cliodhna’s wave

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.

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…

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 !

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!”

…who of course both know sooooo much more than me and can’t agree about anything.

Conversation example

Dad, can we go and test drive a few cars today? Daughter, wait till next week until Mr Driver is back so he can vet them. Son says, I don’t trust Mr Driver.

Dad, They are all NCT’d and taxed and there are six in bray I would like to look at. Daughter dear why would anyone nct a car, tax it and then try to sell it? I don’t know dad, can we just go and see them. They will sell you a pig in a poke says he.

Eoin at this point is still asleep being a nocturnal animal generally. I see trouble when we actually go to test drive these cars. Eoin figures he knows more than anyone else about anything and so does my dad. Sigh

I really just want a really cool car, an old one like the ones I see around mexico. From the 70’s, a big wide ford, or one with curvly shaped body bits and old wooden dashboards. Cars are really boring these days. There is a volkswagen beetle for sale here for 7000 euro. My god, they are two a penny in mexico. Everyone drives one. They are amazing little cars, they just go and go and go and go, up mountains and down hills and still keeping on going.

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.