Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

It has been an awful ten days. I went into it with so much hope and resolution. I mean I did go some good things. Like I tidied Oisin's room, I decorated the house, by way of the tidying of Oisin's room I organised the TV room - it is now neater - not completely sorted by a long shot, but neater and I also sorted the airing cupboard. Of course there was the prep for the party that never was and then the endless days of just trying to get my head around Covid and now, I am out - ten days of nothing. Oh yes and my period has come back again. Who knows why but I do think that it does happen from time to time... I feel fine though. I have gathered two boxes of things to take to school. And I really must get the divorce documentation sorted as well.  I have also decided that most people can have no insight as to the private hell which Peter has put me through. When I say most people I think only one other person can come close to fully understanding what he has done to me - and that...

I did it. I sorted out Oisin's room! I hoovered it and wiped down shelves and I threw stuff away. Things which I had tried not to throw but I had to in the end. Yay. My period has come back again. The last time I had it was March this year. That's nine months.  

What is this blog going to be about? This is what it is about. This blog - as always - has helped me clarify my thoughts. It is where I go to to think. Where I go to to sketch my thoughts and feelings. To ask questions. That is the point of the blog. And to deposit photographs. Although I don't take so many of those. I have had to really make up for the past few months of not writing a lot - so let me think about those past few months and be brutally honest about them. I am going begin with acknowledgement. This year has been mental. No question. 100% mental. But I will need all my will to get everything I need sorted if I want to make sure that I continue with Elements and complete the divorce. My lifeforces have been drained by single motherhood - what effectively was singlemotherhood. And facing contempt from Peter for years and years. But no longer. I nourish myself.  So before the school year begins I will be sorting out the admin for everything. With gentle discipline. I must...

It is the fourth Holy Night tonight.  I wonder what other breakthroughs await me. I have asked a question and I have received answers. This is another blessing I have from the universe. Some answer I have had for a long time - I need to act on it. So this year I ask for gentle discipline. For each of these days in the following year to be blessed with 1. Gentle discipline 2. The Softness of Creativity I had this glimpse of a book about the mysteries - a daily meditation - or at least blog entries about syncretic understandings in history, science and spirituality - all bound up in art. To ignore all the distractions and the noise. To walk past all of them. The maya. The maya which informs TV and the vanity. The shallowness of what passes for satisfaction nad happiness. To walk past all that and to find the spark. To find the tinderbox - to develop riches, the ego light in the soul.  There is nothing to write home about As each day is marked by the briefest rising and setting s...

The Magical Earth Whenever I watch documentaries about the Universe I am always astonished by how people like Brian Cox can be just - yeah science science science. Isn't he astonished by all the things which conspired to create the planet and thereby create the variety of life on it. The Earth is a truly magical place and we live in this magical kingdowm. It very much makes me puzzled as to how people cannot see more of this. Why they insist of demystifying everything when it is clear that we are drenched in the unseen.  When the history of our time is written it will demonstrate how stupid we all are. That we traded gold for tin. That we steadfastly refused to see the glowing numinous beauty instead preferred to delude ourselves with things which were so terribly inferior. What also always astounds me is the limits which physicists always come up against. So much of it is theory and maths - but also, amidst that theory and maths we have wonder - and their religion cannot permit th...

Bearing in mind I no longer expected any epiphanies - this is why I must keep writing. It is only when I write that things clarify themselves. I bgean writing letters to friends last night. It was quite blah at first...then as I wrote more, it became clear that the following year and who I am to be - a question which has been concerning me, revealed itself. But first I must back up. Lately I have been concerned with my ennui. This is a most strange attitude for me to have. I never have never ever felt disheartened nor jaded. I am more likely to continue till it can't be done any more - or continue until it it completed and done. Also I am more likely to actively give up on something, make a conscious decision to do so rather than let things fizzle out. I suppose most of my life is lived through conscious intent rather than being pulled along.  However, in the last month or so I have felt very burdened. And it wasn't about what I was doing but a sesne of what the fuck AM i doing...

The Third Holy Night Who do I think Jesus is? I have stopped thinking too hard about this question. The Jesus which I have no created in my head is a composite of the Christian Community Jesus and a being which is also in the company of other Gods through the ages. That is the thing which Class Teaching has given me - an opportunity to study my beloved mythology - and Jesus... well Jesus is the Christ being who fills me with comfort and hope. I love going to the service because I come away topped up. That is the other stupid thing about me is that I no longer hold on to moods - I exist completely in the moment. And because I now do this it would be a good idea that I made each moment a good one. So this is the learning now - I must maintain an upright sense of being at all time. I think this will be whatever it is in place of my quest. I now live in the moment. I make the most of each moment. 

I have written several entries today. That is something else about this year - my relationship with words is changing. Partly because I'm not reading nearly enough but also I think I am forgetting words. That is frightening. I don't ever want to be in that position of words no longer being my ally. What would happen to me then? I would not be myself. There are now too many words in the world. The explosion of social media and online platforms has resulted in a massive production of content. Everything is content and it is 99% drivel. This is where my hatred for millennials comes from - the crap they put online. Everything is a podcast or streamed. It doesn't matter that they have nothing to say - they will say it anyway. So where once upon a time words were precious and the media they were available on was limited it is now neverending.  I did wonder if I would continue my blog under these circumstances, as I write now I think the aswer is yes. But what is the blog supposed...

Third Holy Night: Gemini May 21 - June 21 It seems fitting that I should begin on the Third Holy Night. This was the last zodiac sign which I had left off in my calendar drawing. I had long been thinking about the image and then I decided it would be the twins from Mesapotamian mythology - the keepers of the gates to the underworld. This is the other terrible thing about getting old. There are mysteries, but there are also no more mysteries. I feel a great contentment. I know that all of the experiences which I have had are now the sum total of my desire to understand the universe. In a sense - there is nothing I can eat, drink, see, go to - encounter which will stretch my sense of the world. This can sound quite depressing until you realise the massive breadth and range of experience that I have been through. I know it seems narrow as I cycle through the day especially in lockdown, but no, not really. I have done all the things which I said I would do, wanted to do - and understood th...

Being lost So I began this very early this morning. Then I suddenly felt very tired. Today I literally did nothing for the first time since school. After I made all those houses and after I got ready for my birthday and after I started to get ready for Christmas - yesterday I did the stars and enjoyed a quiet Christmas.  So, for the first time ever today - I did nothing. Well I updated the blog for the first time. That was it. And then I watched lots of TV.  Ghin and I went for a short walk. We strolled around the park and then it started to drizzle again. It is a quiet Christmas. I heard that a friend's father had passed away. This always makes me think of my own family of course. I spent - have spent a lot of time with my parents over the past twenty years. My mother stayed with me for several months through the course of the years and I went back to spend time with them in Singapore. I would have continued to ha...

I think I made over 14 gingerbread houses this year...  Well... I wanted for the longest time to do something around getting old. Not old old mind you. I think I will probably never get older than I am now in terms of mindsets and activities - well I hope not anyway - these things creep up on you right? I mean I still have vivid memories of running effortlessly down stair or climbing ledges unthinkingly. No. This feeling older has 100% to do with how annoyed I am with younger people - most especially millennials. The generation just after me. I also find the generation just older than me - I hold them responsible for the mess the planet is in - and my generation for idiotically continuing the mess, but it is the millennial which I find most annoying. And this isn't some random all millennial thing - no - it is their hopelessness around technology. They behave as if it still a new thing. They are responsible for the most stupid conten...

My dark self. I have this dark side which comes out every now and then. I have been trying to trace it - it is quite a massive strain. It mostly consists of me thinking that most people are stupid. Stupid and shallow and cowardly. Also any of their flaws - like being materialistic and elitist. I really have a massive strain of antipathy towards people buried deep down inside which I did not even know was there but most recently errupted when I went out with a friend. It is only because we are such good friends that the friendship survived but I was bang out of order. It is also linked to my schedenfreude. Apparently this is not a good thing to have - only like bad people have this. I find this hard to believe because I have grown up with this phrase obi good obi good chia pepek - which more or less translates to you absolutely deserve all the awful things which happen to you. And I am quite delighted with this. Lumped into all that is m...

Plans for the year... I suppose before I look forward I should look back. Divorce This was the year in which I finally managed to get Peter to move out of the house and put it on the market for sale. It has sold. we have accepted the offer and we hope it will go through. Fingers crossed and all. I still have to do battle with him over pensions and all, but that is what the next five days are about. Getting all the documentation together. Elements Elements had a very successful year considering how shitty it was that we had Covid. We more than broke even and we performed consistently well. The rest of the time after I clean Oisin's room will be devoted to Elements and the divorce.  Writing I did start my writing of Atlantis but did not get very far. I kept stalling at Sirius - I mean I have learnt A LOT about Sirius but I need to keep going.  Drawing I did lots of bird drawings - and the Zodiac calendar. This project I must com...

It is the 26th. The day after Christmas. Christmas - well Ghin said it feels like we have been in here for three weeks. I couldn't agree more. It is a quiet and peaceful Christmas though. We have very simple food. Soup and porridge. Well I have some prosecco.  I have been clearing our things from the other house and sorting rooms, etc. This virus is strange. You feel better when you are not lying down and it is easily overcome by two paracetemol. I just checked in on Ghin and it has been more than eight hours and he has no fever. But I will be plying him with more paracetamol soon. I decorated on the 23rd. I got the branches and the decorations out and dressed the house. So now it looks like this is the look the house will take from now on. Solstice branches with lights... one in the dining room and one in the living room. The mantelpiece will have the Holy Family and everything in felt and croche...

Christmas Eve. Just like that.  The most exciting thing to occur has been Covid to me. Well what do I think? I will admit that when I was told it was THE Covid, I was a bit anxious. Who knew how this would play out? I knew so many people who had the long sting in the tail. A friend recently was laid low for almost am month. Another struggled with breathing. None were hospitalised but it was clear that there was some mileage to this bad boy. How did I end up testing for it? Well, my birthday - yes BIRTHDAY - was on the 21st. I did all the shop for the 20th. I cleaned the house. I made eight gingerbread houses as gifts... and then on the evening of the 20th i felt crap. Well I felt like I had a hangover - which was strange for two reasons. First I never get hangover anymore - both wonderful and also dangerous. But also I had not been drinking. My back ached. My head ached and I felt woozy and blurred out. I went to bed and didn't take any medication and tossed and turned for most of ...

I am really exhausted. Watched the Witche yesterday and the best part of the story which was the weird timeline has complete disappeared. So now it is all plod plod plod... it was very dull. Where previously it was funny and irreverent, there was this taking the self to seriously creeping in.  We did watch the Plum and Pigeon show which was very very funny. I am constantly amazed by how good these guys are. Honestly we are so lucky to have them teaching our children. From the anti-burlesque to the acrobatics, it was all good. Sigh. I miss going out. I really do. Of course after all the covid tests etc... we are now back in theatres where people are no social distancing although there is the entire charade of people having to put on masks when they enter. It is all nonsense.  Then they close the borders but before they do so, they take in a massive influx of people jamming train stations and airports to escape before everyone else. Between that there is corrupting and sleaze. O...

I was so depressed yesterday. Always, and always - the moon's swinging round hitting me in good and bad ways. The full moon.  I watched the rest of Taboo yesterday. I had seen it before but didn't quite understand it. It was great watching it again. Steven Knight is a genius. He writes about times I love - the imagined aesthetic, the compexity, the showing and not telling and the great perfect casting Tom Hardy is fab in it. He reprises Cillian Murphy's character but this time a hundred and fifty years earlier and the topic is always the same - postcards from the edge. Everyone is metal and at the same time filled with justice. About wanting to make things right. It has been tough today. I don't know why. Just tough going. I think the entire pandemic thing has really gotten to me. It appears there is no escape if you don't want the vaccine. BUT I will wait until I have to travel. That was always the plan anyway. I know at least four people who have become ill after ...

Eleven days till the end of the year... The things I have done. I guess I no longer meditate on the day - on a day. The day no longer has any meaning as a unit of time. The pandemic saw to that. The days now merge into each other and I see the overlords of the world realise this as they try to harangue us into doing something. I wonder what employers thought when Johnson said every has to work from home now. People who need people to be there for their work and people who did not want to go to work. Driving divisions even deeper... making resentment even more caustic.  People have now died for alcoholism more than any point in the history of the UK. So here is my list of thing which Covid has resulted in. 1. The set back of education for millions of children 2. The abuse of children going unseen - still going unseen because they are not under the eyes of teachers 3. The abuse of women - sexual, financial and violent 4. Mental health issues for children and teenagers from which some...

Home. I have spent a lot of the last few months at home mostly because we cannot go anywhere. It doesn't matter if we have swallowed all the kool aid. It doesn't. You have to work from home although if you want to you can still go to the cinemas if you have been vaccinated... or test negative. I mean nothing makes sense anymore. But the upshot of all this is that we no longer leave the house unless we really have to. I guess that going out and patronising shops lifestyle is no longer something which was never there until the last twenty years. The obsession with constant consumption. It is like when people complain about Christmas no longer being the intense consumption fest it used to be I wonder so what. So what it is no longer the intense consumption fest it used to be. That should be ok. For me if I never see somewhere else again... I mean I would like to. but I can't be bothered anymore. Have they won? Maybe. Now the world is their playground and we are at home. Who ca...

I can't seem to organise anything at all. I need to sit back and look at the year. So much still has to be done. But much has already taken place. I think I am really still recovering from the entire getting the house ready thing. I keep thinking today I will have the energy to do this house now and then I don't. I just need to get it sorted. Right. I might as well really. Ghin is scribbling away, studying. I love the industry which takes place when we do this. Oh dear god I am really not feeling the best now... my tummy is all weird. I just need to make it through tomorrow if anything collapses...just tomorrow. Today it is the 14th. Monday the 14th. Great. OK now I try to organise what I have left...

The day that was... I managed to order oil and then do all the shopping I needed to at Refill Quarter. So that's everything up to date then. Laundry emptied out the car and then collapsed on the sofa after having my first bath since Friday. Yes it has been a bit of a misery weekend. BUT the money has been banked which means that the solicitor can be paid. And oh yes, the house is going for £228, 500 - the survey notwithstanding. So that's us now. Nearly at the home stretch.  My stomach is not good. It is awful actually. I feel bloated because of the pasta I had this afternoon. Tescos pasta salad. Tasteless possessing the texture of paste and starch. Awful. I don't know. Sometimes I really don't know what I'm doing anymore.

Last night Ghin asked me to get his book Roll of Thunder from downstairs and I said - this was the first time in months he decided to hang out with me before bed - and I said, no here read something else. SO I gave him Graham Greene's the Power and the Glory. He said this looks boring. I said it is set in Mexico and it is about ... well actually I don't remember what it is about  all I know is that i was reading it on the MRT when I was 17 and the MRT was new. I remember sitting in my RJC uniform and reading this like 'We are all going to die anyway', and at that time having this profound experience of death. I saw a hole open up beneath my legs, and I can still see my green pleated skirt with Adidas grey and pink shoes and dangling over this abyss and thinking, oh my god, this is what death is. And then everything closed up and became normal again.  This was probably one of the experiences which then made me think that I should make the most of my life. I then began re...

Having relented and tried to register myself for the lateral flow test I was told they could not ascertain that the result was a genuine one. I mean how am I supposed to do that? So we did not go to the cinema. Well I guess that weeds out the people who aren't interested to going to cinemas and restaurants. I am thinking maybe I should try and get the Covid. If I get it then I have the antibodies. I have literally not been sick for two years. Either I have a tremendous immune system - which I never ever thought I had because let's face it I got three colds a year and lost my voice biennially - and would be laid low by the flu at least once a year. Not to mention the awful periods I would have. I would be not in school at least every other month immobile from something or other. And now I have literally not have had an off day once since 2020 began. It is so weird. And all around me people are falling like flies. I know I am a control group now. Someone who hasn't been vacci...

I spent yesterday evening helping Ghin do his English essay. The book was Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. It is to all intents and purposes the To Kill A Mockingbird of its generation. I have never read it but the themes are the same. Always. Where there is prejudice and there lies the same ugly reasons and expressions. It never changes. Never. Racism. Sexism. Sectarianism. Classism. Always. The same dynamic is at work. It tell you something about human beings and how unimaginative we are. That our expressions of hatred and loathing always take on the same tenor. We love boxing things up and then putting them into categories and then assigning them value and often the value is about othering the people who are not in the same box as yourself. If you are loud and obnoxious enough, you then are able to get others to kowtow to you and your self-proclaimed idiocy. This I never understand. I never understood how the women who were treated like second class citizens never united with the slaves...

Working with angels... Today wrecking my brains for a Letter for V I remembered Baba Yaga... but I did not remember that the protagonist in the story's name was Vasilisa. So I now have two for the price of one. Vasilisa and Baba Yaga. Because I was also looking for a Y. Sometimes you just have to have faith. Right... what am I going to do with this blog? I mean should i continue it? It has to be worth something, do something if I am to do that. It feels liike after 15 years I am a wee bit bored of it... and yet I continue writing it. I do find it useful but really... is it worth the effort and time? What do I get out of it? Am I just topping it up for the sake of topping it up? Now that i have asked the question I am certain of the answer. It will come. Documenting my life. I think I got very sad when all the photos I put up here disappeared. Oh one more thing... I have done all my lesson plans on the cloud so they are now all ready to go. I love these lesson plans they are me at m...

I am done. Exhausted. But we still go on. Thankfully I work half the day and then head back for some down time before going on again. Only this week we have stopped Forest School and been able to take sometime to catch my breath.  The thing is I cannot seem to organise my thoughts right now. Whether it is brain fog or just growing old, whether it is too much on the mind... it is hard to say. This week has been good. I got rid of a lot of things I need paid. They are now all out of the way. car tax, housing insurance, etc... all out of the way. Ground rent. Every month a put aside about £100 and this comes in handy at the end of the year when we need to break out the things I saved for. What else? It has been massive the mess we have made really... With the entire Covid debacle. Having always been skeptical I now have the luxury of also not taking what has taken seriously. I cannot imagine what people who did do the hook line and sinker thing feel. People also who have been forced t...

I did not do any organisation instead I just went to bed and fell asleep. It was disturbed and strange. I listened to a youtube video about the new variant and oh yes I have noticed I now receive notices about how stupid people are if they dare to question the narrative. Wonderful eh? Like that is going to make me feel I am stupid instead of annoyed and irritated. Also the arguments they give do not convince me any other way - instead they use tortured metaphors like the seatbelt metaphor. I see you your seatbelt metaphor and raise you a gun owning metaphor - i.e. gun owners blame non gun owners for gun crime. As I said a long time ago, I hate metaphors. We do not need to reduce a very serious issue to analogies because it oversimplifies the entire picture. I also raise you the time traveling exercise when we now are in the future and see how scientists so called have inflicted us with stupid ideas claiming it was progress. It infuriates me completely. I was watching Russell Brand'...

Storm Barra. One of those wild days in Ireland when you are fighting to stand up. I deposited the cheque, bought supplies and we got some pizza for Ghin. I now have toilet paper, oil and soya sauce I need to go back and get my salt. It has been a long long fight to get here. The house has had an offer made. It is now so cold. Storm Barra has passed but it is still very cold. Ghin and I rewatched The Dark Tower. After not liking it at all I did think it was good. Yes it was sketchy and simplistic and there could have been more but it did what it could. Gary lay on our laps and we cuddled by the fire. It was warm inside and cold outside. What more could anyone want? My head is full of crap. I need to sort things out now. Yep I really need to do that. I'm going to do that tonight. In fact I'm going to do that now.

Sort of turning up at the last minute this morning. Slept well last night and it was dreamless as far as i can remember. It isn't always dreamless. I am now being shown by Facebook videoes which are thoroughly obnoxious. Videoes made by 20 and 30 something which think they have a lot to say but actually are completely asinine. Then there was this video which parodied people who did not have a university education and were doing their own research about vaccines and Covid - and climate change. If you do not understand the dynamic which is people who have been left behind being manipulated by self interested greedy people - exactly the same dynamic which takes place in every other place and people who no longer want to be manipulated resisting, then, you are part of the problem. You are the reason how the educated were sent to gulags by Mao. The reason why they were put into labour camps by Stalin. I'm not saying that Mao and Stalin were right, but I understand for the first them...

It has been a most satisfactory two days. Bills paid and things ticked off a list. DONE. I need to now go through the list of things for the divorce and then... we are off to the circus. I made myself a face mask of honey, almond oil and egg yolk this evening and slathered it on three times. It makes the face quite soft indeed. Ghin studied the whole evening. He is the kind of kid who just needs to sit and focus and he remembers. He is like me, essentially. Studying comes easy to Ghin. I never had that same sense of ease with Oisin. It was something he did but I always felt it was something which he always struggled with. Oisin is much better at improve and coming up with things on the hoof. The class is doing really well. We had a lovely morning seeing St Nicholas appear in the forest and then we settled into life once more. It has been busy enough I guess. Got some sad news from a friend about her husband. It has been very hard. Christmas is often a time when people choose or are mad...