Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Did the weekly shop today and laundry. And Ghin is back with me, so all is well in the world. I'm just filling in the spaces. Today was just a bit blah. Everything is a bit blah. Honestly... I don't know what to do with the blahness. I spoke today to Ghin about what happened over the weekend and it is hard to talk about these things, but we must. We must be able to express concern and disappointment and truth tell. I am so sick and tired of the secrets and whispers and the unsaid. Sick and tired of it. This is how what we did in my own family and yet at the same time, it was still tough. I hate the secrecy, the inability to face up to the mistake, the insistence of the non accountable, it drives me bats. After school today, I tried to do the food shop. But due to the massive bills which I had paid out today I had the card declined. Clearly credit card fraud is an issue because this has never happened to me before. I had to go back to school to look for the phone only to find it...

I will start each day with this from now on. I remember feeling great when I did it years and years ago. So many great ingredients in both these plants.  The past three weeks has been just a rollercoaster of crazy. We are now a month since the dreadful news. I think the most awful thing about it is the helplessness. The inability to go back in time to do the one thing we wish we could do. It has been heartbreaking. I have reconnected into Belfast. This weekend I took a long walk along the Ormeau embankment to the train station. Having no car forced me to walk an extra five miles. I did this on my own, seeing the dogs and people and children. At the Oemau Park bandstand children did circus skills. I didn't take any photographs. It made me think of a time when taking photographs was a harmless thing. Now it was insidious. The addition of the smart phone in our lives has been for the worse I would say. On balance, technology has made things worse. On balance. It wasn't supposed to...

Today I realise that sometime in the not do distant past I had begun to live less of half my life in Singapore. That being 50 years old now, and having studied abroad for three years and lived in Ireland for 23, I have now lived away from Singapore for more than half of my life. It made me feel a bit sad. Especially since I haven't been able to see anyone in real life this year. However I know I am very lucky. Once a year for six weeks at a time is pure luxury. And the boys love it too. My patience was tried to the limit this weekend. I have to recognise that this is the one part of my life I have to conquer. The reaction I have to Peter's put downs and insults. To be honest he is slowly losing it as far as I'm concerned. I can never tell how he is going to behave from one moment to the next. One minute he is all trying and wants us to be friends and the next minute he is shouting at me. BUT I must learn that he is the ultimate simulation - in that he is completely unreal a...

It is the planning day. As usual. Yesterday I walked to get the car, using the train. It was an exceptionally beautiful November day. The mist and the water of the Lough and the River... the two beautiful waters in Belfast. They have also managed to take such great care of them. Then, the Brent geese bobbing up and down in the calm waters, with the Brent oil tanker in the background, the sunlight on the moss covered concrete walls, the sadness and melancholia of being with the boys and remembering them... All of the wonder and the time of being here... of being a part of the place... but also not. I don't ever ever remember feeling like what home could be like. Never. All I could feel is my place in the cosmos... everywhere else I am stranger. It is a paradox. I feel most at home when I contemplate the universe or stare up into the stars. I walked along the Ormeau embankment for the second time ever - the first time ever was the day before... it is a pretty walk in this weather. Th...

It has worked. The visualisation of the cell and how beautiful it is. Hard to imagine that only thirty years ago the best we could do were a few squiggles under a microscope. Now we have the entire cosmos under the slide. At this point we could just give up and go home. That really broke me that photograph. When I saw it I thought we are supported by the most incredible forces and intelligences. Just GIVE UP trying to be clever and just fecking do right by each other. Clever has been covered. We are never going to improve on the work of God - the ancients had it right. We have come to the limits of our understanding and there is no more need to do this - now all we have to do is love each other. And the really weird thing is now whenever I am tempted to go into annoyed judgey mode, that photo just appears before me, reminding me that I need to be a good, kind and loving person. As best I can anyways.  I have to say that I am utterly exhausted. When I get back from school all I can ...

  The most detailed model of ONE human cell to date, obtained using x-rays, nuclear magnetic resonance, and cryoelectron microscopy data sets. Aren't we all just so filled with magical possibilities? ❤️ Most recent estimates put the number of cells in one body at around 30 trillion. Written out, that's 30,000,000,000,000. Source and Credit: Transformation of the Cellular Landscape through a Eukaryotic Cell, by Evan Ingersoll Ingersoll Gael McGill ~ Digizyme's Custom Maya Molecular Software Biología Al Instante This one photograph has inspired me more than any of the lessons I have learnt in my life. This one photograph. I wrote this to go along with it before I shared it on FB.  Human beings, stop being such assholes. We are being powered by forces unknown to us, beyond our comprehension and which we will waste our time trying to comprehend. Forces which look after and care for us. Which leaves us with only one freaking job and it is to love each other. Thats it. One freaki...

Finally go the desk organised today. I wasn't expecting it, but Ghin having to study for his exams has meant that I am here accompanying him and sorting things out as well. I have really let the routines slip big time. Between doing too much and being unable to get it together... well... So I'm gonna just list things here which I need to pay attention to once more... here we go again. First, I want to just say that despite not being a mother of very young children, I still feel exhausted all of the fecking time. I think maybe you have just enough reserves to do what you need to do and if you use it all up, then, you know, you've used it all up. My brain has also seemed to have gone AWOL. I find writing, playing the piano, anything which requires the least bit of intelligence impossible. I was writing music there the other day and I was utterly SHOCKED as to how I was unable to focus properly on ANYTHING at all. It was like my brain had been sucked out of my ear and I was le...

It has been shit no doubt. 2020. Began with wildfires in Australia and then the breakdown - collective - both physical and mental - of society. I no longer listen to the news. I try and find connections within the spaces I can find these things and then ignore everything else. But just now, when I sat down to start writing a surge of deep thankfulness rose. As I regarded the darkness outside, the window a sheet of mystery, I was grateful that I could sit here, inside, warm and do this self indulgent thing - write. Being in Forest School this year, these short two months pass - well two and a half months pass, has meant that I am outside all the time. It has meant that I am listening to the wind in the trees, lighting a fire on a regular basis, watching the clouds racing, getting out in all weathers and breaking that mental barrier or working outdoors.  Last night I dreamt a friend had died. It was so real that I wanted to wake up and phone them. It was chilling. Also I didn't know ...

This has been a tough week. Impossible. I attended the third funeral in four months on Wednesday. It seems like this is something which will be part of my life now as people slip away. My head is numb. Everything is numb. We played the handbells in class. It was therapeutic and very funny. There was some laughing to be had. We learned a little of how to write music. We did some algebra. Next week we do the human body.  So time passeth. Life goes on and we are carried along the current. On Wednesday I had never known time to pass so slowly, not even in airport waiting lounges which are certainly the worst place in the world. It has been a long time since I had been confined in a room with relative strangers waiting for something which I had no idea of when it would happen. I think the last time that happened I was in Harapan. I learned to just not do anything. Enjoy the flow of time and we were unmoving stones or rocks upon which time did little work on. I wasn't prepared for that. ...

I'm now just pushing things around.  Pushing. 

Are there places where we go that words may not follow? The bliss of holding a child in your arms, the lover's caress, the unity with a nightsky that no matter how many shares and likes an instagram feed might generate will fall short of a novel of chapters? And then there is the other unity - the death of a person who you believed would never be separated from you. Couldn't not bear thinking about. The very conception of the idea was an invasion into the most painful, unprotected recesses of your soul and yet, entirely stripped you of skin? What of that? What is the point of thinking? Of speaking? Of writing? What? Here is where words go to dissolve. Where words terminate in silence, like snow disappearing even as it touches the ground. Our failure to achieve immortality is only second to our failure to live with death. It seems idiotic, paradoxical. Why when the only thing we can be sure of in being alive is that we must die, do we end up not preparing ourselves for that whic...

It is Thursday and I am shattered. I come home from whatever I have done and I just lie on the bed. Or sofa. I'm listening to an interview on Lockdown TV now. This week has been long. It has felt long. I know why too... just  whole list of things I have been procrastinating and backlogging. For some reason I can't bring myself to do them. Because they are annoying? unpleasant? bothersome? never endning? Yes, all of the above. No wonder people 'travel'. It gives them something to do. It is a runaway from life. A higher, more glorious form of procrastination. What are people looking for when they travel though? A new what? I think of the Somerset Maugham and Hemmingway stories. In the end it all concludes with ennui.  Yesterday we went into the woods in the dark and set up a little shelter. It was wonderful. The rain and the dark and the shelter and the wind. It was a little magical. The ebbing light, was trickling into a darkened  indigo blue and it made the forest lumin...

It was a good day in school today. Kids were interested and engaged and we learnt STUFF. I felt moods had shifted and changed and here we are... sitting with satisfaction. After work I headed to Home Bargins where I got industrial scale sink unblocker for the shower and some very cheap vinegar. I wasn't sure what for but knew I needed some anyway. I also got two toothpastes. Although really I should make my own now. And then I came home, tried to watch some TV but fell asleep. Woke up, collected Ghin and then finished what I was watching - Benjamin Buttons - and made dinner which was spag bol. And now I am here.  Yes it has been yet another busy day. I need to do a whole load of things before I get stuck into work. But I think I'll do it the other way round. Do work and then get stuck into other things. ============================ I just went to bed and claimed my sleep time.  It is now 7.30 am. I have just had breakfast with Ghin. We spend a lot of the time laughing and reca...

After I woke Ghin up, I made the bed, did the laundry, gave him breakfast and cleared out the car. Then I changed for school, made sure I knew what I wanted to do and then finished the last of the coffee. After that it was very much deciding what came next... we had half an hour to fill so Ghin went into the living room and I decided I would just blog. Who knew when I would be next in the mood? In order to use by the sweet almond oil and make myself a promise about making my own moisturiser, I recently made an all purpose beeswax balm. It can be used for the face as a protective layer against winter, the body as an effective moisturizer, the hands, even hair. Just massage a little through the hair to create a lovely shiny putty type hair product. It is a super effective balm - I also added lavender oil so it smells great. It also helped Ghin get rid of his rashes. So it has a medicinal protective effect too. It is also quite economical. A half bottle of almond oil, a bit of the lavenda...

Twenty years ago I embarked on a journey to be a mother. With Oisin now in university, it seems that my journey is now partially complete. I remember what it was like having been thrust into motherhood. The gazing into the child's face and the frustrations of exhaustion. Even now, I am exhausted. I will not rail about Peter and how it was mostly myself bringing up the boys. The Earth is my witness. What I will say instead is that they taught me so many lessons which I would have never learned if I had not had them. They taught me about boys, I never understood boys. That taught me how to be patient. They taught me resilience. How to survive. To hold on no matter what. To try my very best. I did try my best. Days and weeks and months and year of giving myself over to them. Walks and trips and adventures. Quiet times of snuggling and reading. Watching TV together. Cooking. Drawing. Crying. Holding them and crying with helplessness and fear. Nursing and hoping. Feeding and cleaning an...

Yesterday I felt quite blah. Just sense of what is the pointness of it all? The blahness of living. To be honest it is like this after a performance high which is what Halloween was. And then there is this now. I have had this sense of boredom. But then I realised this morning, this morning, the pedestrian, the hum drum, the boring is severely underestimated. The neatness, the two by foursquareness of the everyday. The gentle drip drip dripping of passing time, the solitude of the skies as they move without incident and emotion. The over exaggeration of everything has made boredom a premium. You cannot move for the crazy. Here I find peace. I find peace in boredom. I embrace it willingly, wholeheartedly, gratefully, the liberty of boredom.  To be drinking tea, in peace and quiet, at 3 am in the morning is not to be sniffed at. To be able to write unmolested by a terror is not to be taken for granted. To say, there is nothing which I am overly worried about is a privilege. It is goo...

Today was about just being lazy. Having sometime to switch off and take stock. I watched a new anime series called the Blood of Zeus which was based on loosely on Greek myths. Mostly the relationship between Hera and Zeus. Culture tends to now veer between the ludicrous and the sublime. On the side of the ludicrous is Tik Tok. Also the mad and bad. I cannot believe how awful it is out there for children now. And then there is wonderful new animation made possible by better access to education and technology.  I had a sudden flashback of being on an Indonesian island.  Planning now. For the week. Right. I need to do some writing and then think about what the week will bring and return to my promise to myself about my diet and exercise.  So the days runs in and out - I don't know what the world will bring. Today, I was in Tescos - it was so crowded. Everyone was wearing a mask. I think we are all used to it. But used also to just getting on with it. No one is paying anymore...

It has been a weird week. The passing moon has sucked the energy out of me and the past week has been exhausting. Between Halloween and today... a few nice things have happened. The atmosphere in the school has shifted and yesterday I heard from Oisin - he has been accepted in a fund management company in his university. I'm so proud of him. He s gonna have such a fun time. Honestly. I'm so pleased that we just allowed him to do what he wanted to do. That we did not say do the safe thing, play the safe option. I'm so happy that he has gone on to do what he loves. A life like that is a life which will be full of meaning and passion. I personally wanted him to become a nature lover, but he has had that from me. Instead he has become a music creator, an artist, a parkourist, someone who has a tremendous sense of responsibility - he is now, as he steps out into the world is taking life into his own hands and being the person whom he is trying to feel and see. So your children a...

There isn't a lot that can be said anymore. Not really. I was watching this video about the death of the public intellectual and it is true. There is a deficit in thinking. People are no longer interested in the long slow process of marinating in their thoughts - and everyone wants a quick fix.  People develop brands and then people cling to them, like a latest handbag or something. Without really knowing what they are endorsing. People don't research on the media which they stream, nor the people whom they retweet. It is mental. This is how the right and left have become so confused. How intellectuals have stopped being interested in the working class. I cannot believe that the intellectuals have separated themselves from the class struggle. To me this was just a natural thing. Now... I suppose I should be deemed a complete hypocrite as I live in my nice house and run by nice Forest School and teach in my nice private school with the nice kids and the nice parents and the nice...

  It has been a day of recovery yesterday. I had a steak and watched all of the last series of Harlots . Apparently it is now cancelled so there won't be a Season 4. Then I fell asleep and did nothing. I thought about what class meant and what we could do to sort things out. So i'm going in at 6.30 to tidy up the class. The intention to clear the cupboards over the holidays never took place I AM getting older. There is no doubt. Just more tired, less on it. But I've been on it my whole bloody life. I think I can be a little less on it there days. The Halloween celebrations went very well. We basically sold 10 out of 12 slots. It as quite beautiful and very fulfilling. It was tough work, but it was nourishing. Here I was doing what I loved doing best - telling stories about myths and linking lore and legends. I am fairly sure that no one has made the link to the four treasures with regular playing cards because that is not how people think. Who makes those links between myth...