cliodhna’s wave

loudly, quietly, out of tunely, sweetly, because I like to, silly songs, happy songs, about love, sadly, in the shower, alone, with friends.

my threadless submission for a design challenge where the words have to be part of the design. x

Green is the colour of life, it is the heart chakra, it is courage and the ability to change and be fluid. It is shining forth of the sun through the blue of the sky. I read somewhere once that the colour of the world when it was born was blue and it sent a shiver down my spine. I think I have changed to green now for a while. It heals me and changes me and now is the time to sit quiet and let it do its work. Be patient and allow the changes to take place, not knowing what they are or where they will take me. Maybe I will change back to blue afterwards or maybe I will stay green, I don’t know.

Added to this feeling is the awareness of being immersed in the world, surrounded by energy and part of it with no separation as surely as a fish is part of the water around him or better still a drop of water that contains awareness in the middle of the ocean being part of the water around it. I am the water and the fish; I am the awareness and the ‘I’ looking at ‘you’ looking back at ‘I’. Sometimes I have had these understandings in the past for a little while, maybe five minutes maybe half a second and maybe a whole day but they faded and I was left with the intellectual knowledge but not the connection. Maybe the knowledge of it spurred me to search for a surer connection to that timelessness. I have thought we get given gifts of knowledge, little glimpses into the possibility of what is ahead so we can work our own way back to it.

Well this time it doesn’t seem to be going away. I look for it and there it is; the deep understanding. I get stressed and annoyed or frustrated and I look for the connection and the frustration ceases or becomes smaller and I am back on track again. Very cool altogether, I like it. The temptation is to judge and push and try harder but somehow I know it’s time just to wait.

Happy christmas day! eat too much, lie around, cheat at pictionary, watch the bad old timer movie, shuffle through wrapping paper and collapsed children worn down from excitement and uncle paul winding them up with the nerf guns, probably one or two sent to their room in tears for a little time out and a calm down.

My family has only one still not even a year old to contend with, we are quite boring on christmas day, we lie around and read or pick endlessly at the food. This year with pauls family I have entered the kids zone again. There seem to be endless children of all ages.

Ok so now make a wish…. this is christmas present to anyone reading this post (and it doesn’t have to be christmas day you are reading it either). Get piece of paper, write your wish down and then roll it up real small and burn it.

two guidelines to follow

happy language, no negative words whatsoever, so no I don’t want this (Fear, poverty, anger, addiction, etc) anymore, have to phrase it in a positive way.

don’t let your mind tell you whatever you are wishing for is impossible, make the wish, what ever your heart desires, and then let the universe worry about how to get it to you.

happy wishing!  x cliodhna

the two pictures are from a while ago from a story called ‘Crow Makes a Wish’ Crow inserts a wish between sea and sky. A wish for companionship, an equal, his opposite. The second one is when blue baby arrives on the sea shore. It has a memory of wings and rain and salt water.

I am sitting in montana in snow country for my first White christmas ever! Its so cold here, a big drop from Chihuahua where when the sun was out it could actually be hot and then at night it got a bit nippy. There is a big mountain straight out the back window and the snow flakes are gently gliding their way downwards. I bought a North face coat yesterday, the big buy of the year, I have wanted one for a couple of years now so took the plunge and went for it. It was expensive but it is an investment, I have found in the past that sometimes its worth it to buy something expensive that is well made and actually works. Years later I expect I will still be wearing this coat and still be warm and cozy. I feel the cold and I am tired of coats that look amazing but when you go outside you are still cold.

In about two hours my boyfriends daughter is going to take us up in her helicopter. She is training to be a helicopter pilot and I think that is the coolest thing ever. I always wanted to do something like that but just never really went for it and now she is totally intent on this. She has found her passion and she is focused and happy and going for it. Working her brain too, studying flight trajectories and weight versus fuel ratio and lift and all sorts. Good for her.

What else, it seems a while since I have actually sat down and wrote something. Oh yes Ariana and iron man. Ariana is at a wonderful age of three years and is adorable, she is obsessed by Iron man and Paul got her an iron man costume and play figure. Its wonderful being around small kids, even on the flight over here there were a few really cute children on the flight and it surprised me that they were on quite happy and cheerful and only cried when we were landing and the air pressure started making our ears hurt. It makes me broody actually, I want one of my own. Sitting at three in the morning stuck in seattle airport watching people go by and being at one with the universe and all I saw a woman pass with a child about that age, a girl. There was a man sitting opposite with a tired stressed look on his face (weather was delaying and cancelling loads of flights so there were a lot of strays lying on floors and wandering around with lost looks) and when the woman passed the girl waved at him and then blew him a kiss. It was so beautiful, his face lit up and he waved back at her and when she had passed and gone with her mother he was still smiling. It was a gift of innocent love and it changed everything around it.

That’s the lesson from children this age, how to be innocent and open and see love everywhere and have it reflected back to us, before we teach them to be afraid of strangers and instill them with our fear of what might happen if they live that way always. I don´t have children but even so I can feel the struggle I would have between wanting to teach them how to be careful about the world and be wary of strangers because I know they would cheerfully wander off with anyone and then not wanting to spoil that wonderful innocence and love.

On the flip side of that Ariana woke us up this morning screaming her head off and when I asked Rachel later what had happened she said she (Rachel) got out of bed and Ariana wanted her to stay there longer! That is the other lesson for me from this age, that the world doesn’t comply to my wants, it doesn’t stop turning just because I say so. My mother is not attached to me by a remote control held in my hands and she has a will of her own. I suppose there must have been fear in this realization (I don’t remember but I am guessing) that I didn’t control my surroundings. How was I to make sure I had enough of everything if I wasn’t in control? I guess at this point in where the manipulation starts, who do I have to be to get what I (think I) need to survive?

It is this manipulation I am picking through now 36 years later. What agreements did I make with myself then that don’t serve me now? To not manipulate and control my world brought huge fear and a feeling of panic and resentment. Everyone else was doing it, if I didn’t I would get left behind and ignored. Scream for attention in any way I could. I am learning to see it and I have ditched a lot of it and it gets easier as it goes along.

There was a city once, a long time ago, that was built by a people who worshipped the wind. They built the city to pay homage to the wind, they constructed every street carefully so the wind would whistle or howl or hum or simply blow straight and hard banging bells and clattering signs and causing windows to rattle as it passed.

There was a bridge in the city called the singing bridge. It was built of hollow pipes of different lengths and angled in different directions and the sound of the pipes and the combination of the sounds would tell the people of the city where the wind was blowing from and how hard it was blowing.

There was a narrow street that curved and twisted and the wind would run up it whistling and shouting from the sea, carrying the smell of the sea and the noises of the returning sailors from their fishing trips and the boom of the waves on the hulls of the big boats from far away. The children would come running down the street then, looking for fathers or brothers or the strange merchants who came from over the water with their goods to sell that smelled exotic and cost more than they would see in a year.

The roofs were tiled with wood, narrow slats that were only attached on one end and it took a strong wind to get them dancing but when it did, it seemed like the city would take off into the air and fly away.

The city was carefully built with streets facing the direction of prevailing winds, designed to take the wind into the heart of the city, spin it round and send it off in another direction. The people of the city could tell practically to a day what time of year it was by the noises that surrounded them and indeed they were so used to constant noise that, on the rare days when there was no wind, they stayed indoors and talked in hushed voices or if they had an errand to run they would move quickly looking over their shoulder for fear of the silence.

Every house had wind chimes hanging from the corner of the roofs. Wind chimes of hollow wood that clunked with low notes against each other, heavy, slow ponderous vibrations or wind chimes of perfectly tuned metal from low to high bell-like perfect roundness that would cause anybody walking under them to stop and close their eyes to feel it properly inside themselves. In a street the wind chimes were tuned along each house so walking down a street was walking from one chord to another of a slowly changing melody.

Song birds were bred for their voices and competition was fierce between the owners as to which bird had the clearest voice, the most limpid melody, the most satisfying roundness of tone. The best birds sounded like water gurgling through a brook, like an urn of fine metal filled with water and tapped. Try it; you will see what I mean. Gold was exchanged for breeding rights of the best songsters and eggs sold before they were even hatched.

The city thrived for centuries but alas the people forgot their worship of the wind and slowly the singing bridge became a home for bird’s nests and debris and became silent and the roof tiles were replaced with ceramic hardwearing tiles that did not rattle and slap. Noisy signs were more firmly fastened to their supports and some buildings were demolished and others built that did not pay attention to the layout or wind direction. The narrow curving street that brought the smell of the sea to the heart of the city was closed, blocked and forgotten about. The wind became an annoying factor rather than one to be used and enjoyed and slowly the past glory of the city was forgotten and became just another noisy smelly port city where the sailors would stop and move on from as quickly as they could.

The old people, who were the only ones who listened anymore, were the ones who remembered the stories their great grandparents had told them and were the only ones who wondered when they met for their morning coffee or afternoon tea were the stories true, of a city built for a worship of the wind and a city that sang from every rooftop and street corner, a city that was proud and shone and laughed and chimed and had a different song for every day of the year.

I got quite hippied out by the stars last night. First I started looking at the constellations, Scorpio, Libra, Orion the hunter, the tiny little dipper beside that triangle that has a red star in it. I suppose I can look them up on goggle later, I think one of those two constellations are the Pleiades with the Dog Star. Then I realized with a shock I couldn’t remember the star sign after Leo, earth, ruled by mercury, like forgetting the name of an old friend.

So I meandered like this for a few minutes then I really started looking at them. The stars, like our sun but so far away, (or maybe not, I have always wondered that maybe distances in space are also the product of our mind, things are as far away as we think they are) and I got a shiver down my spine. There are so many of them and so many more we cannot see and they hold their own space. They are kind of impossible in my head, where do they come from? Points of awareness. Maybe all our search for star people is because each star holds its own life like our sun holds this earth.

We occupy this earth round our sun and it is so fragile and we are doing our best to upset the balance and in our own little lives we forget to look up at the stars and look down at the ground beneath our feet and see it for what it is; a miracle, impossible, awe inspiring. Even scientists admit there comes to a point in their splitting the atom and the quark and the whatever down further and further that they are stumped, they don’t know what makes life tick. They will never find it; it is like cutting a brain up to find a thought or cutting a word up to find the meaning.

and its ‘virgo’,  I had to go look it up…

First came the in-breath, the gasp from nothingness, the awakening the awareness of being. Nothing still was, just pure awareness and stillness, waiting for the impulse to move.

Then came first pondering; A simple ?. No words as yet just pure question, a wondering of the awareness.

Next came second pondering, an awareness of ‘self’ as something different to ‘other’. In the vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world ‘self’ looked round and thought ‘I’ and ‘you’

The vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world did not say anything back, did not look back, just was, in its awareness there was no difference between ‘I’ and ‘you’

The self began to name things; self needed some landmarks to make the vastness smaller and easier to live in. Tree (big green fluffy), grass (green soft), mother (love),

The world began to turn and the stars began to move and the self was frightened. Self asked the world “Why are you so big and all? And do not pay me any attention?”

The world did not answer.

Self asked again “Why do you not do what I say?”

The world did not answer

“You do not love me” said Self sadly

Then he heard a voice inside him “You are loved little self, you exist because you are loved, there is no difference between you and me, we are, look around you at the vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world and stop putting names on things to make it seem smaller”

“Who is speaking” cried Self

“I/You are speaking” replied the voice and suddenly Self understood, the world had begun and everything, self included, was part of it. Everything was on the journey and self was there to witness and be a traveler on the voyage. Self smiled.

The stars twinkled, “Hello stars”

The rain started to fall from the clouds “Hello clouds, hello rain”

Self looked in a puddle at the reflection “Hello Self”

It’s that dark time of year again. The Cooks put up Christmas lights on the dining hall and it looks so pretty twinkling red and blue and green. I felt nostalgic for Christmas, but almost for the Christmas that is portrayed in books and films, that Christmas of snow and huge trees and long lost relatives and home comings and personal healings and one big happy family and everyone gets their wish fulfilled. You know, that one, the fairy tale one. Maybe the Christmas of my childhood, before I figured out Santa didn’t exist and there was a real magic about the day.

I went through a while of wanting to avoid Christmas and came through the other side, teenage angst probably. Now I love Christmas, and the Christmas’s in my house growing up were full of love and sharing and all of the above. I love the present buying and the rituals and the lights on the streets in dark Nov and Dec and then getting up on Christmas morning and making the croissants (from the tin, the ones you roll out) and getting Eoin/Daire/Grainne/me (pick whoever) out of the bed because we want to start opening the presents. And I love the day before Christmas eve in Dublin, wandering around meeting people in pubs for a drink before getting the seven o clock dart to bray to continue on the Porter House with friends from bray (hence the need to get people out of bed the next day!) and home by twelve and ham sandwiches. My mum still make us stockings and will make a stocking for any friends who happen to be visiting, but know she puts them on the end on the bed in the morning when she wakes up instead of waiting until we fall asleep; that became an impossible task many years ago.

The thing that has always struck me about Christmas though is the first Christmas I was nostalgic about, the one from the media, the perfect Christmas, is that is belongs in the same box as the perfect nuclear family, it doesn’t exist but it is the measure everyone uses to construct their own personal perfect Christmas. This of course is not a problem but where it falls short is when for some reason someone can’t have that perfect Christmas or doesn’t have the money to buy their children the perfect present and how we portray it as a shortcoming if it doesn’t happen, a failure, poor them, how sad, god love them, and then in the media someone comes to the rescue (Santa Claus or a rich relative) and fixes the problem.

It’s like we are trying to be perfect for one day, be perfect people, be a perfect family, be a perfect mother, father, child, a perfect society, peace and love for one whole day on earth. It is like we have taken this day and pinned all our hopes on it, make this day perfect and we will be ok.

I like the original reason for all the lights and trees better than the catholic one, seeing as Jesus was actually supposed to have been born sometime in late Feb early March. The pagan celebration was the death of the old sun and birth of the new sun, the darkest day of the year when the world started slowly turning its face towards the light again and the sun began to recover and get stronger and stronger. This makes more sense to me growing up in a country where there was barely 8 hours of daylight in the winter. Put light in the darkness, light up the streets and be happy, only in the dark winter do the fairy lights have the full impact.

My relationship with Christmas changed when I decided I liked it just for the excuse to have a party and celebrate life in the middle of death and put lights up in the darkness and think about the people I loved and what could I get them that they would really like for Christmas, depending on budget (and some years we had a family agreement that we couldn’t spend more than 5 euro on each other, which only made the present picking more inventive) and then it is just as much fun to see them open my present as it is to open theirs to me.

I am going to Montana this year to visit with Paul’s family. Paul’s relationship to Christmas is to give any children around everything they ever wanted o make up for the lack of his own happy Christmases. He admits this himself. He is already planning the shopping trips to the toy stores and I have overheard conversations with his daughter along the lines of We can get her (her being his granddaughter) this or this! And the reply Dad, she’s only three. He doesn’t care though; this is his particular perfect Christmas and the kids treat him like their own personal Santy Claus.

What do I want for Christmas? I want a down duvet, a big huge one, like a queen size or king size, one with really warm down fill. Can’t find them here in México and its COLD right now in these mountains.

Here I sit, 8 in the morning, in between making cups of tea, calling my dogs back, thinking about breakfast, yoga, should I take the dogs for a walk now, my English lesson later on. I write and look for the inspiration to take me. Wondering also about the things I have learnt I don’t want to share yet and reckoning that’s exactly where this stop in inspiration is coming from. I am trying to edit what I say.

Ok, let’s just get it over with. We are all part of one big life. We are all little reflections of it and because we are part of it each one of us has our own connection to it and also, we are all connected to each other and to the earth, in fact we make up the whole thing. Everything you can see around you is part of this life and what holds us together is intent. Intent is life.

That wasn’t so hard. I have been in resistance since I did this last journey. I don’t know why. Alongside the resistance is a surer and firmer knowledge of my place here and what I do here. I guess the resistance will just give up and go away soon. It’s like my dogs in the morning when they want out. The little one starts scratching the door around 7 am; she is a good, if slightly annoying alarm clock. The point is that the first few times she did that I got up and let her out. Now, it is in her head that door scratching=out and it is the same with limited patterns. The mind uses them as an escape route and it takes an effort to break them. I know this resistance all my life. It comes from childhood, from resistance to the catholic church and all its control, resistance to my parents trying to teach me things I didn’t want to learn. Resistance to school and why did I have to be there. I never opening rebelled though; I became the master at passive resistance and that is exactly what my mind is trying to do to me now, even though I don’t want it anymore.

So I am part of everything I see around me and my resistance is part of me. I have to just accept it and it will fade out slowly, like a scratched record playing an old tune I don’t listen to anymore. I am not going to wind up the gramophone anymore.

My head hurts. I have had a headache for 24 hours now and following my usual pattern I will have it for 24 hours more. Pills don’t work on this type of headache, paracetamol, aspirin, dispirin; none of them have any effect. Just have to live through it and move slowly and carefully.

It is a learning experience living with pain and I have had little bouts of living with a sore back and a migraine headache every now and then but nothing big, nothing life shattering (though some of the migraines have felt that way at the time). Pain saps my energy and my enthusiasm, makes me want to be still and quiet and wait for it to go away. It makes me feel disconnected from the world and any attempt I make at creating or writing falls flat into cheerlessness and what’s the use. Particularly this type of pain, this restless ache in my head and feeling of unease in my body; of course my period is on the way too and this also shifts and turns my perception.

Other times I can feel the pain on my body as a direct link to my frustration and want to control. When my shoulder hurts really badly and nothing I can do will shift the knot of frustration and it sits there and sits there and I feel like sitting down and crying. The urge is to go faster, try harder, do more extreme yoga, pull the muscles this way and that way when they are crying out for gentleness and a little attention. It makes me want to pick a fight with Paul, be sulky and moody and blame outside of myself.

I can use the pain as a flag of attention and time needed. TLC instead of fighting forward against the current, learn patience when my hormones are shifting and I don’t feel ‘myself’- I will return to the connection with information gathered along the way. I am grateful I don’t have severe injuries or illness in my body which some people have to learn to live with, I am reminded of the strength of the human spirit and resilience when I do meet these people, if they can live with their lessons I can certainly learn from a headache.