Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Flowering hawthorne Beltane This evening I bring myself to start to look forward to things again. To imagine the possible. 

I went buck mad with the Chaldni Plate I did 44 pictures in all Frequencies which are very high have the most complex designs Very low frequencies very simpler designs It really was quite magical, such a privilege Then after that I cleaned the house. I mean I cooked then I cleaned the house. I fell asleep after I cooked, and then I folded the clothes, washed the remaining clothes (2 loads) and then sorted my books, cleaned the fridge, sorted the snack area, tidied the pantry, rearranged the crockery, washed the surfaces, cleaned out the cooking area... washed the dishes, etc etc etc... I finally caught up on all the work. It was doing my head in. Tomorrow I will be able to go running and work in peace. Finally. And tonight I can plan for the next three weeks. I think it will be another three weeks. I can't see it going on any longer. Probably by the third week of May.  So I wrote this on FB. Having played about with the signal generator an...

There are things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio Chaldni plate hoooked up to sound generator It really was like magic. Our first cold day since lockdown began. Yesterday I felt very miserable about how life will be when it returns. It has entirely to do with the fear which people have in their lives. Fear about the virus. It makes me so angry. As far as I know the elderly here are treated with total disdain. They are shut into nursing homes and forgotten about. Think granpa Simpson. That is the fate I am avoiding. Anyway, then this virus comes round and suddenly everyone is all about the old people. There is no point thinking about the hypocrisy of human beings. Their lack of faith in themselves. Their lack of faith in life. Their complete ignorance of how these things work. And then when people speak up - the left is the worst. A new Michael Moore film has come out to criticise the Green Energy industry which is run on, surprise, surprise...

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars..." From "Les Misérables," Victor Hugo, 1862. "Mysterious Garden," painting by Kinuko Craft. My brain has been slightly melted over the past few weeks. Everyday has melded into each other. It's hard to believe that it has been almost five weeks since we went into lockdown. That is the same amount of time we spend in Singapore each holiday. One more week and we'd have spent six weeks doing this. I need to get my ass in gear. I spent most of last week watching Community. It was amusing but then became annoying. Note to self: binge watching does this to you. TV shows are not meant to be binge watched. What lovable quirks make the person annoying. Fair play to the people who put them together. I also watched the Breakfast Club which made me think of my days back in JC. It's hard to believe that that used to be a thing, sitt...

Four years ago I have to stay off social media now because it is officially beyond depressing. You really cannot question AT ALL the narrative of either side. People will say oh that's a right wing thing... oh that's the left ... I am SICK AND TIRED OF THIS. These glib replies, these easy solutions. The insistence that we box people in, the insistence that we point fingers and laugh at people. It makes me so angry. I just must focus on the future. On the positive. On the common ground. Damian has just told me that the hospitals ARE quiet. We didn't have it bad here in Ireland because we are a rural community and didn't have tightly packed cities. When this is written about we will see how stupid we all have been. The fucking media. It has been them all along. Listening to the doctors do that press conference you could see how they just refused to accept the narrative asking the same questions over and over and over again. It is load of bollocks. Honestly, t...

Artist unknown This week went by very quickly. We came back to routine. We were back in school. I thought about the May Day celebrations we would be doing now but instead here we are. This too shall pass. I must remember that. BUT in the aid of things passing, I have decided to do Ramadan too. Fasting during the day and small meals for breakfast and dinner. Running in the morning... yeah just going back to what I had. It has been another weirdish day. I went to the Asian market to do the weekly shop. Well, the shop will last for a few weeks really. Loads of noodles and loads of gyoza. All of Belfast seemed to be out. People didn't care anymore about social distancing. No one seemed very concerned. The weather was mental hot. It is only April too. It hasn't rained now for more than three weeks. I water the seedlings twice a day now - yes, it is that hot. The flowers have started to fall from the cherry tree. This time last week it went into full flower. This time next...

I am bootiful catta Simple is best My pretty princess It has been a truly strange few weeks. I have blogged so little because I have been trying to process everything still. Everyday the patterns change, everyday some new information seeps out. Everyday nothing makes sense. Being unafraid of the virus has made me a someone who is a social pariah now. You now cannot have conversations about it at all. People will look at you and assume you are right wing. Where are all the left wing people are find this lockdown unacceptable? Nowhere, that's where they are. They have revealed their hand as people who are fragile, who really are the snowflakes which the left have accused them of being. Willing to trade in their birthrights at the drop of a hat. Using the economy as an excuse. Somehow, even though they have been whining on and on about the economy for the last fifty years, now suddenly just throwing in the towel and going, you have to choose between the economy and the dis...

The prettiest Cherry Tree It has been three days since I tried doing this entry. So much has happened since. I made some terrible pasta. I had to prep for the new term. I have been trying to get my head round Google Classroom. There has been a lot of learning. We have settled into some kind of normalcy. Working from home is the new normal now. I have gotten used to it. Well sort of. I am still trying to find a routine that works for me. It seems a bit haphazzard. If I am honest the first two weeks were the best. Then came the holidays and then I've found the rest of the time a bit all over the place again. MONEY is weird. I spent almost nothing at all in the last two weeks. The first two weeks, loads, the last two weeks close to nothing. I have also stopped looking at the news and wondering when the lockdown will be over. There is now an almighty bun fight about a few things in the news is what I can gather. First, the PPE - the equipment which the hospitals can't give...

Green Man - he who must be sacrificed to bring life Persephone is but one of the many cthonic deities which are unique in the Sumerian-Mesopotamian family of mythologies. These include Ishtar/Inanna/Eshkrigal, Adonis, Orpheus, Jesus Christ, Hermes, Mercury. They are also found in the Germanic-Nordic myths - such as Baldur and Odin. Although it is thought that these Northern deities were influenced by contact with the Christianity, especially the myth of Baldur. The Sumerians later went on to influence the Semetic religions, then the Greeks and Egyptians, and eventually the cult of Christ. They, of course, were simply reflecting the seasons of death and decay - autumn and winter, and then the seasons of revival - spring. There was death, and then there was renewal. There was also sacrifice. The Celtic myths - the myths of the British and Irish Isles practised human sacrifice - usually a man, who represented the bridegroom in the sacred marriage to the Earth, who was female. Jus...

Today's selfie Yesterday's Nice Thing: Walking with Oisin on the Greenway I did feel very lost yesterday. After almost a month of this. Time has stood still. I made many plans. Some I have done, others, mostly involving house cleaning, I have not. The worst thing we can do now is go food shopping. I resent so much the amount of control that takes place outside. I feel smothered. I have done nothing wrong and yet I feel like I'm being punished. We all have not, and we have been placed under lockdown. And some people are enjoying the power. The police, for instance. Some have fallen back into the checkpoint days. How easily old habits resurface. Now with drones and ever more subtle monitoring, you can be check up on in your own house. In Singapore, us expected, everything is exaggerated. There have been not one, not two, but several racist incidents. Most Chinese Singaporeans being assholes. The disdain towards foreign workers is, as expected, disgraceful. I feel qu...

At Haw Par Villa station - I think 2013? I think 2017, Singapore under the bridge near the Merlion Melina, what a holiday that was It has been a strange day. Time seems to have no meaning any more. We are just walking and waiting - today I was bored for the very first time. I mean properly bored. It was unexpected. I am now so bored I will probably start cleaning out cupboards. The lockdown has had a strange effect on me. We spend the entire day at home with each other now. The boys are all in different rooms, although Oisin does spend a lot of time with me in the dining room. He is learning to code - Python, allegedly. Ghin is wedded to the Xbox. I listlessly try to find some meaning in what I do. I didn't go running today. I felt such a deep sense of ennui. Oh god, I forgot to mail the belt and the pork crackles and letter off. I forgot. That is how disconnected my brain has become. I must run every morning or life falls apart. Yep, that was amazing Hones...

When I first started painting birds... Sooty Sheawater Yesterday was good - ran, played piano, forgot to paint, will do that today, completed website once I cracked it, cooked for the boys burgers... burned my pan... The mornings are the most productive. Peter is now longer here. He has disappeared for the past three days. No one knows where he is. He left saying he was going to visit the electrician and he has not come back. I have not asked the boys because their standard answer is 'I don't know'. It is cool in the mornings. Then it warms up. Oh yes, I also wrote yesterday.I have decided that I'm no longer going to read up bout the virus. So the school of thoughts have coalesced in this way. It doesn't matter what your political leanings are. What matters is your sense of fear around the virus. And they fall into two categories. Now, some of these categories are warranted - people who do have underlying conditions. People who are vulnerable. They must ...

The Rape of Persephone Bernini I didn't write yesterday because I didn't feel like it. It felt broken my writing. But Dorothea Brand says we must push past the pain of writing. For a while back there even writing blogs were hard. They are not hard now. And I must continue with the writing. As I was running on Tuesday, I thought of the other part of the Persephone story. It is now gone, that will show me. But it was good as it is... it still isn't Atlantis though. So I have two possibles - Atlantis and stories of mythology. I was thinking about how cultures have made women victims. Why must there be a victim? What is this flaw in power? Why do men want to make women suffer? Why can they not treat us as equals? What is wrong with me? =================================== Somewhere a spider's web catches the sun and the light slides between the points of its beginning and end.... What? The roaring of space - it is only massive - the darkness breathing in thr...

Lunch - indian rice with samosas Garden in Singapore Another angle It is day #25. Yesterday the authorities said, three more weeks here in Northern Ireland. Then the UK mumbled something about oh primary school children can go back sooner... so who knows what is happening?  I made a big breakthrough yesterday - I finally understood how the Word Press website/blog works. Cracked it. So I'm starting to populate the pages with content. I DID go for my run yesterday, I DID play my piano, and I finally did the website. I cooked two meals - an Indian one and a Japanese one. I did laundry. I did some research for the class. Looking for photographs I also remembered what a great childhood I gave those children. I was responsible for that. I gave them more than they could have ever had at any other school. They had a gold standard of education thanks to me and they cannot take that from me. Never. It doesn't matter that I wasn't popular at the end of it. Thei...

Mid painting Purdy boys Honestly I have never been good at sharing grief. Never. I don't know if I would ever be. Oisin is a bit like me. We are very good at minimalising pain. It never goes there, until it does. So this morning I was jolted awake by a sense of sorrow. It was awful. I felt like I had/have wasted my time in lockdown, partly true and partly untrue. If i look at what I've done, I've done loads and I think we have another 2/3 weeks at least of this, so there is loads of time. My brain is not functioning at all regarding the children and their experiments. I don't know if they CAN do the experiments. It has caused a jam in my brain. I wonder maybe they should do Islam instead... the Fall of Rome and Islam. Ugh I don't know my brain is on fire. I have to make a decision. It is very hard to do this on my own. But had to enumerate all the good things I had done since the start of all this. I have: Started painting birds again and improve...

Dark Silence in Suburbia Edward Hopper I went running yesterday. It was a longer run - up the hill in Stormont and then through the small forest. Well, park really. It is good to know that even at the age of 49.4, I can still feel like I'm improving every day as I head out. As I ran, I thought about Atlantis and what draws me back to it. Perhaps after this I will have exorcised it from my system. My google research of Atlantis has come to a blank. What there exists of it in Google world is the following: Plato's Atlantis. Small tantalising fragments which Plato says he heard his grandfather talk about and his grandfather got it from an even older source who got it from the Egyptians. And even by then, Atlantis was gone. It disappeared under its own hubris. Steiner talks about Atlantis as a time when human beings did not have bodies. So it was not solid. Everything was still very soft. Atlanteans had this connection with the etheric world and could make things grow ju...

Clamdigger by Edward Hopper We have only been in lockdown for three weeks. That's all. This is the start of Week 4.I'd say we'll be back in school in two weeks time. Everyone who would have died would have died and everyone would have realised this is madness and they are introducing contact tracing so people that can move around again. I am going to ENJOY the next two weeks. Every moment I spend in here will be pure pleasure. I am now going to start cleaning one room in the house everyday. I have actually run out of things to watch on Netflix. That is only good, of course. I have also stopped making plans because I now know what I am doing. I am cleaning the back of the oil tank today. That is my big cleaning task. Life is beautiful. Tomorrow I paint a bird. I think I'm doing to try a cute bird in Anthony's book. This week I get all the online presence for Elements sorted. This will probably be done by Wednesday. By the end of the week the work aro...

La Primavera - Botticelli It seems a weird thing to say, but my biiiig learning from the last two days are learning to sit with my sorrow and pain. Two things happened which were hurtful. And instead of trying to 'fix' them or justify it, I just did nothing. I know this is how the rest of the world does it, bit I am a slow learner, ok? So, one of these was what happened with Oisin and Ghin - and I can talk about this. The other one I can't talk about. But with Ghin and Oisin, it began as a tease ... we were just having a go at each other, sort of like a verbal roughing up and then it got serious. Ghin was hurt and then of course it was MY FAULT. I tried to make him feel better, but he wasn't having any of it. And now Oisin was annoyed with me because I had also landed him in it. All in all it was pretty shit. Usually what would have happened was I would lose it, because it was so unfair...we were just having a bit of fun and it got out of hand and people were b...

Easter Sunday. The boys had pizza for dinner. I went for a run up Stormont Hill and loved it. Stretched in the evening. I cleaned the entire shed out. I binned somethings. And somethings I have decided to give away. Somethings I rearranged. The shed is now open for business. I did a lot of dusting out as well. It feels very satisfying. I also did the glass recycling. Mended my running trousers. It feels good. It is only 6 pm. Oh I also did writing and played the piano. The days are now going well. Easter is here, all is well. In the meantime, over 10,000 people have died with Covid-19 in the UK. The median age of those who have died is 81. Here are the number of people who have been tested and the number of people who have died with Covid. I'd be really impressed if it was more than then people who die from/with flu every year All of these figures are in dispute. All of them. They are reported haphazardly - you'd think that where numbers is so important people w...