Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Greyabbey It is Halloween, where the veil between the worlds thins and the spirits and us mix. We mingle and we cannot tell one from the other. Our dead are honoured, they are remembered. We enter the darkness, the darkest. Here we are alive, here we are also dead. Here we exist. A cold cold breeze makes the nettles and the yellowing leaves of the cherry tree tremble. The beech outside sheds its leaves. When I go running, I run in a genteel falling shower of colour - the lime trees of Stormont, the oaks, the sycamore, the birches... they are all falling asleep. It is time they whisper, time to disappear... So we must, we must leave. Many people never survived winter. This was a sort of memorium and a goodbye. We now left the world of light and placed our lives into the hands of the unseen. It made sense. Makes sense. The light must now be carried within so that when the sun returns, we can then unite with it too. There is a stoic melancholy. The laughter is brave. The revelrie...

Yesterday's Nice Thing -  Driving around the Ards Peninsula I have had a strange Halloween break. Something in the air is beckoning. It has been a very very long time since I have felt like this. Change is sweeping over everything and I feel it so keenly in the skies. This autumn I have noticed colours and nature like never before. The skies are iridescent and the colours in it are always changing. I don't know how come I have never seen this previously. Before autumn to me was the loss of the leaves on the trees, perhaps the fruit we received from the plants. But now, now... it is all about light. The sunrises and sunsets are mercurial, they are ever shifting. I drove around yesterday entranced by the clouds and birds which flew down and over the lough. I was with Ghin and Cash and they chatted away, nattering and commenting on everything. Our geese Yep, birdwatcher... finally admit to it. No better place in the world to do thi Greyabbey What a pl...

Bogside mural How did I end up in Northern Ireland and what happened when I arrived here? Why wasn't I afraid, why wasn't I deterred. Over and over again would ask me, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And of course, I would say, I married a Derryman. For my sins. But really, the reason I was in Ireland was, when I arrived here, it is inexplicable, I felt I had come home. I had never ever thought of visiting Ireland. When I was here studying, I saw Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Midlands, even Blackpool - I had been everywhere and really, apart from Cornwall, I never really wanted to LIVE anywhere in the UK. How I ended up here was the invitation from Peter to visit him. But once I got here and I was shown Kinnegoe Bay, I knew I had come home. Derry, the North West, Donegal, the Atlantic. Cork. Dublin. These places, the people - their history would become MY history, their struggle became my struggle. I instantly identified with the nationalists. Having be...

Gary in the autumn light So I thought I would just do the review here and then put stuff in which I can't put in later on. Here is what we did this half term. The Main Lessons were Ancient India, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Persia and Egypt India - Vishnu, the Ganges River and we made chapatti. Our projects were the Animals of the Ganges and Avatars of Vishnu. We worked on punctuation and did imaginative writing. The class began to learn how to take notes and then rewrite the corrected passages out. Mesopotamia and Babylon - we did the Tigris, Euphrates and we did the myths of Marduk and the Enuma Elish. We made ice cream. We drew the Rivers using watercolour. We also learned about the Marsh Arabs who lived in the delta of the Euphrates. Persia - we did the life of Zarathustra and wrote a play. We made bergedil. We drew the vulture and learnt about some practises of Zoroastrianism. They wrote out the first Gatha. Egypt - we did the story of Ra and Isis, Isis and Osiris and...

The Troubles at 50 I was watching the series on the Troubles at 50. I can't quite believe that I'm still here. I arrived in 1998. No one knew anything, although the IRA had been under ceasefire now for a few years. But the killings and attacks on Catholics still continued. And the bombings still continued, although the character of the conflict was now very different. I watched footage from that wet, rainy night in Stormont and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement... then after that the long long walk back to freedom. To the relative peace which we have today. That we have now. The Orange Order was still trying to march down the Garvaghy Road, East Belfast was still rioting, Derry was still Free. It was a strange time. Everything was possible. There was this rawness which now we can look back and think it's great. But back then, nothing was certain. Nothing. We have lived through the rebuilding of the place. We have lived through the financial crash of the earl...

Silver Moon I was looking at a poster about Halloween and I thought about the journey of the year and my own journey towards an understanding of this. I remember it began with buying this book in the Silver Moon bookshop in Charing Cross. I remember doing a double take walking past the window. For a start it was called Silver Moon. Then, it was full of books... but not only that, it was full of feminist books. It was a huge awakening for me walking into the bookstore. Picking up the We'Moon calendar and this other book, Lady of the Moon. They were BOTH about the cycles of the year. Since there were no cycles of the year in Singapore, but lots of celebrations determined by other festivals brought in from other parts of the world, it was all very mysterious to me. Despite having experienced the seasons for a short while in Europe, it still was all very weird. I can truly say that I've only understood the seasons in the last maybe ten years. However, it didn't stop ...

The turning of the year Yesterday's Nice Thing - I stayed in bed ALLLLLL day With the end of half term, I just ended up in bed all day. There was this thing on Friday night, and it really was stupid of me to try and go for it, but I had to, but I was utterly exhausted. Saturday I met someone, but Sunday, I just fucking stayed in bed, watched Netflix and slept. The boys too had a sorta same weekend. I didn't care the sun was shining and I needed to garden desperately, I just had to sleep and sleep and lie down and sleep some more. I didn't even bother going for a run. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I watched all of Episodes , then Capote and finally, Inside No 9 . It was like when I spent the entire day on the sofa channel surfing but this time in bed with Netflix. When I look at my life, full-time jobs, NGOs, studying, full-time job and working mom, and more courses and studying... and now, new business. I have always, ALWAYS just had a very very full l...

Belt! Yesterday's Nice Thing - I made a belt. Making things is sooooooo satisfying. I have loved the last two sessions of book making and now, belt making. I am so lucky to live in Belfast where people are always doing amazing things. Yesterday I began my first batch of kombucha. I'm going to add that to my daily routine to get the gut bacteria going. I was sooo tired yesterday. Honestly. Just wiped. I didn't even go running. But I did go to drive around Belvoir Activity Centre. It was great. So many venues. Will keep asking. But yeah, yesterday I got up at 7 am. Which is at least two whole hours MORE than I usually get up. But I did go to bed at 4 am... eventually.  This morning, weirdly, my heart went into that same very very sad vibe which I haven't had for ages now. In that moment I aid to myself, I am grateful for this feeling, it reminds me I am still alive. I am grateful for this feeling, it means that I can feel sadness. And so I kept on say...

Shrooooms!!!! Yesterday's Nice Thing: The class got to go for a mushroom walk. In a world where people are constantly trying to be exceptional, and this is causing untold mental and physical damage, the fight now is to just be normal.  I grew up in a culture which was about excellence. We were told we had to constantly be excellent. To excel, the be the best thing ever. It was on all our stationery, it was all about being wonderful and extraordinary. This sort of continued and then it spread to the entire world. Today we see the toxic effects. A planet ravaged in the search for the most exotic, least visited, most beautiful. People's bodies destroyed by plastic surgery, working out too much, the personal favoured over the political. Careers prioritised so that family, the heart of every society, is neglected. People chasing the next grotesque instead. As this happens the lens or the mirror becomes distorted. Then there is social media the MOST distorting medium of all...

Yesterday I visited Belvoir Park Forest to get photographs of trees for a new proposal I'm working on with someone who asked me to do some drawings for a story she had written. Naturally no visit to Belvoir is complete without visiting the Belvoir oak.  It is around 500 - 600 years old. Just let that sink in. And recently, there was a serious outbreak of larch disease. All the forest around the tree had to be cut and only a few trunks were left around it.  However, the Belvoir Oak was not alone. It had other younger oaks around it - around 200 years old. Yes, when I say younger, it is younger in Oak years. I went there, hoping to get a photograph of the sulpher tuft display which was spectacular about ten years ago. As you know fungi only grows on dead wood. So I pretty much expected the display to be great, because you know, dead wood.  What I was not prepared for was the complete regeneration of the entire back part of the tree. The ...

details from the papyrus of ani Does it slightly terrify me how quickly time is passing? Yes, yes it does. Teheuty and Sobek Ani and his helpers Map of the Nile Our nature table Making spore prints Shaggy Inkcaps Our lives are but a brief spark, a fragment. So, when I contemplate the depth and the width of history, what do I think is the best thing to do for a person - so that their soul sings? So that the Earth is enriched? So that we arrive at contentment and love? What would I do? I would, if I had to start all over again, I would say to be kind. To be kind and loving to those most immediately around you. To give infinitely, forever and never stop. To forget vainglorious ambition and success which is defined by the world, as defined by the world, and plough your own furrow. And I mean to REALLY forget it and follow what makes you happy. And to understand that it may feel like nothing is happening for a while, but something is happening all the time. ...