all new and shiny

my nephew, who I haven’t met yet. Very soon. I can’t believe I am an auntie, its great! My parents are finally grandparents. He is going to be the most spoilt grandkid in history, but then thats what grandparents are for isn’t it?

I get asked a lot here in mexico as to why I don’t have kids. They don’t understand the fact that I don’t want them. Women get pitying looks on their face and try to persuade me to give Paul a child. He is amazing with small children, they instantly adore him. But he is happy with what I want and thats what matters. It can annoy me sometimes when women here try to tell me I am missing out by not having children. I think sometimes women have children to fill a hole in their lives, to have someone to love. Not most of the time, but sometimes I wonder where the utter desperate need to have a child comes from in some women I meet or when they meet a woman who is happy without children to try to persuade her she is not a whole person without them. I feel for them, especially if they are trying and not succeeding to get pregnant. That must be hard, to want something that your body refuses to give you when it happens so easily for others.

I think the cultural identity of women is bound up in having children, especially in a society which is still male dominated and full of maschimo. The house is the womans centre of power here and she has to fulfill her role or she isn’t a ‘proper’ woman. In the village I was staying in recently the young women were watched by their brothers and fathers to make sure no improper behaviour took place. Made me appreciate growing up in Ireland.

Of course when they do get to me I realise there is a part of me that wonders what it would be like, “Am I missing out?” and sometimes (round the middle of my monthly cycle when the hormones are raging) I think ‘Lets do it!’ then that passes and I think phew.. Actually Paul was the first guy I was ever with I actually thought that about. It was really strange. I was afraid I was going to get ‘accidently’ pregnant so I went on the pill for a while. I want too many things for myself this life, I look at my life and where I want to be in the future and children just don’t appear in the picture. They are amazing and wonderful and they change your life and they bring a love with them that is so strong it can change the world, I just don’t feel the need to have my own, I am going to have to find that connection to the world myself, that power and love and bring it forth. Because thats what children give us, that connection to pure spiritual unconditional love that has no boundries and no limits. But we feel it for them because it is always present in us and we can feel that for the whole world.

I am just going to have to spoil my nephew and my friends kids and be the mad auntie who lives in strange parts of the world and comes to visit bearing gifts and sweets.

xx to all you childless women out there, whether by choice or not, there is an identity for women past the titles ‘mother’ and ‘grandmother’ and xx to all you women with children, if you ever need a babysitter I shall be glad to hang with the madness for a while. I used to babysit two small boys of a friend of mine a lot and it was organised chaos, amazing and I adored them but I was always happy to see her come home too, they wore me out and their batteries were still up and going. I think kids get duracell and adults have changed into a weaker brand.

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a dream

I had a dream years and years ago and I was sitting beside a canyon looking at an old leatherbound book which had the words “Where dragons be and how to find them” written on the front cover. I was looking at the index page because of course I wanted to know how to find them when up the canyon a huge bird came soaring. It dissolved into a thousand pixelly parts and then reformed facing towards me and took off past me with such power. I was left sitting there with my mouth open but no-one else saw it in the dream. I never did find out how to find dragons, guess I wasn’t supposed to know that information at that time.

I have changed a lot since that time. I lived in my dreams back then, It was quite cool for a while, I could dream on order and I had all sorts of mad strange lessons and journeys and I think looking back I was learning a lot on a level I didn’t know about. Time came though when I realized I wasn’t capable of holding down a proper job or manifesting all these dreams I had into reality. I was so afraid of failing (or succeeding) or making mistakes or not being able to live up to my own dreams and my knowledge about myself that I was stuck in this world and so I made the decision to come out, to quit obsessing about my inner world and start manifesting in my outer one.

The thing I know about myself is that I always get what I ask for.. always.. and this is not from an ego point of view, it amazes me sometimes when I look back and remember ‘Oh yeah, I asked for this, cool, thanks universe’. Of course this cuts both ways, I remember being frustrated with myself that I wasn’t in touch with my negative emotions, I was living on the surface all the time. Boy oh boy did I have a doozer of a year and a half after that wish but I came out the other side wiser and more in touch with myself and more accepting of my negativity and smarting from a few painful lessons.

So to come to place I think of as the Jonathon Livingston Seagull place. To learn how to ‘not ask’ but to stand so still you can traverse time and space. To learn how to be in that precious space of peace where creativity flows without hindrance, without judgement or comparison or fear or dissaproval. To leave ‘trying’ behind and just be. To let myself do that with my art and my pictures but also my life. Let it flow to where it needs to go so always I am in the right place , and the right place is always here.

I feel right now I am on the beginning of a cycle, cool feeling, I am planning work, wanting to get down to it. more oil pictures, these pictures I’m doing for threadless will get turned into embroideries. Patience, plant some seeds and see what sprouts. I said to someone recently my lesson is slow development and patience with myself is something I have had to learn. Let things develop slowly, don’t rush, don’t push, I will get to where I want to go to eventually with my stuff well learnt and well prepared, with calmness and in heart.

I am settling with Paul also, wonderful feeling of deepness that I always just accepted I would probably never find and of course scared the shit out of me when it arrived . Just to make ya’ll jealous here is a picture of the swimming hole we were in recently and I was swimming in a looking around at where I had found myself in my life saying “Cool! thanks universe”

toltec dreaming

I am coming back to Ireland in a week! how soon time rolls around…

Back to mists and mellow fruitfulness and away from my new found watering hole under a railway bridge and constant sun and dust (dust has permeated my pores, especially since the water in the house we are staying in ran out so no showers or washing dishes) and dogs sleeping away the day and barking at each other all night.

So news for those of ye in Ireland who are interested in self discovery and exploration and healing of the body and being. There is some workshops happening now and for May in Co Claire in a retreat (language school) called Holywell. Its on the edge of the burren and a very inspiring place to be. The work is Toltec and is about facing yourself and your wounds and healing them. The teacher is Luis Molinar who was an apprentice to Miguel Ruiz who wrote ‘The Four Agreements”  and “The Mastery of Love” and he is a very understanding gentle teacher. I have worked with him now for about four years, various workshops in Ireland and trips to the pyramids in mexico.

Dreaming is changing your dream. We are dreaming right now, creating our world from the energy we carry and send out and everything we see is a reflection of our inner being, the beautiful side as well as the side we don’t want to admit to carrrying. In dreaming you take the limited side and literally re-dream it. Change takes place on a deep level.

I always find I have changed after doing these workshops even if it seems nothing was happening at the time. Its like a glacier melting. Small streams grow to big streams and then all of a sudden when you are least expecting it a whole big chunk falls off and there is a lighter quality of being. I love doing them, I love the quality of energy that surrounds them and that stays with me after I leave the world of the course and go back out into the big world again.

For me also its about getting rid of all pre-conceptions I have about the world. All the ways of looking at the world I was taught growing up and that I don’t want anymore. To be able to really see the world through love and not through the smoky mirror of my own thoughts and habits. Leap of faith into true freedom of spirit.

I have posted the poster but if anyone wants a bigger file of it post a comment or email me and I’ll send it to you. He is also doing private sessions of an hour long in his house in claire but they fill up fast and sure maybe see you at a workshop!

I will be going to the yoga day and then the Language of love. There is a mens workshop also. I know this is kinda short notice but I have been distracted lately, hard to get to internet and then when I generally did have it I was working so not much room for keeping up with the list of ‘things to do’. There is a link to Luis’s site in my blogroll or here  http://toltecheartwisdom.com/

love and light!

computers rule my life

they do, they really do! I am learning excel spreadsheets at the moment to add to my growing list of programs I can find my way round in. I am becoming a computer geek. Not quite though, there is still a lot of things that stump me and a lot of times I will accidently do something and not be able to fix it. For ages I couldn’t figure out why all my typing would suddenly go into Italics and I could never work out how to turn it back again until I realised I was hitting ctrl+I instead of shift+I when I wrote capital I.  Now I know.

My brother said he was going to give me one of those drawing tablets. My sister has one to do her animation and they are really cool. Photoshop is amazing, it has so many details. I just found the button to change the brush selection the other day. All these cool brushes and I didn’t know they even existed! Of course it all has to be used sparingly, even I with not much knowledge of photoshop can look at designs sometimes and know exactly what effects were used and in what order. I suppose true originality shines through whether you have pixels or paint.

The picture above is called ‘The Poet creates his world” and I have been fiddling with it for days now. The problem was too many details so I got rid of flowers and then the mountains were bothering me, they weren’t sitting into the backround when they were blue so they got greyed and then a highlight on the foreground mountains to bring them in front and give them some detail.

Its funny with this stuff, I think I am finished but then when I show it to people or just leave it alone for a day or two I will find someway to tweak it to make it stronger. Sometimes I just want to finish things too quickly and I have to find the balance to know when to change and when to keep working. I was painting for a while deliberately doing it fast and trying not to think to much but this is the other side, careful consideration to make every element have a purpose or a place in the overall design.

other peoples stuff

hi, due to an absence of stuff I have done I have been thinking aboout what it was I wanted to write about and then I remembered etsy and all the cool things I have been finding there. Starting with a new ‘hearts me’ which I checked out and loved her pictures. MizzDraconia has a cool photographic style, I love her images.

also a shop called Stargazer29609 who has the most delicious bead work I have seen for a while, she has this necklace here which I love and there is a bracelet I just saw which went on my favourites list also

and still on the bead trail, check this shop out, she has beaded necklaces but she also uses really yummy stones in her stuff. Forbesfarm

I adore Kathannah’s work, she is very witchypoo, all vague and sensitive and wonderfulness

who else.. for sheer wonderfulness of style, johnwgolden, he has a simplicity I find appealing and his work is so full of character, check this crafty fox out

an to stay on an animal theme, I remember the first time I had ever seen a wild boar, I was so excited. It was in the north of spain. Remember Asterix and Obelix? they were always chasing boars to eat them and the boars would always lead them to roman patrols to shake them off and the romans figured the gauls had trained the boars to find the romans. A shop called the bigheadedrobot.

I love this womans work also, KatherineDunn, this link is to her website, but she has an etsy store also. Its another fox. she draws a lot of animals. Her drawing style is so free. I am inspired to get out my messiest charcoals and oil pastels.

alright, reckon thats a lot to be going on with! cool stuff everywhere to be ferreted out and discovered!! happy happy joy joy……

death and rebirth

born from the old the new comes flying forth, a rabbit leaps upwards in green growing plants, seeds yet to be germinated wait for their time to take nutrients from the earth and burst forth into life.

x spring time!

where I live

So, its sunday morning and we are going to a water park today!! with slides and thermally heated water.. very exciting.

I decided its time for some pictures of where I live, I have been here in Guanajuato for on and off about two and a half years and it is such a sweet little town. Its safe to walk around in and its got wonderful reastaurants and some wonderful bars and a lack of good dancing places (unless of course you like salsa or rave, I like 70ties funk and good popping disco for a fun everynow and then and in general just a good mix of good music. The salsa thing is fun for a while but… I actually bought a cd so me and Paul can practise.

Guanajuato was built on gold and silver from the mines here, which have been mined for centuries. It has been the focal point of various uprisings and rebellions notably the one lead by a man named Hidalgo against the spanish who were taking all the silver and gold out of the country. Of course now its canadian and american companies taking all the mineral and paying the miners terribly, but now its legal.. go figure

I love guanajuatos winding streets and old colonial buildings, it has such a grace to it. It is snnuggled into a valley and the buildings wind their way up the sides of hills and then down the other side.

Good leg muscles from living here, most directions are either up or down. You can’t get lost really, just follow the flow of the hills down and you will end up on the main way that meanders through the town. If in a car and you want to go back you have to follow the circle until you can access an underground tunnel.

The view from our house up the hill. I take the dog for a walk up there most days.

My puppy!

not so little anymore, he is a big slobber monster and loves to bark at passing motorcycles and bicicles. People are scared of him because he is a rotweiller but really he is a big mush. There are a lot of strays here and they are all savvy street dogs wanting to defend their turf, and Cubo of course just wants to play, most of them are ok but there are one or two whose aim is to fight and I drag Cubo away from them both dogs barking furiously at each other with people screaming and scrambling to get out of the way!

A square with two great restaurants on it, a crepe place and to the right and french salad bar, mmmmmm, so good..

Jardin de La Union.. with teatro juarez to the left there, its a beautiful old theatre, all plush and gold and carvings of cherubs and things inside. On the top are statues representing al the arts, painting, music sculpture, etc

I am missing certain pictures, like a view from above and a picture of the purple trees in bloom, they come out every year this time, so pretty. We are in high desert here and the surrounding hills are brown now but come the rainy season in july and august then the thunderstorms come rolling in and the hills turn green and the Nopal cactus starts flowering and other plants I have no names for send forth colour. The cattle and the horses start looking sleeker and in every tiny pool and puddle tadpoles swarm.

Ok I am going to go make some more coffee and some breakfast and then off to swim!!

Sailing southern seas

My other project which I have been doodling away on is a submission for threadless, the t-shirt company I have been going on about recently. I am getting the hang of photoshop, just discovering how I can make it do what I want it to do and also, what does it do best. I like the clean lines I can get, it suits my style.

A close up of the boat and the birds…

What else.. I have been discovering new music recently, I am finding what can only be described as noise. I love it, when it doesn’t have any reason or beat to it but layers of texture. The newest one which I downloaded without listening and then go lost in it for an hour is called the Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, he was transferring electronic loops from analogue to digital and the tapes were very old and decaying as he transferred them. “The music was dying as I listened to it”. They are wonderfully calm and spacey.

Another group called Godspeed You Black Emperor and the album is called ‘Lift Your skinny fists to heaven’ another ambling through soundscape and random samplings.

For one last one along the same vein, Amon Tobin’s Chaos theory has a beat but at the same time is pure noise.

Cool stuff all, I don’t know how to put a sample on this blog so you are going to have to imagine it!