Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Seeing Ghin get better, receiving a letter from Singapore Yesterday was probably the lowest I have been this year. For no apparent reason whatsoever. Ennui. God. Des[ite having so much to do - too much. But then I have realised this, that I CHOSE to have a boring life. I CHOSE THIS. So I have no one else to blame but myself. And why did I choose this, because it was the smart thing to do. It was. It is boring, as I wrote back, but also tough - teaching is a tough gig and I can't do an awful lot more really. And I have to protect my boundaries. I have never ever asked for glory or attention, despite this constantly being forced on me. And I have done all of this. If there is one thing I have come to realise - glory and attention, being great, is utterly pointless. The only thing that matters is the act of creation. Having spent lots of time with the Renaissance artists, it would seem that they got the most sense of meaning from doing their craft and...

Yesterday's Nice Thing - Meeting up with Kevin and Anthony to do some birdwatching Well, honestly it has been a great week, but I have been feeling awful. And I couldn't even tell you why. The feeling of having failed at things is making me feel just crap. It feels like - honestly I can't do anything right and I have no energy to do anything. I do not know where that is coming from either. No amount of pep talking myself is working either. I think it is just something that is going to have to pass. People are also very disappointing and incompetent and I number myself amongst those people who are incompetent and disappointing. I have also been forced to confront my own limitations, but I do need to bear in mind that the tasks which I do take on and the standards I do set myself are impossibly high. I also find that the whole world is very odd indeed. There is a neurosis which is makes me think that people are now mad. Perhaps I should spend less time on line, but it doe...

It is time to start the day, the week, the next half term. It is beautiful foggy morning, with the sun blanketed by the veils of mist and watery air. It is a day of silences and blackbird song. I have been writing and thinking about so may things - and this half term, I regret not taking so many pictures. Much has happened because I tried to make the effort and those efforts have been made into good memories. It has bouyed me up, lifted me. I have arrived at The Empress card and I feel completely nourished by the reminder of how beautiful life is. Yes, we are here to learn, but we are also here to enjoy it. To wander and wonder. It is important to remember that part of the reason why we are here is because we are angels who have volunteered to come here and experience this jewel of a planet - our planet Earth. It now feels like if I ever did a Tarot, it would be the Healing Earth Tarot - the activist tarot. The Empress - there is plenty of life, plenty of it - always stay grounde...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Breakfast at General Merchants, buying Ghin Lego, having dinner at the Glendennings. I am feeling better today - I woke up with no cold, no sorethroat, but I did wake up with a cough. I need to keep warm. The birds are singing outside - I can hear the blackbirds. It would appear that winter has left us to get on with spring. I remember last year how it dragged on March and how even March was freezing cold. One year, there were huge snows on St Patrick's Day. Barring any freak currents of warmth, we are going to be in Spring very early on this year. I remember last year sowing seeds at the end of March and everything rotting because of the continued winter. I have continued reading about Hermes. I am just going to stop trying to make sense of it and just enjoy it. It would appear that in all mythologies there is a Trickster god who has loved human beings so much that he has sacrificed something for them - Prometheus, Jesus. A god who has been identifi...

Yesterday's Nice Thing - Meeting up with Siobhan at Cyprus Avenue, a lovely bistro on the Upper Newtownards Road and using my Christmas present vouchers The High Priestess, described by Waite as possibly the most important card in the deck, is what you encounter when you decide to become a querent, or initiate. You face the veil which separates the outside world from the world you journey in, thereby always indicating that there is not just an outer and inner, but a dichotomy which is always held together by the veil. The High Priestess This is such a rich image because of the rich tradition which it hails from. Beginning with the figure of the woman - she is the goddess Isis, mother but also virgin and priestess - the keeper of the realm of power and secrets. In Egyptian mythology, Isis was the sister of Osiris, but she also was a trickster, stealing Ra's power for her brother and husband. She is also dressed in the robes of the Virgin Mary, indicating the direct li...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Hanging out with Zoe and boys at Port Muck and then discovering the BEST little cafe ever - The Rinkha I am now sick with a weird cold and sorethroat thingy. It has been a winter of intermittent illness - that's been true for everyone really. Even Oisin is have a sorethroat. So I thought I'd get up and do some blogging then later on I'd be able to sleep on. Despite having packed loads in, the week has gone very quickly. It has been a week of reflection and thinking and doing a little. Discovering new things, going to places, catching up with friends. I think I will garden today after running. I have finally caught up with the laundry - the laundry, always there. It has also been a week which takes us closer to Brexit. It would appear that all sense has gone out of the window. I don't know how the UK has arrived at this position. Who'd have ever realised that the self delusion could be so deep? It will ultimately becoming something l...

Researching so far.... between researching colonisation, I am also researching areas of interest fr the book and three have appeared. The Tarot, the Holy Grail and Grail legends, finally the Ark - from the time of Adam to Christ as the Ark. I have no idea where I am going with this, but I think I have settled into three areas now. Into this mix is Christian symbology, as a metaphor for all symbology. This hermeticism, which is the common vein that runs beneath this all. It is without doubt the most developed thread of gnosticism, possibly globally. There are many, many different threads, but from the little reading I have done, it is the one which is most developed. Some of it is downright kooky and amazing. It is most certainly the realms of fiction. Other bits are intensely fascinating. So, my first area of research, as I have more or less thought, are going to be the cards - the cards used as a form of meditation. The Tarot cards are divided into the Major and Minor Arcana. ...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Going to Derry with the boys and having dinner and laughing loads My sons are the best people to hang out with. They are funny, interesting, interested, conversational, Confident. Creative. Understanding.... and the list goes on. I don't know what the future holds for them, but standing in this moment in time... I look at them and think, they are amazing, I've done good. On the way there, we sang to a set of CDs I burned for Ghin for Christmas six years ago - we teasing each other and joking. Then as we entered Derry Ghin put on Mr Blue Sky and I said, we should play this ALL THE TIME we enter Derry. When we got to Derry we headed for the Guildhall - just everything is better when I am with the guys. All those years, all those years of carrying them, now they are carrying me. I am bouyed along by their silly chatty company, how they talk about everything around them, how they pass comments, how they have this ease and I am just nourished, nurture...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Celebrating Chap Goh Mei with my Irish sisters I held a very small Chinese New Year celebration with some of my Irish sisters - Ruth and Sarah were here and it was so lovely. Just my wonderful, wonderful friends here. My darling dear circle of strength and amazement. Amongst us we have moved mountains and parted oceans. We have been to the moon and back, we have hewn rocks and made huge differences. To me, to me, they have been the foundations upon which I have learned to stand on. I don't trust people easily - I take people at face value, but I don't trust easily. And this is just because you know. I mean, it is really idiotic to trust people easily anyways. I have learnt that you can love people but not rely on them because human beings are pretty much unreliable. That is the human condition because, you know, we are fallible. Also, as anyone who knows me will tell, you I will go a little further - there is this streak which means that for me l...

Whimbrel. Photo by Anthony McGeehan from To the Ends of the Earth Yesterday's Nice Thing: Having lunch with Kevin and talking about everything! The Baay Tree was very noisy and very busy - I had the celariac soup, he had this sausage that came in a mantou. It was weird. Anyhow, since it was the holidays, I had a glass of wine and then we went to another cafe to talk about soap - literally. Spring is here, which is weird because we didn't have a winter - winter lasted for approximately three days - and now - now here we are - 12 degrees, 14 in some parts. And lots of sunshine. Everyone was visibly upbeat. I never managed to do any cleaning - after I got home I flopped on the sofa and just hung out with Ghin. Oh yes, I got him some lunch. That was it. But I have this renewed interest in life. The working on a book properly has really given me motivation. Kevin wondered if I would stay in school, I said, well I can see this all working out. After all it WAS school which ...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Meeting Kelly and Cormac Woke a little late today - ok 8 am. But I am going to come up with a new schedule which will have me waking at 4 am, doing research on the book at 5 am and then running at 6 am. It is going to be awesome. I feel like I have a new lease of life again. I now have a focus. I give myself about six months to do research and by the end of the first year - i.e. this time next year, I should have some sort of draft. In addition, as a meditation I am going to do a Major Arcana series on the bird tarot. It is something I have wanted to do for a very long time - my own Tarot deck, and now I have the chance to do this. Just looking up there what's available. The Tarot is now so easily available to everyone - I wonder if more people now have a sense of what it is. Looking at the symbols in the Tarot, it has been so fascinating to know that I have journeyed to seek them without really knowing this all my life. From history, to geometry...

The holidays began yesterday. I have decided to nourish myself over the holidays which means bringing back things which I love and hopefully keeping them there. So, I am going to carry out my promise to take a photograph of something beautiful everyday for this blog. I encounter so many beautiful things every single day. They are worth taking memories of. Like yesterday when I was on the beach with the boys - it was like being in paradise. No contest. If I could have stayed like something forever, it would have been to stay like that, me on the beach, watching that water, and the boys tumbling about on the beach. I would never be bored, never. And so I remember the many many places I have been with them - train stations, caves, rainforests, museums, beaches, again... just being there with them - here, we are here. We are always, always here. And I AM getting older. Possibilities fall by the wayside because, well, because so many of them have already been made possible. I have don...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Hanging out at Portmuck with Oisin and Ghin Listening to a TED talk about poverty and found it fasscinating. The poor make bad decisions because of a Scarcity Mentality. It also does not help when all around us they are being shown images of what life should be - and life should be about constant consumption. There was this TV programme yesterday which I watched, which i subversive without knowing why it is subversive - it was called Billionaire Babies and Billionaire Kids. You have to wonder what happened to Giovanni de Medici's idea that you should not ostentatiously display your wealth? It was awful how shallow and superficial and tasteless they were. Of course only the most nouveau riche would allow themselves to be filmed for something like this programme, but honestly, gold plated iPads, a cake for a four-year old which dispensed sweets, massive pink bed built like a castle. And the grown women and men who played up to this. How could they live...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Oisin returns from Iceland My rest began today. Woke up and after a bit, Oisin, Ghin and myself headed to General Merchants. THEN we went to Islandmagee, which is now my favourite place right now cos no one ever goes there. Honestly, it was gorgeous. We were in Portmuck and the boys tricked and did free running on the beach while I sat on a rug and read in the sunshine. You could feel spring in the air. I gazed out over the blue waters and the perfect weather... and thought, I am so lucky, to be here. Oisin indulged in side flips and B-twists, backflips and front flips and he helped Ghin to do a backflip. My sons. I thought, does it matter what they do in their studies, here they are, enjoying life - this is what being young is about. After that we went shopping for Jed'd present - a chocolate stationery set - and after that we had seafood chowder beside the space-time continuum cafe. We drove about Whitehead to check it out, then drove around Crrick...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Ghin got a Valentine's Day card from a secret admirer!!! I am done. Just done. Right, I need to be positive. Being a grumpy shite never got anything done. Came home yesterday and just ended up very very tired, as usual. Is this normal? When I berate myself about being rubbish at things, I discover that actually, that's all quite normal, being so rubbish. I was recently reading this article on Millennials, who are currently being blamed for everything. It is kinda weird when the people who should be blamed for everything are the people of my parents generation and our generation who accelerated the bad work. I think Millennials are being blamed because Caliban no like what he sees in the mirror. If at all Millennials are suffering from the nightmare which the previous generations have imposed on them - species extinction, climate change, radical poverty, war and pollution - of which plastic is the most visible. At the bottom of all this? Greed. ...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Researching Michelangelo A bit late today for this. But several insights occurred to me yesterday. Firstly, I need to grow up and stop imagining the world is rational and fair. Cos it ain't. And the second thing - I have to look after myself. Really, I do. Because the world ain't rational, nor fair, and it also is actively a wicked and evil place. And women who are strong and speak their truth - the world generally doesn't like them an awful lot. Especially men. Men don't like us. they say they do, but nope. Actually I have become less and less impressed with men the older I get. This is probably because they are mostly incompetent but have more or less masked it by bullying everyone else around. And there are women who would ride on those coat tails. They're kinda like class traitors. So yeah. Fucking BRING IT, I say. Anyhow. Yep. Grow up Steph. The world is full of dicks. I mean REALLY full of dicks. Right, relax. I was look...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Researching Massacio It is so interesting to cover the ground once again of the Renaissance once more. It is fascinating. But also I get the sense that I am not really getting to how it used to be - there is something illusory about the Renaissance. Something oily that lurks beneath the surface. Yesterday something took place which was really - what is the word? - horrible? Is the word horrible? I think it must be. Something horrible took place and after agonising over it for a few hours, I've decided to put it aside because my conscience is clear. So that's that. The world is full of different types of people, I just need to get on with it. Although, it has become increasingly messed up - and in many ways, I am glad that I am not really involved in the mess up that is taking place. Sometimes the parallels between the Renaissance, Ancient Rome and the world now are so clear that it is near depressing. Our world though lacks the beauty and t...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Oisin leaves for Iceland and arrives safely. I just slept almost all of yesterday evening. Came home, did some school prep, cooked and then... slept. I am eating a bacon sarnie - for the first time in ages. It is really really good. I was researching Michaelangelo yesterday. Actually I nee to start doing that now - putting it all down. I switched to Donatello - it just made more sense. Two men who made it to a ripe old age, defying the Black Death, crazy colleagues, wars, penury, injustice, corruption, assassination, poisoning by toxic chemicals... how the heck did they survive? And they left no survivors. There are no baby Donatellos nor Michaelangelos - no one can claim to have been descended from either men. Their madness and passion were singular.

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Shopping with Oisin, painting a Sooty Shearwater, starting to garden Oisin and I went into town yesterday. He is such a pleasure to be around. Does Oisin ever know how to put a foot wrong? Well, he can be irresponsible and feckless, but only in omission rather than an purpose. And he IS 17, so, you know. Bright and blue it was in the morning, and I went for my run in Belvoir. There was song thrush - song thrushes are airheads. It is like they will sing the first three notes that come into their heads, repeating the ditty, until another three notes comes along and then they will sing that. They are idiots. But this is not about the idiots, this is about the birds cope-ing seats early. The Dawn Chorus has already begun. We got him a new coat, some waterproof trousers, I got food for the week and we changed money to Icelandic money. Then I cooked dinner and then flopped. I was supposed to do lesson prep - but I was just so tired, so I left it to today, th...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Painting a blackbird and writing a letter How many shades in a black bird? I finally understood what my problem was those past two weeks - no running. I went running yesterday and everything righted itself. Also, rather interestingly, don't ask me how, I discovered the answer to the question I had been asking myself for a very long time - how can people be so awful? The answer is, because it feels good. It feels good to be horrible to people - I mean actively choose to be horrible - not give yourself a reason, but to go, yes, I think I will make that person's life miserable. To have ONE person you can be shite to, if you are this way inclined, is even better..Your personal punching bag. And actually it feels great to see them twisting and suffering and to know that *I* was the cause of their suffering. And when they lash out at you, it feels even better. Yes, it was what I was looking for. It makes you feel REALLY powerful. This is probab...

Yesterday's Nice Thing: Ghin telling me he loved me while we were going home in the car (which he does on a regular basis, but I thought I would acknowledge here.) End of the day tired... Oh man, what a week. I still have an unsettled stomach. It isn't great. Truth me told it hasn't been great for weeks now, but on Wednesday evening it just took a turn for the worse. I was also developing a sorethroat and a cold which was gone by Friday. There is a lot to be said for not pushing it. Well, I am feeling alright now, enough to contemplate running today and finally getting back in the way of things. I miss structure in my life so much. Yesterday I drew the Ayyubid star - there is something incredible about it. Just the act of drawing it is incredibly interesting - after you have successfully drawn it, it stays in your mind - it is ad if it is inscribed into your brain. There is something mystical about it, alright. It also makes you think about projective geometry -...