Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

From the garden Writing exercise ===================== She: I love my job I speak my mind I am well respected by both colleagues and ex colleagues. I am highly valued and loved by my students and I am a wonderful friend and daughter. I know that you cannot but help hurt me for whatever reason you have. You have called me a murderer of my unborn children and a bad mother a danger to the children I teach, a scrounge and a sponge, a hysterical mad woman, disrespected the enormous sacrifices I have made willingly and gladly and never for a moment regretted them. You have told me I can't keep down a relationship, that I am a narcissist and abusive. I wear all these lashes with pride the same way a beaten and scourged person who will live to tell the tale does. I have loved every moment I have been with my beautiful sons. All those moments YOU missed. I trusted and believed you and the knowledge that one day very very soon I will be free of you give me no end of delight. ========== He:  ...

The warmest day of the year thus far. Almost certainly. It has been so interesting watching the world go into meltdown. I really am not very worried about this virus - please see previous posts in the last two months - however, I respect the fact that other people ARE. And watching other people trying to square the circle of wanting to go outside or not wanting others to go outside is really interesting. People who either are LYING that they find it stressful or people who are really stressed out by this are the ones which I just keep watching like a car crash. We will never EVER know the truth of what happened this year. However, what is true is that life will take a long time to go back to normal.  There are doubts which crawl through my mind and today they were huge and persistent. So much is changing and so much is uncertain now. In America, they are paying, paying for their refusal to acknowledge the Indian Burial Ground which is the entire country. The atrocities carried ou...

The inevitable has happened. A police officer killed a black man on camera and the whole of America exploded. As a result there are now people who champion the Black Lives Matter campaign giving the Neo Nazis of America an opportunity to now publicly castigate people for not wearing masks, self distancing and intimidating the general populous. That American would rather go through this than address the real issues of inequality, land theft and centuries of racism and injustice really says something about it. It is like a much larger version of the Northern Irish 'Troubles'. The conflict created from denial and pain. It would be so much easier if people just admitted the shit that went on and people received opportunities and assistance to level up. We are better than this in 2020. I was watching the Royal Ballet documentary on dancing for boys. We now have a generation of children - children or young adults - from my generation, probably our generation being the first to rece...

Mount Batur In many ways I am at a loss of words. The day to day has become a strange mix of doing things on my own which I love and not understanding what is going on with the world beyond. There is now a dangerous schism between left and right - which was initially fueled by neoliberalism, then Brexit, followed by the last election. In Northern Ireland we have lived with antagonism for years. That is the fault line which we exist on. The earthquake of the Troubles. To think that that was nothing compared to what's going on now. Facebook has removed anything which is credible that is linked to questioning the virus. People who would have put forward a differing viewpoint. The only people who are left and the neo Nazis to discredit the alternative voices. So much for free speech. It's ok. You know what we will survive. We will. And as for the school, what will be will be. I have done my best and that is good enough. There is nothing else I can do really.  Well yesterday was ver...

Hard to believe I once did that - The Gjendin Edge After I read Peer Gynt - we then went to see it Back to school today - the final stretch. I have more or less given up really on trying to think about this for myself. It will be what it will be. When this is all over it is going to be shit. Whatever happens. England has well and truly kicked itself in the balls. You could argue that it had been doing that for a long time. Kidding itself about the truth of its situation but really, what else can you say? It is more than depressing. With outdoor classrooms becoming a thing now we are going to need land for doing that on. Once again, it is the privileged who will benefit from this unless the people around the area come together to do this for their children. I wonder what all the lefties are up to apart from covering their faces. I don't want any part of it really. They have been just embarrassing. Maybe I am going to have to settle for being grumpy and alone in my old age. ...

The Great Cat, Tokuhiro Kawai My last entry for today before I go to bed. I got up, wrote, blogged, played the piano, ran, did the laundry, cooked, worked, did email things... it has been a good day. No alcohol. Little food. Saw 1 film - 12 Years a Slave which just reminded me of why I no longer watch films about slavery. How human beings can be so awful - and the deep held belief that they had the right to be cruel and racist - no wonder America is in the state it is in. How they have never come to terms with their own history, the country they stole from the First Nations, the people whom they brutalised to build the place. The elitism, the coarsening of the soul. The American Dream. What a joke. But it has been a good day really. The boys tried out their new deep fat fryer. We had lunch in the garden which was so warm and muggy. Then I drove Oisin to Heidi's. That was followed by a shop at the Co-op - the weekly shop - and I then came home to finish off the Maths. O...

Manu and the Rishis I am currently now working on four or five strands. 1. There was suddenly a short story which materialised out of nowhere. Those are the best. So potential short story collection. The first one I called Cleaver. Maybe it will be the only one. 2. Atlantis a) Present day to past memory b) A journey of Return 3. These four women which came out of nowhere as part of the journey of Atlantis. Kinda a Murakami thing. 4. Goddess stories - Persephone being the most developed I want to think about the 3 strand a bit more today. Four women, undergo a traumatic experience and are transformed into these half animal/half women and they are released. Freed. One is on a boat and becomes a mermaid. Another is trapped in a house fire and becomes a Lamia/Salamander. A third is on a mountain and experiences an earthquake and becomes a harpy. The fourth is in a forest and becomes a centaur. The conceit is that it is an end of the world thing. It is corny. And cheesy and...

Venizia Sometimes I have to wonder what this lockdown has taught anyone. I have felt really puzzled with how people are. Actually scrap that, I'm not even going to go there. I can only concentrate and focus on myself. I also did manage to piss my sons off. I am almost never ever the source of grief and sorrow in the family being the bloody doomat, but yesterday I had had enough. Also I found these videos which talked about making a quick buck and I sent it on to Oisin and said to him, be careful of these lifestyle coaches and gurus - and then mentioned hustling and he got very annoyed with me. It was entirely my fault that because everyone is trapped right now and the last thing they need are mirrors of the truth. So I was wrong. Oisin is starting on his journey and he really doesn't need someone to come along to burst a bubble. I really do feel for him. And I was completely wrong. I should have never done that. Lessons from the pandemic. When people are trap...

Igor Baranov (Russian b 1983) Some days I just can't get anything right, no matter how hard I've tried. I am a bit tired I have to say of trying to please people. To be honest, I think we have done pretty good to have gotten this far in the lockdown and been good to each other. I will give myself the proverbial break. I did write a short story. I did wake up at 3 am. I did do the laundry. I did do some gardening. I did go for my run. I did not watch a lot of TV - I saw Dominic Cummings' interview. Hilarious. I actually don't really care for the entire thing. Apparently Cummings was a huge advocate for lockdown, a thing I well believe. Because he said that he had pointed out the need to plan for a pandemic. I'd love to see his paper on it though. It has made people who hate the government but love the lockdown come out in all kinds of hives and spitting rage. Nothing about this virus makes any sense. I think that when it is all over no one will know what hap...

Cleaver Here i sit, in my beautiful garden, just all life rioting about me and there are angels and sprites swirling all about. This is why I brought my computer out here to write. Just the lifeforces which address you as you stand here. I have to garden a little everyday. It is a must at this time of the year. The nettles need cutting back and the heat, the heat - as the sun reaches its longest stretch across the skies i am drowning in the honey of its heavy warm light. Bees are buzzing everywhere and wood piegeons are guzzling the ivy berries. They flap about so noisily I fear they will break the already overburden shed roof. The cherries, despite their hard greenness are already weighing down the otherwise whipsy branches. I must water them every morning too. Despite the rains it is still very dry. We had a very dry, almost bone dry April and practically nothing at all in May save a few damp mornings. I harvest a rose now and then from my rose shrub. It is not a bush but a ...

Something like this The little town stretches from the harbour and lies insouciant, against the steep slopes that lead down to the water's edge. It seems as if it as always looked this way. The rose gold of the day's draining light suffusing the whitewashed walls and gliding its windows and roofs. The light reflects off the water to be admired by the sky and makes the air sparkle. It seems as if no place could ever be so beautiful and yet, here we are. The lap lap lap of the waters against the docks and the gentle clunking of the side of the boats against the jetty mesmerises. Perhaps once upon a time I dreamt of it somewhere, the unsteady heartbeat which was perhaps mine. Somehow the boat finds its way back into the harbour and do not know how I piloted it there. But I believe this is no ordinary boat, nor is it an ordinary harbour. I have been here before and now, without knowing, I have been called back. Through the fog and the rain, the gales and the screaming, I h...

Ground Zero Today I got up at 3 and couldn't go back to bed, so I did some writing and some reading. It is interesting the human being's need to find the source, the beginning. All our stories start with once upon a time. Possibly because we are so ego bound and we have beginnings and we have middles and ends. Anyway, the book I am reading is The Story of a Pebble and it looks at the origins of the universe found in the pebble. I think it is interesting, and fascinating, but when I do find that if I am reading something super 'scientific' at some point I find myself thinking about how much this is like mythology - I find myself thinking, yes... how can we know what happened 13 billion years ago you know? I mean I don't even know what happened two minutes ago. It is that sort of thing which makes me think, hm.... Also the entire Big Bang thing is suspect. I'm not saying it is suspect as in I don't trust science. It is suspect in that it sounds too much ...

The boyz - Ghin and Oisin when Oisin was 9 and Ghin was 4 Mother's Day 2011 The sun has finally come out after a long day of brooding muddiness. It hasn't been cold but it has been grey and dull. Which is a bit depressing always. However we have had the best April and May in recent memory so I think everyone us just generally happy. I was trying to remember the awesome times... 20 May 2011 - just over 9 years ago! What a gorgeous evening then it has turned out to be.  Maybe I could write about what I am going to do with my own continued journey towards the garden. To me, this experience of the transformation is getting me ready to move onto that new phase of my life where I get on with developing that last bit of my own legacy. It is taking everything I have been through and cultivating it. I know the person I am and the person I want to be and from this moment on I am getting on with it. It is so interesting that I have not done as much as I thought i would o...

An ancient woodland For how long have I questioned what traditional medicine been about? For a very long time. Since I read Woman on the Edge of Time and then discovered feminism. During this time I learned about how madness for reserved for women and that our bodies were to be medicated. Pregnancy was treated as an illness and that menopause was seen as something to be combated. Drugs were pushed on my Big Pharmaceuticals who had more or less convinced the Western medical establishment that drugs were the solution. If you were a doctor your job was to diagnose your patient and then give them the right medication. As a result the medication crisis in this part of the world and the US is off the charts. Several programmes have been made of this. Meanwhile simple things which cost little money and expertise like diet and exercise was neglected until recently. These simple ideas of how diets must be balanced have always stayed with us in Asia - and exercise as well. Tai chi, qigong,...

Nut as the all nourishing cow Ah Nut. Nut one of the few female sky deities - often male deities are the sky and the females are the Earth. Not so with Nut who was the star covered sky and with her twin brother Geb, who was the Earth, in their constant copulation, creates the Ennead - the eight popular gods - and everything else in between. Nut is depicted as a woman arching over the sky, her body covered in stars. Sometimes she is the great sow, her suckling piglets are the stars. And then she is the Great Cow - and the Milky Way is the liquor that pours forth from her breasts. And of course water from the skies are nourishment to the Earth.  One of the best stories of the birth of Gods is how Nut, with the help of Thoth. There is a common theme in mythology in the Mediterranean of an abhorring of one's own progeny by the Gods. Very often the newest set of Gods, the ones which are the most potent in that time either are killed or made to disappear by their parent...

Hathor Hathor has her origins in Sekhmet. Sekhmet was created in order to get rid of humanity which had become disruptive and horrible. She could not be controlled, so she ended up being unable to stop the killing. Ra then got her drunk and turned her into Hathor, the Goddess of Pleasure and Love. Fertility, of course. If you are Goddess you are bound to be linked up to fertility somehow. Hathor is a cow. Literally, she is often depicted as a cow. But very interestingly, when she is half human half cow, the shape of her face is that of ... the female reproductive system. Her ears are the ovary and her neck, long and thin, is the shape of the vaginal canal. Her face is the uterus itself. Hathor is therefore not related to any other god as such. But because she was a bit like Athene, created by Ra himself, she was also associated with Ra and therefore the Sun itself. Hathor was the goddess of love, pleasure and sensuality. She was also the goddess which traveled with Osiris to t...

One of my favorite motivational posters of all time I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that my house is once again in some state of collapse. Today MA and I were talking about the migrant worker dorms and she said you know they are men, and you what men are like, they don't care about keeping things clean. Tell me about it, I said. (I also said that Muslims tend to also be cleaner then she said look they are so tired when they finish their work and they can't be bothered to clean their own quarters...) It is very complicated and full of stereotypes, I know...) However, this leads me to my house. If I do not do the laundry, hoover the place, clean the toilet, tell people to pick up after themselves, it never gets done and this week I was in a state of complete despair over the new Geology Main Lesson and also had slightly given up on life. I shouldn't complain I said to Emma yesterday. I should be enjoying the lockdown and just wanting to stay in forever - so y...

Artemis by Hrana Janto I begin with Artemis because she one of the pair of twins. Her brother is Apollo, the god of the Sun, Music and Medicine. Apollo, being the bloke always gets the glory. Artemis, being the Goddess of the Moon, Hunt, Young Girls and Magick, was no less important during in Ancient Greek. Legend has it that after Zeus had impregnated her, Hera, his wife, being very jealous refused to allow the birth of her children on 'terra firma'. So the little floating island of Delos took pity on her and allowed her to give birth to her children. Just how long she was pregnant is anyone's guess but as soon as Artemis was born she assisted her mother with the birth of her brother. Because of this Artemis is also one of the goddesses of childbirth. She is a bag of contradictions, possibly because she is the goddess of the ever changing moon. The Moon's role in our culture and history is best seen in the dual face of Artemis. She is the goddess of animals an...

Jan De Vliegher, artiste belge né en 1964. Iris Garden, 2013. I suppose despite not going to school I am still teaching and doing class prep and being held responsible - maybe even more responsible - for people paying fees. So that is exhausting. And when no other structures are holding the thing together I feel even worse you know. But it is what it is - I must look to myself now for all the things which are good in my life. And let me start with the writing. Yesterday I cooked samosa and potato curry really quickly for the boys. I also bought some eggs and maybe I think i'll make something like fried rice today with lots of veggies. Been ages since they've had veggies. The world has so completely changed. Everything is rocking, everything shifting, by the day. There is no sense of what is up and what is real. I have always known that the reaction to the virus' threat has been over exaggerated by the commitment to the mistake is just stupid. Howeve...

Painting probably by Ninetta Sombart Listening to Bach and feeling a whole lot better.  We have another six weeks until lockdown is over and I need to get into proper shape so having an end in mind is nice. Six weeks is plenty. So here i am, pulling myself up by the straps of boots, once again. How much easier would life has been if i pretended to be a little bit stupid and a little bit ambitious. So easy. But i would have felt soiled. I know that. All the time I would have known I betrayed something terrible and deep. A yawning chasm would have always lived within me and I would have been hostage to my own conscience and what would that have meant? It would have meant an unfathomable horror within myself. I know it. And when i listened to the gorgeous music and been to the beautiful places i would have always experienced the cruelty which i was part of. And as such my little rustic home and my idea of what the future and having no regrets of the past...th...

Ascension of Christ - when the Earth ascends into the Heavens People are now more or less losing their minds. There is a set of people who are completely terrified and do not ever want to leave their homes nor go back to work. I suppose this will end fairly sharpish when the government has decided that they can't pay for stuff anymore. Also, they will slowly get people to adjust their lens, the same way they did with Brexit with people who have been saying the same thing all along to go on TV now and restore some confidence. Kick people in the arses. Then they will do something superficial aesthetically pleasing but mostly pointless thing, like make people wear masks and visors and create a lot of problems for small business who want to resume. Who knows where this will all end? Two things took place for me this week. One, i had to deliver a normal main lesson and I freaked out. I really felt the burden of the entire school's justification of the payment of full fees o...