Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Missed my calling as a doctor Got home and was wrecked. Today I am going to write down names of children which will be switched in and out. We can have four ribbon holders, one from each school - so eight altogether. They will sit out Barber's Pole and be switched out when it comes to Spider's Web. Then another set will be switched out when it comes to double weaving. Everyone stays on for single weaving. I'll rehearse that with them today and on Friday. Back to school and it is the summer term. Always a busy one but also always very satisfying to see the chickens coming home to roost. It has been a truly satisfying journey this past four years. I feel like I've really started to get this teachering thing. I collected Oisin yesterday and we gabbled and gabbled. It's so wonderful being with my son now. It feels totally magical to see him so engaged and interested with everything. Right, I have to go now. I just wanted to put down a marker for today.

St Andrew's Cathedral in Bordeaux So we made our way to Brive. It was a long one. A pilgrimage, fittingly enough, to a journey of lifetimes. We hadn't seen each other for 35 years, and those years had gone both slowly and swiftly. When we began our journeys we were young women in our twenties. We were carte blanche. We had nothing to trouble us but those miles and miles of possibility which stretched on forever. When you are in your twenties, things like responsibility, success, family are literally lifetimes away. We were often the first women - and possibly men - in our generation, which had been liberated from the footsteps of our ancestors. All of our parents wanted something better for us, the entirety of our societies said, whispered, insisted, that we could be anything we wanted to be. We could travel. We could see the world. We could speak without fear nor favour. We were in the ascendancy of the iconoclasm of postmodernism. Nothing should be taken too serio...

Social media. Social media is ridiculous. Just the sheer volume alone around social media is a nightmare. Yes, sure you can try and sort it out, but when 5 second clips about a genocide are interspersed with an idiot's trip to 'space' and some ad about a stain remover, you have to ask youself about the amount of time spent on it. The second PTSD I have had from social media from the Gaza genocide has been awful. I have not had a decent night's sleep since Oct 7. The worst part of it all is that the only thing we CAN do is share the stories. Make people aware of the genocide. To be honest I am just so shocked that people are not more vocal about what is taking place. It's so awful. So awful. That's the only thing which I'm so upset about. Trump - I will be honest about Trump - I am quite relieved that he is so incompetent. He is either incompetent or a complete genius. I think his rhetoric tells me he is not a genius. Sometimes a role can get larger than it s...

Last week, possibly last Tuesday, I drove to the Shannon Pot. On the way back, I went to White Island North. When I got there, I discovered that the ferry didn't start going till May/ June. I mean I knew this. In the literal first story I wrote, I write about someone rowing out to the island.  So I clearly didn't remember my own story. This memory thing is quite worrying... but i CAN be forgiven for today cos EasyJet had switched its flight from City to International and I didn't pay attention. Its' kind of completely mad. Also I have been in a sort of stasis since coming back from Singapore a - a sort of Eat-Sleep-Repeat. It's awful really.  But... then... So I have done very little of anything creative. Apart from school which is obviously very creative... I must not mislay my book... they are the only copies of my work. Anyway, I returned from the Shannon Pot and I now know, just like writing, I can just have a mystical experience whenever I want. Just like that,...

Bruchfast Easter dinner So there is another seven hours to go...  I will complete reading the Táin and then do some writing. I can literally transcribe my writing over this time. I haven't had anything to drink for a week and honestly, i never thought about it till now. I notice I want to drink when I am really hungry and very stressed. I think that's about normal the idea of happy hour, although I do doubt if people back in the day were very stressed. So far the Táin has been very interesting. It starts with Mebh of Connaught and her husband/consort arguing about who has more shite.  It then comes down to these two bulls - a white and a brown one. Which are pretty much supernatural. So you know they aren't arguing about literal bulls, but about these mythical beings. Which were swinherds and are now in Taurus. Interestingly they also go through other transformations - they turn into eels, stags, dragons, etc... and finally they become maggots which ...

It has been a crazy ol time. I know I was not looking forward to travelling. I used to love travelling, but now, not so much. I am now in the airport Escape lounge. An ironically named place. I do not know why airport departure lounges cannot be less inhospitable. I have always found them reprehensible. Prehensile. The buzzing lights, the scent of synthetic perfumes which people are told are desireable so that they saturate themselves in it and then sit next to you on planes, the awful stalls - the 'designer' brands which we now know come from sweat shops in China - the usual - in the higher ended airports Gucci, Ferragamo, LV, whatever, the electronics store, apparently everyone wants to buy some kind of electronic when they are about to go on holiday, the aforementioned perfumes, the alcohol, the local thing - in Ireland it is mugs covered in sheep, shamrocks and leprechauns -, the bookstore, cos apparently people st...

I'm about to head off to school. I found out yesterday well the night before I do not have till Wednesday but only till tomorrow to get everything sorted. That did kick my ass in gear and I did have a few things with all the other things which are going on... It's kinda mad really. Really. I am now done with the madness of the world. This is how people are dragged into wars. People say batshit things and other people believe them. But there had to be some sort of betrayal which had taken place in the first place. In this case, the betrayal was from the people who said you can trust us - we will look out of you - tis always the case. Then for years they sat on their hands and did nothing about it or even worse exploited their positions of power, and then after years and years of being screwed around with, people are like fuck this shit and we are just gonna do whatever it takes to look after our own because we have literally nothing to lose. This is how wars are star...

It is clear that there is no more international order. I don't think there ever was, not really, but there seemed to be limits. People seemed to be at least slightly embarrassed about being evil. This does not seem to be the case any longer. Cases in point: 1. Genocide in Gaza 2. Extreme income inequality 3. Destruction of natural resources The fabric which held society together is swiftly crumbling. Everything which we have built our expectations on in being washed away, like sand in a flood. Israelis have no shame. They literally have no shame. I cannot believe how without conscience they are. I am just appalled at how anyone can continue supporting them. What is the story they tell themselves to keep on supplying weapons to slaughter children? What the fuck is going on? The entire space flight of the idiotic glambots has also demonstrated how vacuous people are. In the midst of a recession, when people can't afford groceries to go to space - the complete lack of imagination ...

I wasn't expecting much from this series. I watched it out of curiosity, but as i started, I realised that this was a very political, very sharp commentary on the dysfunction in Indonesia society on par with Parasite , and by extension on colonialism, neoliberalism and the awful disparity of wealth. The first episode was Rumah Tua - which is a play on the words Old Folk's Home and Old House, or generational wealth, which takes place in a retirement home for the uber wealthy. The second is about emptiness of wish fulfillment as well as the plight of refuse scavengers in the massive dumps of Jakarta - the episode was actually filmed in one of the dumps there. The third was about Domestic Violence and how wealthy men have second families in Asia. The fourth, land theft. The fifth mental health and possibly drug abuse. The sixth finding work with a disability and the desperation which drives people who cannot make ends meet - the middle class. The seventh was the theft of the uber ...

When I dipped my feet into Shannon Pot, I was trying to make a connection with it. It was cool. Cold. It was pure. So pure. Possibly the purest water I have ever dipped my toes in. I was alone and I felt connected with my guides. And I just sat there and wrote and wrote. When I came home, my toe was sore. It was dry and sore but it was like a good dry and sore. It felt like it was drying out. Three days later and it feels like it is getting better. The usual healing over has not occurred, instead it feels like the root of the rash has been excised. This is from a foot that was soaked for six hours in the South China Sea. It never got rid of the rash, but this time perhaps it will be different. I must write about Shannon Pot later on its own. Then another miracle occurred. The miracle of homeopathy. Ghin had been throwing up the whole day and he came over last night. Jonathan recommended Arnica and I gave him the Arnica as soon as he entered and lay down. Then I gave him some paracetamo...

The Shannon Pot It has been a minute since I put this pictures up. There are a few things I realised. I am also having PTSD having had to put up with the fucking oligarchs and assholes and zionists murdering people. In fact it has been years and years and years of this shit. Just resisting. I'm so used to it. But I am also worn down. So it is ok it acknowledge that that realise that it is a fucking nightmare living on this planet at the moment. People think consumerism is going to save them. Their response to TRump's tarrifs is buy cheap luxury goods. Cut out the middleman. I guess that's good. The emperor really has no clothes. He is wearing nothing at all. Also the latest space launch which took place with these insane women wearing these skin tight Avenger style suits. They are getting loads of blow back - which is also great. And finally the genocide in Gaza is now receiving more and mor...

Well the Easter scheme did not go ahead due to insufficient sign ups ahead of time. I think if we held our nerve we would have managed to hold it... but we had to let it go. And in a way I was happy about it.  I needed the rest. I mean I needed the money as well, but I also so seriously needed the rest. 

Things which nourish me Running Writing Goddess work Drumming Teaching Cleaning Gardening Piano playing Laughing Cooking Housework and decorating Drawing Discovering Travelling Family Friends Nature Dearest people of Palestine, we think of you all the time. Our hearts are tied with yours. We grieve, frustrated, helpless. Please believe that if we could we would end it at this very minute. We hope you will have the peace and the justice you deserve. May your enemies know truly and deeply the suffering which they have inflicted. They do not need to be punished. Just developing an iota of humanity will be punishment enough for them. Till then they will wander, lost and lost, in the howling darkness of the Nothing, their souls and spirits consumed by a relentless absence. This is punishment enough for them. They will forever be held in revulsion. Please be sure of that.

I vow to write two entries in the blog for the rest of the month everyday - AT LEAST two entries.  For my own mental health, I will transform the sorrow and heartache I feel about Gaza into a positive power. The heart is a spinning vortex. We are linked. We are all linked. Even those crazy people who appear to have no heart. To have no sense of heart intelligence coming through. The damaged and the broken, and the smothered and the lost. These people need to be prayed for. I will pray for them. This genocide has gone on for so long now that it is clear that the people who justify and participate in it and in some kind of an oubliette. I used to be so angry and feel such hatred towards them. Fuck em I would say. I wish they would die. I now know that it has gone on for so long now and these people do not possess the slightest warmth of humanity. They are empty howling souls. They do not possess the same kinds of hearts as it were. But I possess and heart and the blighted...

As usual, only writing has the power to save me. It was only when I got back in front of the computer to start writing again did I manage to regain some sanity. I have been staring into the abyss of the genocide in Palestine. It is now beyond any doubt that the media, the governments of the day, the businessmen, the people who purport to run the world are psychopaths, or sociopaths, at the very least. They are monsters. The rest of the world is not monstrous. They are the monsters. Zionism is latter day colonisation. Americans are colonialists. The British are colonialists. The Europeans are colonialists. The Middle East leaders are corrupt and bought out. Everyone else is helpless. But we are NOT helpless. We are strong. We are survivors. These leaders whose names we will always remember turned their faces for some contorted reason and they did not do anything. But we - we bear witness. We bear witness. And they will NOT destroy our hope...

I have Gaza depression. It must be a thing. I have seen people talking about this and they are being driven insane with despair. On TikTok, on YouTube, on the streets... driven insane.  I have only one last resource, which is writing to a politician? Like WTF. Social meida is nonsensical. It is bollocks. I hate it. It cannot change anything. Only we can change things. Only we can change things. Nothing else can change things. Nothing else. Then this photo came up.  "I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself."  Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 This.  THIS. Today I promise no one can take my spirit from me. Nothing can take that. Nothing. No one. No amount of lying and gaslighting and torture -...

The boys enjoying a free game of tennis with no net on a filthy court... ghetto tennis they called it It has been the best spring in living memory Thoughts on Gaza The past week has been awful. Actually this whole year has been awful. From spending money I wish I didn't have to spend to the fucking Zionists and Gaza and then hearing about friends getting sick and unwell, and finally, the end of an international order. America is a typical narcissist. It held the international order for as long as it suited them and when they couldn't get away with it anymore, they threw all the toys out of the pram, leaving everyone feeling completely confused. I hope this is a lesson to idiotic countries, the neoliberal who thought they could beat America at its own game. How dare they. How dare they think that the could outstrip the natural advantage which stolen had had given them... The question now is - for how long do destructive cycles last...

On Sunday we went walking to Ben Crom. I had never been there and it was a revelation. Oisin had wanted to find the hidden waterfall but the Silent Valley was closed. We found an entry at Carrickmore and well - 5 hours later we had journeyed there and back.  It was also Mother's Day. In the past when we walked along treacherous or difficult places, I would hold the boys. Now they hold me. They helped me down the steep slopes of the mountain and made sure I twist my ankle or fall.  I was very very tired by the time it was over and by Wednesday I was in full flu mode. I am so very very tired. I did have a wonderful time but it took everything from me.  I also had time to think about having difficult conversations with parents. Should we bother even? Where does our responsibility end? When does it begin? I really need to know.  It has really not been easy the last few months, since January actually. It really h...