am going for a run. In fact I am going for a run after I complete this blog post. Being in my mid-forties is great fun. When I was younger I had loads of energy but did not really know what to do. I am slowly heading in the other direction - i.e. I know what I need to do but I have no energy. Perhaps in my 50s the both will eventually collide. The highlights of my year are as follows: Spending Christmas Break/New Year's Day in Cashel Bay Going to St Andrews TWICE The juggling convention Our school garden My own garden Biodynamic gathering in Ballybay Seaweed foraging My garden in the spring Having hot flushes and learning how to deal with them Singapore holiday Melina Beach Resort in Tioman Hanging out in Sentosa with the boy...

I have always written a blog post at the end of my year. I love my birthday - it is time to take stock, to think about new things that can be done... to fall in love with the Earth once again, to clean things out, to remember friends... to give thanks, to promise to do better... to try new things. It is a great time of the year. There are too many happy memories associated with it. My yule log cakes when I was a child, going to the zoo when I was ten, parties on the beach and at the pool when I was a teenager, celebrating my 21st in Luxembourg, in Oslo, Manila, in Belfast. My sons. My new lives, starting and finishing, phases of life - secrets always kept - sufferings which prepare my soul. I have discovered something - I cannot drink anymore. Ten years ago I had to give up red wine. Now I must give up white as well. I had a drink and a half recently and proceeded to fall asleep quite quickly. Since I do not drink anything else - beer or spirits, this marks the end of my dinking ...

The solstice is nearly upon us - the cold, damp, foggy drizzly wetness. The blurred lights through darkened windows, and blurred lights on the wet ground. Mirrors of wetness and mirrors of exhaustion. The darkness, closing in, just before it releases us - whisperings of strange, inexplicable greyness etched in our memories, half hidden worlds which lie just beyond that melt and fade, when we try to bring them into the heat. I live amongst people and I watch them scurry - celebrating - something. Trying to convince themselves, in their panic, that the lights will return. They festoon electric strings from cornice to cornice, buzzing in equal quantities of hope and delusion, for really, no matter what we do, the light will return. It will return. Tomorrow will happen. The future is forever there, staring at us, with its unblinking eye, the unforgiving glare at the end of the tunnel. Like ants during a flood, as the waters rise, we desperately move things to the...

I have decided that I will now head all my posts with amazing places I have visited in my life to celebrate how amazing our planet is... This is Geiranger Fjord in Norway "Santa is not bringing you that" - is what I have told my sons so they now know not to ask Santa to bring them daft things. I know, how evil am I? This started off being a post about complaining about how wasteful Christmas is here. But it is not going to be about this. Because... it (this post) is not going to be about that. Instead, I will write about what happened when I collected Oisin yesterday. It was so wonderful to see him and he was clearly delighted to be back home. He talked NON-STOP, because there was all this English in me waiting to get out, and he told me everything that happened to him. He talked for the entire journey home and he probably said more than he had ever said in that four hour journey than he had said in the past year. Instead of the forty shades of Good, (so, how was yo...

When I was very young, I asked my mom, what religion is the best? And she said, all ways lead to God. Each religion teaches you to do good. End of. And I remember, when I was very young, knowing that this was the answer which I wanted to hear, although I did not really understand it. As I grew up, I realised that each religion could also teach you to do bad. But there was NEVER a doubt in my mind that ALL religions were valid. ALL faiths demanded respect. In Singapore we learned to grow up like this - we learned, from the youngest age at all races and religions were relevant and required EQUAL treatment and I knew that this was critical in creating the place which we have today. People wonder at how come Singapore did so well economically. It was because that despite its flaws, this tenant was enshrined, sometimes imperfectly, at its core. Imagine if the race card was played? Actually you don't have to imagine it. Look at all the countries where it was played - look at them. ...

I, like many others, did not really care that the government was listening in on my phone conversations. I mean, I live in Norn Iron right - people have been listened in on to since the Stone Age here. One of the jokes in Derry was that the Army could hear what you were having for tea in Creggan. In Singapore, people who volunteered as activists just accepted that our conversations were being listened in to. We would say, those clicks on the line, well, they are listening to you. A friend even suggested we have all our conversations in Jurong Bird Park because there was very little opportunity to listen in then. So when Snowdon said, the government is listening in on you, my attitude was, yeah, what's new? Also, it won't stop me from doing what I do, I will simply just do it anyway because it is the right thing to do. So really I never self censored, because, what would be the point? Also more often than not, I found that the government really didn't care - except that ...

Not long to go now before I finally turn 45... So it has been a long time since I have done a mood piece because I have been so pissed off with the Syrian war and the stupidity of politicians. But after I wrote my most recent rant, I then began to defrost the fridge and looked out at the skies - that pale, pure twilight blue, that Air of December blue. Just filled with memory and possibility, filled with all sorts of complicated half had emotions which have never been fully realised. It is sad, but also a good sad, a sad that I have lived, I have never held back, the sadness that there were lessons learnt, all the hard way, but that is ok too. Those branches, those trees, those silences which come to bother you in waves, which visit and lap upon the shores of life, that is what December is to me. I love December. Man my hair is long! I have also done lots of Trying to Make Myself feel better pieces. Because of the Syrian situation too. However, since I feel a good sort of m...

Made from scratch - took two and a half hours I was feeling much better yesterday at about 7 am. In fact I felt so well that by the time 9 am came round I felt well enough to attempt the gingerbread house. This was done in 2 and a half hours. I did buy all the ingredients the night before but was just too exhausted to do anything. So, I did this instead in the morning. After watching John Pilger I have come to the conclusion that the politicians of the world have absolutely NO interest in people in general. Nil. Zip. Nada. We are sort of back in the late 19th early 20th century when anarchists were going around blowing up people, when Lenin and Trotsky were beginning to take hold, when Marx was talking about inequality. We are back there. The political elite did not care about the ordinary person in the street. Let us see what they did back then. There was then a war which last from ... well you could say that there was constant war since the Imperialism - and then it all culm...

Today I am shattered. I have been shattered the past week, but yesterday I was supposed to have made a gingerbread house and I could not. I had bought all the ingredients and then I came to my mom's house that has the great oven and I collapsed in a heap - along with my hat and coat and scarf. I just collapsed on the sofa and did not move until I went to heat some sausage rolls for dinner. Poor Ghin was left to watch TV, while I slept beside him, waking every now and then by my own snoring, feeling very sorry for myself. After that we both fell asleep. We were both exhausted. I do no energy or sick very badly. I feel very sorry for myself and I think I am going to die. It generally goes something like this, "I am so ill, I have never been so ill in my life, why am I so ill/tired? Am i getting a flu? What did I eat? What have I done. I am going to die, I am never going to get better." Mostly I keep these thoughts to myself because I am too weak to say anything. But I...