Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

I cannot believe how SICK i felt three hours ago. Exhausted and despondent - because my house was such a mess and the laundry was bursting out of its basket - i thought i just wanted to curl up and die. In fact, i wish i could. PLEEEEEASE take me AWAY from this hoovering and laundry and from this EVERYTHING. Ugh. Then i began to start folding the clothes and Oisin came home, and bless him, he helped me clean the place up even though i was so grumpy with him. When i apologised, he said, No, you are just tired. My god, what have i ever done to deserve such an understanding, gorgeous son? I felt bad INSTANTLY. And because he helped me the work then shifted. Unbelieveably in less than an hour the house was out right again and the laundry has been going ever since, Your life, isn't that bad, he said to me. Which was entirely true. My life was NOT that bad at all. I was just tired. My son. Who sees everything and knows everything. It is only 5.15 pm. I spent most of today curled up...

So, i have to be really honest with myself. When i began this phase of my life five years ago, the world was a very different place. OK, there was the financial crisis - the continued after math - and the Middle East was in a smaller mess than it is now, but almost certainly the Syrian War had not started yet, and the refugee crisis had not hit. Also, Brexit had not taken place. Nor had Donald Trump. Although, make no mistake the conditions for it were festering already. I had decided, more or less, that i would spend the best part of the next two decades working at the school. It was going to be a modest, simple existence. I would do lovely things - like teach this incredibly progressive curriculum in an environment which nurtured and encouraged children as well as people to be the best that they could be. Not some kind of corporate athleticism, but rather really, to have the courage and the support to find what they do best in life. Whatever and wherever their path took them, they ...

It has been a godawful week. It is not like i wanted Hilary Clinton to win. It was Sophie's Choice. In many ways, having Trump win was maybe good. Because people are now waking up to the true state of the world. However, i have noticed a few disturbing trends. Firstly, because most people don't pay any attention to what is going on, the shock of Trump being elected was complete. It was a little bit annoying but also very interesting to watch many people get really upset about something which has been predicted and spoken about now for nigh on 30 years. If not 40. Maybe even 50. People have been warning about how this complete obeisance to the market will lead to this mess of a totalitarian government as a result of the ever increasing inequality in society, the dumbing down of arguments resulting in a confused, compliant population and the rape and pillage of the Earth which brings environmental disaster, not to mention a scramble for resources. This has been a long time co...

I have been playing this piece VERY SLOWLY the past two days just before breakfast It is gorgeous very slow - also i can't play it at its right speed. But that doesn't bother me anymore. Gorgeous morning skies - saw Venus during my run Miso egg given to me by Dearbhla Reynolds Before i opened it From the day before - spending time in the woods Possibly the last day of super clear cold sunshine for the rest of the year And we spent it marshmallowing It has been a busy day. as usual. Once again i feel like i have woken up. I am beginning to take notice of things around me and to record things. Life continues to charm and i am ridiculously living in a ridiculous space where things are beautiful around me. Of course it is not EASY. No, easy would be to live with the general horrific ugliness of the world at large. I spoke to a friend today and i said, i hate real life. But you live in real life, he said. No, i do not, i replied. I have constructed my ...

Dreams Ghin is a child with a ridiculously active dream life. When he gets up he can usually tell me plenty of detail of what took place during the night. The places he went to, the things he got up to... all very dream like, often involving us - members of the family. Oisin on the other hand never talks about his dreams. Well sometimes he talks about his dreams, but strangely Ghin, all the time. I really enjoyed school today. The children when they come back from the holidays are high. Currently i'm teaching a mixed class and will be doing so for three weeks. It is the first time i have ever done this for any length of time and i am a bit nervous. But today i thought that we would have some kind of getting to know you activity and we did a campfire in the forest. The kids were great. They really enjoyed themselves. I mean what's there not to like? Beautiful weather and a fire and some marshmallows? Something really has shifted for me over the last few days. I am in ...

I have used the same running gear since 2003 So my running goals are: 10 km per week by the end of Jan. Sit ups: 100 per day Stretching: Salute to the Suns, 7 per session To run everyday, regardless of the weather. After i went running i felt much better. I never understand why i don't go running anyway, especially when i feel like i don't want to run. I think that this time i was afraid i wouldn't fit into my running gear, which is nonsense of course. It is made of lycra. 

The miracle of the beeches The half term holidays are over. Back to school now. I have spent time thinking about many things, but during these holidays i spent time mostly sleeping. I was lying in bed the other day, going over the things which i know. Which i have lived through. The conclusion i have come to is this: being happy is great, but being authentic is even better. No drama is the best of all. I recently spoke to my mom and i said, you know what, who knows the pain other people are going through. If we weren't human we would not have pain. Because we are human, we will have some suffering in our lives. It is how we cope with this suffering, what we learn from it, which allows us to take life in our stride. Becoming negative and miserable is pointless. Being positive and doing something about it, if you can, is the best. If you can't do anything about it, then be alive to the moment, make the best of a situation. And everything, everything changes. Everything passes. ...

It may seem hard to believe, but despite teaching being the hardest thing i have ever done, it is also, by no means the most stressful thing i have ever done. The most stressful thing i ever did was events organisation, which i DETESTED, because it required attention to detail and also everything had to be right. Furthermore, you could organise the hell out of something and no one would come to it. I was very good at event organisation, but i fucking hated it. What it did do for me though was the following: it gave me the discipline of doing things which i hated. Pushing through the pain. So there it is, a terrible confession. Teaching is not the most stressful thing in the world. It is exhausting and tiring, but it is not stressful - possibly because in a Steiner school we don't do exams which are intensely moronic. Exams say to every child, who is completely different, that they can and must be exactly the same. I realise this now as a teacher. It was one thing to have a child ...

Here i am, 6 am, writing. I have just had a mustard and olive sandwich. I was with the boys yesterday, trying to get a kitten. It was impossible to get a kitten from the ASSISI sanctuary. The people there are very nice, but very strict. I wonder what kind of people have tried getting animals from them and the animals have been badly treated. They were more like Stazi than rescue workers. I have since discovered that i have five stings on my hand. It is taking quite a long time to get it sorted. Oisin said it looked like a marshmallow hand. Thank you my son. Yesterday, he came to my room and lay in bed. He seldom does this and it has been a long time since he last did it. He is very funny with funny observations. I could see a lot of myself in him yesterday at a meeting, when i was trying to bring some levity to a situation. I never see the point in being miserable, especially when things are bad because they just make a bad situation worse. If we are not in a good place, the best t...

Everything is very still. No wind, no rain. There hasn't been a single storm at all. The strong winds that usually blow at the end of September have not materialised and October has been a completely still month. Even now. November feels like that. So today we are cleaning the garden for a few hours. I have mobilised the boys to help me. Let's see if we get anything done. Yesterday i just lay in bed and didn't change out of my pajamas. Well i changed from one pajamas to another pajamas. It was very therapeutic to not go anywhere nor do anything. I ate what we had in the house, the leftovers of the party and i had one glass, the only glass of wine left. And then i told myself, well this is it, really, the last bits of the party till the next party. Which i assume will be Christmas. Or the solstice. It was nice organising the party. It had been so long since i did that, and it wasn't as onerous as i thought it would be. I kept it quite small, which was ...

My blog is almost 10 years old. I began it when i had Ghin, almost ten years ago. I can't believe it. Ten years, is i now know, nothing. Nothing at all. But it is amazing how much has been packed into that ten years. One of the many wonderful things which i did this year was clean the house thoroughly and during that time i came across many things which reminded me of the life which i had led now here, in Belfast, for almost fifteen years. I was lying in bed today thinking of the lives i MIGHT have led and thinking that the best thing one could lead was a life of freedom. Freedom in the sense that I could choose, within reason what i did. Not an extreme life, or an exceptional life, but a life of freedom. On Monday i slightly lost the plot with Ghin. I had been working all day to get the Halloween party ready and had asked him to hoover the stairs for me. He said, no, he could not do it because it was too fidley. I did lose the entire bap. He has spent the entire time i had been ...