Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

It is 6 am now. I'll do this for half an hour and then head out for my first run in almost four weeks. I don't worry that I have 'lost' my fitness, etc. It is strange with the retrograde. I really felt so strongly for the first time my sense of direction and confidence dissolve. I doubted everything. Doubt is healthy and important. It puts brakes on things. You get to stress test it. You get to decide is this where I want to go, what I want to do? You get to choose. Or back away from things. I like doubt. I was writing to Bart yesterday, saying that the nice thing about being 50 is that I have forgotten more than I have remembered and yet at the same time I still know more than your average 30 year old. I can reach up and pluck out some random thing I have done. I also said in my letter I would not for all the tea in China be anything other than 50. I love being 50 in a slightly smug way. I have passed all the sharp rocks of drama and the uncontrollable madness. I mean ...

It has been a very productive day. I have cleaned the house, sorted the cupboards, understood what needs to be done, sorted and tidied the desk and finished watching There Will Be Blood. I watched it many years ago and it was amazing. It is even more amazing now. Daniel Day Lewis is an incredible actor. Possibly the best actor of his generation. Just the acting moves through him. Utterly amazing. Anyways, it has been a wonderful Sunday. That resetting and recalibrating. Back to normal. I am completely certain of a few things astronomically. That the full moon brings a change in the weather and that Mercury Retrograde is a thing. It is strange that I was so miserable during the retrograde. Any now it has passed. I have the energy to clean the house and get things in order again. So it is a thing. I have decided that Gemini is going to be the drawing of the two twins from Sumerian mythology - the keepers of the gates of the after life. It makes sense. Where the winter solstice brings new...

I cleaned the house, organised the table and sorted the cupboards. Everything looks great now. I am doing the laundry and I have restocked the fridge. We are as close to seventh heaven as possible. Everything feels very chilled. Relaxed. Restful. I am writing, I am thinking about tomorrow and how to juggle things. It is almost 6 pm. I am going to have short nap and then organise everything after that. Everything seems doable again. Everything seems possible once more. I will take the laptop and do work in front of the TV. Just organising things. I am airing the house. It is fresh and clean. I am relieved. The sun is beautiful outside. A cool summer's day. I cleaned the house and wrote a poem. It was indeed a good day. I now have my image for Gemini. It is going to be Inanna and Eshekrigel. Time for a short nap.

A return to the blog.  I am now out by 10 days. It has been a really up and down year. Even more up and down than last year as we try and manage coming out and staying in at the same time. It's mental. On the one hand clearly the whole pandemic thing is not as serious as they ministers have told us since people like the man who began all this Neil Oliver or whatever his name was AND Matt Hancock where breaking social distancing rules and have affairs.  Exactly how does this work now? Do these people have no actual moral compass? On the one hand people have killed themselves, died and been unable to see loved ones. On the other hand they have been conducting affairs and being in contact with people whom they should not have been in contact with. They are revolting. I'm so glad I no longer live with Peter. The hypocrisy is what kills me. I have never been frightened of this virus. Nothing I have seen apart from a health service which is being run to the ground and forcing people...

Well this was a solstice to remember. The sun, the heat, the light, the children. Has to go down as one of the top ten solstices in living memory. My memory that is. I am trying to settle. For the past three weeks it has been both slow but frantic. I've only had two modes. Manic and zoned out. I need to regroup, reset or something. Yesterday - so that's what I'm going to do with the next post. It has been literally four days since I put this down, or tried to at least.

Things are changing again. So much is moving and I don't know which way I'm supposed to move with it. But there you have it - there is only ever change and I'm going to have to get used to it. I think that's the big takeaway really for the past two years. Everything changes. What has not really changed for me is the way in which I think about Covid. Nothing about it makes sense and I have learned to trust this intuition in me. Whenever I have enduring questions that aren't answered then it smells fishy and so I'm less likely to go along with whatever else everyone else goes along with. I recently met someone whom I thought, actually I think we are just gonna have to differ on this. But this idea that now you have to be vaccinated to protect everyone else. This is pure magical thinking. Vaccination does not protect everyone else. It is supposed to confer immunity on the person who gets the vaccine. You get vaccinated for example if you are going into a place whic...

There is something decadent about this, the longest day of the year. How the sun swivels and the Earth stops and altogether the both gleam at each other before they fall apart again. It feels... as if it should last forever. The best film about a summer that seems to last forever is In the Heat of the Sun. Directed by Jiang Wen it captures that strange magical memory of summer... a summer that was and never was. Like so many summers of when you were young should be. Am I frightened of anything? No, not really. A bit sad sometimes though - sad that I will never be able to fall in love that strange thorough falling in love which I was able to do so so easily all the time once upon a time. And why not? Why not indeed? What makes me think this? Because I remember the film and I remember thinking, this is what love should feel like. I feel like that all the time and that is true. Mostly because I needed to feel like that. And now... now I don't need to feel like that anymore. I have fel...

It has been such a huge huge push to get these reports done. Finally, finally finally they are off and away. I have worked hard on them and now that they are gone we can have the summer to relax and do Forest School. I can't believe it is already June - well midsummer. Midsummer and midsummer and midsummer. Six months have past. Mid summer.  It has been seven days since i have written an entry. That is how busy I've been.  What happens in these seven days then?  I work at the school. We had reports to complete. I am utterly distracted. I don't know what I want to do. Tonight i'll do a review in bed. But tomorrow it should be entry 172 so lots of catching up there. 

I managed to start escaping Mercury's retrograde today.  The reports are almost cleared and I managed to get the laundry and the bins done. Then I tidied the house and felt much better instantly. God it has been such a nightmare the past two weeks. I think that tomorrow I will be able to go for a run in the morning. It will be two whole weeks since I went out. So I am going to take it easy. By this time tomorrow the reports will be out of the way. It will be much easier next year though. Whew! It has been otherwise quite a peaceful day. I saw Gabriel, we chatted and went shopping and had some coffee. These are the days which we will look back with fondness. Friends connecting with friends. Then i headed home, unpacked, reports, fell asleep, got up, cleaned the house, had a shower, more reports and now... here I am. I made it. Two more reports to go and that's IT.

It has been a complete nightmare doing these reports. I've decided that I'm going to do four today and three tomorrow. On the plus side Gabriel's class has sold out. I'm so pleased for her. Just so awesome. I'm so glad that she is going to be able to continue doing this with us. And that people drop in and out. I have not going running since the retrograde began. It is getting worse as well. But I must just start the reports. I want to spend a moment though recording how sad I am. How sad I am that we aren't going to Singapore this year. I have tried to brush it off but I can't. I also feel like the entire tech thing is pickling my brain. I feel like there is a whole life out there which I am no longer able to keep up with and I feel both sad and torn - one the on hand, yes, it is a stupid thing to try and keep up with - on the other hand am I being a fuddy duddy being left behind. That I don't know popular memes that I'm missing out - it's not g...

  What a week it has been. First I had no idea that Mercury was in retrograde. I also don't know if I made this entry before... but for what it's worth I'm going to do it again. So.... Mercury went into retrograde on the May 29. That was two weeks ago. It stays there till 22 June. In any case, around a week ago I began to feel very sad. I felt as if life was not worth living and it was all bad. Nothing had changed but my brain. Literally. I was so sad. And I lay in bed resisting it, feeling like I had to get over it. Then I suddenly thought this is so unlike me... this is ridiculous... I wonder if Mercury is in Retrograde - and viola! it was. Why does it matter if it is? Because if it is, it means that I am ALLOWED to feel sad. I know its so stupid. But feeling sad, just feeling like things are too much and I am overwhelmed and I need to take stock happens when Mercury goes into retrograde. It feels better then. So there it was, Mercury in Retrograde and feeling blah. On t...

  We created a summer mandala - the whole, the finite and the trimurti. 

Here are watercolour paintings done by my class Me in front of the house Buttercups in the garden  Yellow rattle in the front lawn Last year I had enough of the mowing. I even hate the sound of mowing. I hate it. And the damage it does to the lawn and the insects there. For the longest time I hand cut the grass in my lawn to give the animals a chance to run off. it also broke my heart that I was cutting these dandelions and buttercups. Flowers I loved before they were fashionable to love. Anyway, for this year i told David, I have had enough of killing my lawn. I am going to grow wildflowers. Then the question... what wildflowers. He asked me if I wanted to do the cornflower, poppy and ox eye daisy mix which was quite pretty. I said... well... the thing with them is that they have to be rotivated every year in. They don't keep the seedbank which is kinda weird. Of course they don't cos they are not local seeds. Poppies are ok fu...

 As I get older things get fuzzier. The past week has been one long fuzz. There is so much to be done and I am constantly having to deal with everything. Just everything. So I procrastinate - by doing Irish. My spelling has gone to hell. My typing has gone to hell. My grammar has gone to hell. Apparently I have forgotten how to write. This may not be a big deal for most people but that is kinda all I have - my writing.  Big sigh out now... So what has taken place over the last three weeks... Here's the deal so far. Here it is. Exercise wise it has not been good. Organisation wise it has also not been good. Work wise it has been mental. Everything else is a total mess. The house needs hoovering - I haven't done that for two weeks, and the fridge needs cleaning out. It has never been so messy. Honestly I don't know when this began this descent. I am not pleased about it at all. God knows I have tried hanging on, I've tried making this make sense, but nothing makes sense. ...

Well there are so many things I constantly learn about myself. For instance, I am not very good at languages. I really am not. I can barely speak Irish new despite having been at it for the past three months. No matter.  I am not very good with people who appear to be talking shite. Especially when it comes to unsolicited advise. I need to chill the fuck out. Really I do. I keep thinking I do, and then I don't. Sometimes people are just full of trash - I should just give that to them. Ugh no point arguing. I have given up arguing with people. I just do my own thing. That's the thing though right... I have now lived enough of a life to have my own life. i'm no longer needing to carve something out for myself. So Stephanie, no more arguments. No more arguments. I'm just gonna do what I have to do. Which brings me to the divorce. Hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.  I need to get it sorted. I have to get many things sorted. From school to Forest School to the ...

It s beautiful - June, that is. I now spend my days in a settled state. The only thing that is pissing me off is the divorce and the assets, that's it.  Ugh. Save me.  I think I've more or less lost a couple of friends. Through no fault of my own. Mostly because people are weird. I've now learnt this, just to move through life the way it is and then if we ever meet up again, then good, otherwise I will just move on. Perhaps stop for a short while to appreciate what was. That's the important thing right, to appreciate what once was. I had a hilariously funny day at school - tricking the kids into thinking they could magnetise pins using silk. They were just looking at me completely 100% believing me. I then said, look this is why science is great - you can test to see if it is true. And there is the serious lesson...  It is now almost the next day. I have had such a great time of it. Next week we do electricity which is even better. Then we do magnets and electricity. Ri...

I now spend so much time in forests and outdoors I can recognise trees from afar simply by looking at their shapes. Ash, oak, beech, rowan, sycamore etc... it is something which I have developed. Not having be born to this or even born to this part of the world, I am pretty pleased with this. I don't think it can hurt being pleased with oneself. I know that it is not a thing which is done. But I DON'T CARE. I was thinking about how much I now really missed Singapore. It was one thing when I could go to it once a year. In fact the last time we left we said, sure we will be back next year. That was more than a year ago. Now we won't have been back for TWO YEARS. That is just unherd of. HOWEVER, it is also the case that I am running a summer scheme and the Forest School is doing great. Now I must go to sleep as I am waking early to do a couple of things.  ==================================== Back in bed now. I love writing up the day in bed. I go through the day with a thousan...

Here we are in June. Unbelieveable. It doesn't feel like June simply because when we start singing June lovely June, it hails it end of the year. Furthermore when June arrives it means that we now get ready to leave for Singapore. Singapore... it seems like some kind of a dream away. And all of the plans we used to make - they are all now gone. Who knows what the world will be like in a year's time? The mainstream media have insisted they are right. They now lay on the propaganda thick.They are completely irrational now in their insistence of the entire debacle even though it is pretty clear that the jury is out on so many counts. I'm bored now and no longer care to comment on the issue. After all this has passed the irrational screaming and yelling will die down and something else will take its place. God this whole thing took such a long time to boot up that I'm properly sleepy now.  I have to say I don't feel great. Possibly because I stopped taking the supplemen...

I'm lying in bed now. It is 5 am . Well it's almost 6 now. I'm caught up with the blog.  I did two drawings and did some report writing. Things get very busy at this time of the year. But it hasn't been a regular year. I really miss escaping to Singapore. However there is no Singapore this year. It doesn't matter really. Everything is a complete mess. Everything. The entire planet is a complete mess. There is no place which has escaped from the madness. From the insanity. I try and keep sane by doing the small things. Doing things which are good. I try and keep sane by doing things which bring me sanity. Like the drawing, like the writing, like the teaching, like the grounding. Running. These are the small things. It feels like I have a strange thing going on in my head... I can't tell what it is. Like it is running interference. I'm supposed to meet Gabriel at Heidi's at 10 am. Just remembered. The light is so beautiful. It looks like a cloudier day, bu...