Archive for the ‘ireland’ Category
Posted by Cliodhna
it was strange being here for the first day or so. Jet lag makes me feel odd and drained and I get waves of tiredness that empty my brain of all thought and the idea of dealing with the world or having a conversation or organising the things I need to do are just too huge to be done. Instead i crawl into bed and get warm or have a bath and relax.
I am getting there today though. Went to see my nephew (whom my brother calls ‘the bestest baby’) tonight and he is chirpy and cheerful and I am struck by the randomness of his actions. Maybe as we grow older we continue to act just as randomly but we learn to put structure and impose meaning on the chaos and pretend our acts have purpose and order. I remember there was a mad man who would race around guanajuato always with a bundle of papers in his hands, he was ragged and filthy but he always had something he was organsing, always something important that had to be done, someone who had to be talked to and I would see him and I would think about all the ‘important people’ running around doing ‘important things’ that had to be done or their world would end. I would think of him also whenever I was feeling important about doing something or organising something.
mark (the bestest baby) doesn’t have any importance about what he does, he just does exactly what he feels like doing at any given moment in time. Sometimes for his own amusement, sometimes to get attention and sometimes who knows why…
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Posted by Cliodhna
which doesn’t happen in mexico… completely ignored in fact, though once a mexican person knows I am irish I get to hear the story about the turn coat irish who adandoned the american side in some border war a long time ago when they were still fighting over texas and ran over to the mexican side to fight for them instead.
thats the thing about being irish the whole world is happy to see you, generally for stuff thats completely cliched like an ability to drink the rest of the pup under the table (my alchohol tolerance is practically zero) and myths of the fighting irish from american history. We would pour off the famine ships dirty, hungry and looking for the nearest bar.
One thing about being irish from over the seas is that there is a view of ireland that is completely romanticised and in soft focus and hazy memory and nothing what-so-ever to do with the reality of back home. I suppose this happens with any displaced people and there is a part of irelands history that is everything to do with being displaced from need and a hope for a better place somewhere else and if you weren’t the one to go personally then all your hopes and dreams went with the person who was going. Even now every single family I know has relatives in america or england.
Maybe it is buried in our physce to consider somewhere else as better, more money, more opportunities, someone from somewhere else is more exotic, wiser, richer, better; or maybe thats just me. Its one thing I have realised in all my travels. Doesn’t matter where I am or what I doing its still me being there and doing it and trying to find that better place just doesn’t work because I can’t run away from me.
Posted by Cliodhna
I am going to Ireland soon, In a week and a half, I am looking forward to going back and meeting my friends and smelling the air. It will be spring time which is particularly changeful; As far as smells went and the possibility of change spring and autumn were always my favourite months.
Ireland holds a lot of memories for me, of course, it being the country I grew up in and it always has a hint of mundaneness about it, like I am going home and somewhere else is more exciting. I suppose there are a lot of issues sitting in Ireland waiting for me to see, like my relationship to my parents and all the stuff I still haven’t looked at from growing up or hopes and wishes never fulfilled or embarrassments or bad times I buried or ran away from.
It has a lot of good stuff too, it is a reconnection to the past in a good way also, a reminder of dreams I had and wanted to fulfill but now I am coming round in a spiral a little more ready to bring them to light or truly abandon them and leave them out of my live. A clearing of house one might say, a good old spring clean of the inner psyche.
It has taken me a while to truly accept that I now ‘live’ in another country rather than just travelling and sooner or later I would be going back to Ireland. Now when I visit it is for visit and I have joined the ranks of the millions of ex pat Irish living abroad and returning to the old sod for Christmas and the occasional summer vacation. I think there are more of us than there are Irish actually living in the country. If we all returned at once Ireland would probably sink!
Posted by Cliodhna
Who am I really? Who am I underneath all the pretenses and masks I have developed over the years? All the times I have shifted colour and form to fit in while never really succeeding, always on the outside, not understanding how others made it seem too easy, trying too hard, being seen as the ´weirdo´
That is the problem I have faced in the past. Wanting so much to be accepted but afraid to be true to myself because I wasn´t enough, everyone else seemed to be so much more happy, successful, witty, just plain ‘more’
I didn´t know who I was, not a clue, not an iota, well maybe a part of me knew but was covered over by the masks. How do I find out who I am or want I really want in life if I don´t know and really don’t know how to cut through all those layers I had covered myself with. I wrote a story about it called Coat Boy. I will post it later. How to dig down through those layers and find out what lay beneath and smash those mirrors into smithereens.
I remember about three years ago making a promise to my heart, standing in front of a Rathmines window and gazing out at grey Irish weather that if my heart were to bring the means to finding what it really wanted into my life I would do my utmost to make it happen.
I decided I needed help, for the first time in my life actually admitting I could do with some help. I think now, just occurred to me, that my resistance to seeking help meant that I might actually have to change myself on a deep level instead of wanting it and wishing it but at the same time ultimately avoiding myself.
I did Reiki one and as part of my intention for doing it was to find someone to work with and he presto, three weeks later I find myself agreeing to become an apprentice to a Mexican teacher who works in the Toltec teachings. My life has never been the same since. I have ditched so much baggage and there is more going all the time, I have completely changed my outlook on the world and seen past the stuff that I took for granted and saw into the heart of myself and the world around me. Competition, comparison, my inner fears, my manipulation, my need for attention, my inner tantrum throwing control freak child all get put under the spotlight and seen for what they are. Outmoded tricks of the mind which will do anything to stay in control.
I am writing this from a hotel room in Mexico City, about to go on spirit journey to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. I have done this before and always come out the other side charged and renewed. There will be changes though, there will be upheavals and earthquakes, there will be the tower card of the tarot inside my inner being, there will be resistance to letting go and there will be competition and comparison until I surrender and become in line with the flow. But at the end I bring gifts back with me to my life and they continue to shift and grow inside me until they flower and bear fruit.
Posted by Cliodhna
wonderful!
nap done and I am feeling a lot more mentally together. Teaching is exhuasting. I am out of practise of how to appear like the stern teacher and I used to hate that bit anyway and also with a strange class it takes a while to get to know them. Its funny, with the discipline bit, I am not sure what my mother has in place as to what is acceptable and what is not but when someone does something thats really out of line then the rest of them freeze for a second. Then they realise I am not going to do anything and they go back to normal.. Trouble is in a classroom messing and noise escalates rather than them keeping themselves calm. They just get giddier and giddier.
Plus I am unknown territory so they have to try everything to see if they can get away with it. They started with the fake coughing round little break today until I offered to send anyone who wanted to go up to the principal to ring their mothers and tell them they were sick. That stopped that in a hurry. I think whats so tiring about it is that you can’t switch off for a second.
Schools have changed. When I was in primary it was all about sewing and art and drama and singing and projects with history and geography and maths fitted in round the sides of those. Now its all curriculum and there seems to be no time for what I would consider the important things. I ask myself why teach a young child endless facts about geography that he or she won’t remember when we should be teaching them creativity at a time when their minds are still forming and are open to new ways of thinking. Teach them the facts later when they will learn them faster. If I had a child I would definitely send them to a steiner or a waldorf school or teach them at home if I could.
Their pictures turned out great. I would take photos but the camera isn’t at home so…
Posted by Cliodhna
I am teaching in my mums school for three days. I have a bunch of 12 year olds. 6th class. Already they have lost the innocent magic of the really young and now are worried that they can’t draw and anything they do will not live up to their own exact standards. Its kinda frustrating especially since I love what they produce, so fresh still and naive. I am doing an art project where they have thought of who they would like to be when they are older (outside any considerations of backround, whether they think they are clever enough, gender, in short anything the mind reckons is a reason not to do this) there are quite a few beauticians, an architect, a trillionare (I asked how she was going to get there and she said win the lotto, right…), a vet, and of course the usual few who shrug the shoulders and mutter ‘I dunno’ .
Tips for art in the classroom, particularly this age group
Talk about what you are going to do beforehand. Talk about the story or poem you want to do. Discuss with the class the kind of things they could put in the picture, ask them how they think they could illustrate the scene. They will give each other ideas. It helps to have a starting point, a theme a goal you can work towards. You can ditch the goal but its good to start out with one. Tie it in with music. The sorcerers apprentice, peter and the wolf, the nutcracker suite are a few good ones.
Stress most strongly the importance of drawing BIG. I find they gravitate towards small. Especially 10 to 12 year olds who are using pencils. Younger than that give them big chunky crayons and markers. I told them today I wanted the head at the top of the page and the feet down the bottom. Ask them whats in the backround, what else could you put in there, fill the page.
Get them to choose one scene or one character and develop it. In a scene maybe try to pick three characters and talk about how you could show the action happening. The thing is to get them thinking about the picture before they start drawing. To expand their ideas on what could be in a picture.
When using paint give them a tutorial in keeping the paints separate and washing the brush properly before they use it on the next colour. Give them big brushes.
At home you can give your child a wall and let them loose. When its full take a photo, paint it white again and they start over on a fresh wall.
For me its a balancing act between giving new skills and encouraging creativity and staying out of the way for them to discover it themselves. They get great satisfaction from gaining more control of the medium they are working in and discovering new ways of manipulating it and my job is to give them that and at the same time push them past the ‘I can’t draw’
They will draw the picture and then we are going to stick fabric instead of paint. I have buttons and sequins for them to sew on and wool for hair. Should be fun.
and there is no such thing as not being able to draw
Posted by Cliodhna
I am about to wash my sleeping bag, actually both of them, seeing as I bought a large one and a thin one and generally end up using them both. One for warm nights and both together for the cold nights.
The reason why this is worthy of a blog is because my sleeping bag has become my security blanket… have sleeping bag can travel. and I was always afraid of washing it in case it looses that fluffyness and warmness that is essential to any good security blanket.
I bought them before I went to mexico three years ago so maybe its time to wash them. They kept me warm (one inside the other with the hood bit for my head) on a sleeping platform on the side of a mountain, the thin one as protection from mosquitoes in a hammock on a beach in Tulum, in my first flat in Guanajuato, and in countless freezing cold irish houses on friends couches/blow-up mattresses/floors
the old irish house builders had a unique talent known only to them… how to build houses that were actually colder on the inside than they were on the outside. I remember having an argument with a friend on whose house was colder and I described the bone chilling qualities of this particular house I was living in for a while and she topped it all with “but Cliodhna, my toothpaste freezes in the tube”. She won the argument.
I am kinda nervous about putting my precious cuddlinesses in the washer. Better do it though, and sure I can always get a new one if they go lumpy.
Posted by Cliodhna
green is clean
and trees are green
but thats a josh
cause trees don’t wash
A brief nugget of deep wisdom for ya’ll, from my younger years, there are others but I think one is enough and it ties in with the theme of green.
After thinking about how green it is here in comparison to where I have been I took photos of my parents wood. Its not very big as woods go but it is a beech wood and is airy and light and the air beneath the leaves glows green.
The wild garlic takes over from early march to mid july and is wonderful to look at and smell and very good to eat. It has a subtle flavour but one that is quite distinctive.
Enjoy the greeness! it is quite a feast for the eyes, I tell ya…
Posted by Cliodhna
I was on a yoga and meditation day on saturday down in Claire just beside the burren in a place called the Holywell. Amazing place. I said to a friend, the grass is so green here in Ireland! and she smiled and said You sound just like an american. I laughed, its true, americans generally when they come here at some point will say exactly that.
But it is true about the grass,, coming from where I have been living in mexico, high desert, where the plants struggle for water and the cattle and horses are bone skinny and are constantly cropping close little brown spiky tufts of grass, to come here is to marvel at the greeness and the softness of the ground. I was scrubbing for wild garlic in the wood yesterday and was amazed at the depth of the moistness and softness. Old leaves and moss and returning to earth mulch. In mexico I learn to see the subtle colours and little signs of life and signs of water and new buds on a tree stand out from miles away. Here there is no stopping it.
On the car front I bought a 1998 Ford escort, metallic blue, reaaaaalllllllly cool! the first day it was home I kept taking sneak peeks out my window just to look at it. Insurance was bought yesterday and I am collecting the owners papers tomorrow so i can tax and register it. and then there will be no more excuses!
On an art front, not doing a whole lot right now, I am missing some permanent studio space what with coming here and then for the last while in mexico being in transit between old guanajuato and new chihuahua. (more about that later) But I have one commission from the parents for an embroidery for a 50th wedding anniversary, a commision for a childs mural that needs to be discussed and talked about, a craft competition to enter for and a gallery to find. Lots of doing things in front of me. Ok, off to bray to apply for a new passport and call into the fabric store and oohh and aahh over their wonderful things…
love and light ya’ll !
Posted by Cliodhna
so update.. my dad actually refused to go with us yesterday! he huffed and puffed a bit and said he didn’t know the first thing about cars. I think he is threatened by anything slightly different or maybe he doesn’t trust his own instincts. I don’t know. I do remember getting a few driving lessons from him years ago and after the third time I had bunny-hopped the car down the driveway him sitting there like a Mount Vesuvius of frustration. Tsk… heavy sigh… ok cliodhna, try it again. I think I have attached a lot of emotional trauma to that piece of machinery called a clutch. 
I got lessons last year from a very calm instructor who explained very clearly how to do it and it was great! no problem and now I have Paul in Mexico who is a great teacher. He doesn’t get impatient. Its also an automatic car but good to get road experience without having to worry about changing gears.
So me and Eoin set off on a shopping trip. One car smelt like a portaloo that had been sitting in the sun all day, not bad smell but that chemical they use in them. Another car sounded funny even to my ears. We say a car shaped like a jaguar that was a copy and a car shaped like an old car from the 40’s that was ten years old, and we saw Herbie and a really beautiful red mini with tartan uphosltery. We saw a merc that Eoin wanted and we test drove a really nice Toyota Corolla that is on my list as ‘the most likely car I am going to buy’ spotlessly clean with perfect service history. Eoin said it drove really nice. (Eoin has a vested interest in all this because once I leave the car will be turned over to his care!)
Going to see a Ford escort this morning. I have learnt more about cars in the last few days than I knew in my whole life I think. Eoin on the other hand since the age of three has been pointing out car windows at cars that flash past saying “look! a ford prius skolla tummty from 19– with alloy tires”
me? “Look! a green car!”
