Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

OMG, FINALLY found the fucking car document and taxed the car. That's that saga come to an end. Fucks sake.  I feel like the entirety of my life which was uprooted when I left for Singapore has now come to an end. Dear fucking god. Best Chinese New Year present EVER. I also found a whole load of other things as well. Like the organiser which I had been looking for forever. It feels like my life can move on now. It felt like my life was in suspended animation. I really need to start reading regularly again. My brain has started to melt. I can really feel it. So more reading. I love reading anyway, what am I doing exactly? I am SO GLAD that the entire car saga has come to an end. It was such a nightmare. I can now start focussing on the rest of my life. I think it was very much blown out of proportion in my mind. I think I'm becoming an old person. I need to have a calendar on the wall which reminds me that things are coming to an end. I will spend...

In many ways there is no need to plan. I already know what must be done I just lack the will to do it. Or the energy. After I come home from school, I am exhausted and then after that, I feel so demotivated. I just need to go running first thing after coming home from school... or just think, I need to do this next thing and once I'm up, I'm up. This is why I think I'm phlegmatic rather than choleric, although I am possibly both. Or sanguine. What I am not is melancholic. I really CANNOT understand that temperament AT ALL. I just have to try and pretend I understand melancholics.  But back to planning.  I think if I just decide to do one thing a week, that would be better instead of parceling my day up into tiny bits and pieces and pretending I can do it all. So if I said I will do admin for forest school this entire week, that would be better than saying i do Admin on one day and then clean up the house on another day, then play piano everyday at 7 am. Although I should do...

In many ways, the return to Singapore is year was something which I had been expecting ever since I first moved here. There was be an emergency and I would have to literally get on the next plane and head back. It happened once, when I was working in the RPSB and I flew back because Mama was very ill. She bounced back and lasted another ten years. Long enough for Oisin to still remember her. This time round, my return was again, unquestionable. My parents needed me and I needed to be there to ensure that everyone would be able to do what they needed to do. Ma recovered, Pa - well Pa is Pa, and Jac managed to have the rest of her holiday. Singapore was... strange. I didn't see anyone else. I was there for three weeks, but it felt like three months. Each day felt like a week. Ma managed to return to better than she was, each day she saw great progress.  I have to say that for the first time in ages and ages and ages, even during my marriage, I felt that circumstances were...

I've only need back 2 weeks and it already feels like I've been here for 2 months. All of the chaos of the start to the New Year has almost subsided and I'm in the midst of finally getting so many other things sorted for the car and the boiler i back up and running. I am down over £3,000 more than I thought I would spend and I promise to NEVER EVER join a gym again. That was very stupid. The first thing that happened was I broke my leg and the next thing that took place was I got the WORST cough in my entire life. I had never been so ill. Then I contracted a weird fungus thing which has only just begun to go away. I am pretty sure that that was ALL picked up in the gym. From the chlorinated hands to the athlete's foot. PLUS, I never ever ever did manage to attend more than 2 classes and when I attended them I hated them. Well, not hated, but even though I'm a teacher and I love activity, my sports have always always been about being on my own, like runni...

Cursive writing and the Ulster Cycle Genealogy of Cuchulainn I~ feel incredibly sad. It has been the bittersweet ceasfire in Gaza, the inauguration of Trump and the rampant stupidity of the Americans... I mean WHY is it now so unacceptable to have in idiot in the White House? People are angry with Trump because like Wilde said, it is the rage of Caliban seeing his face in the mirror. The kids are having a great time reading the stories. We do two readings a day, both really challenging and stretching. The stories are situated in Ireland and it was so awesome doing the geography of Ireland first and then the literature of it. I am truly in my element for now.

I am still jet lagging. Having a strict routine I need to do has not helped. I come back at 3 pm and need to be asleep by 4 pm. I then get up at 8 pm and then have dinner. Then I go back to sleep and get up at 1 am. Yesterday I was up at 12 am.  I was so tired that I went back to bed at 5 am and only got up at 7 am. So yeah, its not going well. I have been back to school though at 7 am which gives lots of time to do lots of things...but I do miss blogging. Everything feels incredibly discombobulating. BUT YES we now have heat in the house. Thank FUCK. I have been trying to cook in the evening, but I am so tired that I can't even stand up straight. Being the mother I have chosen to be I think has taken it out of me - quite a lot out of me. I'm hoping to catch up this weekend with everything. There are now 8 children in the class which is lovely. Things are building up once again. With any luck there will be another joining us shortly. Fingers crossed. There was supposed to be a ...

  For some reason, at a certain stage in our lives, we allow our wonder with the planet to be beaten out of us and succumb to the idea that we are lesser than. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth that we are truly blessed and chosen to be here, on this planet. This planet, which like an overly indulgent parent, has provided us with more than we could ever need and have, and has also chosen to include us in this very safe and wondrous part of the cosmos.  On this planet we have learnt how to live, not without some effort, of course, through the natural largess and the gift of inventiveness and initiative, and come to appreciate this experience of being Earthlings. From music to art to invention to architecture, we have showcased the best this universe has to offer. But this gift is double edged as we are also capable, through the use of ideology - whether it is neoliberalism or religion - to blind ourselves to each other's humanity.  It is both unfathomable....

Its interesting how swiftly one can get used to the temperature around you. This morning I got up at midnight and had something to eat that resembled breakfast. While I was eating it I sweated profusely - for some unknown reason. It was weird and uncanny. Then I went to bed and it was toasty and warm. I woke at 4.30 am and had a sort of lunch. And now I'm in front of the fire and feel really warm as well. So yes, we can get used to the cold if we need to. I mean it's not very comfortable, but maybe, like eating we possibly do too much of it. Possibly our homes are too warm. Even my house, which my sons complain is too cold.  Yesterday was a good day for the class. I'm trying to see where they are now and what I can do to support them. But by and large they seem to be holding up fine. Lenna and I are trying out different ways to make sure that they are being looked after - both classes. Hopefully we can get things on an even keel.  There sppears to be peace moving in Palesti...

Steiner said that Intuition was the highest form of intelligence. That we all had the capacity to have it, but that it had to be nurtured and nourished. In a way pattern behaviour is a kind of intuition. Older people are wise because they have seen it all before. They have been through stuff, they can read the signs, they know that it will be alright once the dust settles. In this way then, they appear to possess some kind of insight into the future - because ironically, the have lived so long and have seen it in the past. Wisdom is one of the attributes of intuition. It is sort of proven intuition. True intuition though is being tapped into not just the cosmos, but yourself own self as well. Intuition is the way in which not just new things come into being, but that you are able to stay true to yourself. It is gut instinct PLUS this gorgeous flower of self actualisation, but it is also what the cosmos want to bring into being. In this way we achieve balance - between the singular and ...

Sagittarius - December It's kinda weird right?  There are things that happen and it feels like a total disaster, but then it settles and you realise it isn't that bad. Just put on more layers, get used to the cold, have five layers on the bed, wear a hat as well. It's ok really. I mean that's how people lived in the past. And they survived. Last night I actually slept in my own bed because as comfortable as the sofa is, my bed is actually has the most comfortable mattress in the world.  So I thought fuck it and brought Gary up, I was already warm because I had been under the blankets in the living room, and I got into the bed and SLEPT like a baby. I have five layers of insulation to help and in no time at all I was warm and toasty and I fell asleep in 5 minutes. And slept till 2.30 am, which is 10.30 in Singapore. I have just given up fighting jet lag and decided to make a breakfast lunch of kale and white pudding and fried tomatoes. And black coffee of course. Now I...

Capricorn I began the Esoteric Zodiac in 2021 because I wanted to incorporate all the elements which I had come to know and love about this starry menagerie.  Like many young girls, I loved reading about the zodiac. It included many hours standing in MPH, a massive bookstore in Stamford Road in Singapore, which was next of my school, pouring over the handbooks about the star signs. I can still see the shelves which contained all the well thumber books about star signs and love signs. It was the 70s after all.  I loved how they attempted to capture people's personalities and did the most superhuman of all things - attempt to tell the future. The zodiac provided the answers to two of the most fundamental human needs - the answered the question Who am I? and What will happen? To a teenage girl this was heady stuff. I could now bifurcate into a million tangents about space and time, talk about the precession of the equinox, talk about coinkidinks, but I think I wo...

So I'm doing the same thing I do every year. Game Plan. One thing at a time. One thing at a time. Taking this off line.

  My legendary passport... Well some years just don't start how you think they might. To be honest, all my starts of years for the past god knows how oong, have been very chilled. Long, quiet, civilised observances of the Holy Nights, contemplation, celebrations of new years, just very contemplative, very gentle starts to the coming year. So that all went out the window this year. From the surprise Singapore trip, looking after Ma and Pa, trying to sort things out. The arduous journeys and then the return home to all kids of shite. From burst water pipes, to new boiler and house with now heat - I think thagt's the worst - then there's the MOT and the admin I have to do. I just need to do it. For the past three weeks my entire being was focused on Ma and Pa. Being so far away as well has been insane. It has been ONLY three weeks. Like three weeks ago I arrived in Singapore on Wednesday night. Three weeks ago I turned 54.  It has been so difficult coming home and then having ...

  I guess you'd say my trip was successful. When I arrived three weeks ago, Ma could barely move. She couldn't dress herself, I had to dress her, help her shower, etc. She was barely exercising and barely eating. She had essentially lost her way. It was a tough three days, but it was three days well spent. I slept in the room - and between the mosquitoes and the father and the jet lag... it was only on my birthday that i left the house to go into Serangoon Garden and get some coffee and buy food. I did some cooking for her. And she started eating again. Especially fruit. Then we started exercising and she began to improve daily - exponentially.  By the time the second week came round, we had adjusted into a lovely rhythm where i'd go running (I began on the 25th) and after she'd exercise and I'd go and get food in NTUC after - with my coffee. Singapore in December is gorgeous. It is cool, rainy and empty. There are no people in Singapore in December - everyone disap...

  It's always kinda amazing to see a blank sheet of paper become an actual drawing. I never fail to be amazed that I did it.  So something I began in 2020, just before Covid, is now complete. I will now write accompanying text with it and then I will sell it. I cannot wait. Along with my writing - I have 25 stories, and I will edit it and then whittle it down. Today Jac asked me what I would do now - what was next? I said... well... actually it was pretty amazing cos this is what I said...  The Esoteric Zodiac Uncomfortable Reading - Short story collection New Moon Journeying Group Forest School Initiation for Young People Both mean I am doing my own personal work Steiner School Forest School So I think that's ENOUGH - that's more than enough. The idea is that I begin developing my own work and skill in this confluence which I am standing and be able to take this work all over or wherever I go. I don't know how I managed to get here, but really, I possibly got here by f...

  It has been a week of intense activity. Between the polyclinic and drawing and just letting myself crash a bit... it has been emotionally draining. Pa has been extremely combative and abusive when we are trying to manage the driving issue. The shouting and the bullying... it is no wonder that I had to leave. There is nothing, no rational debate, nothing. I did write a whole lot of stuff here but say if he did read this - he would be so hurt. But it was all true. It was all true. And now I know it was all true. I had to leave Singapore because I took fire and in doing so, I may have shielded Jac a bit, I don't know. But it was something I needed to do to self-actualise. It has been almost ten days since I last wrote here. It is unusual that I don't start the year writing every single day. I try and do that at least. There is much to think about - what is my future here in Singapore? In Ireland? I love Ireland and what Ireland is. I went to Ireland, at first because I thought I...