cliodhna’s wave

I have created a new store at cafepress.com. It can be found here at www.cafepress.com/cliodhnaquinlan

They do all the printing and shipping and packaging and I don’t have to worry about any of it. Very Cool. That was the problem with Etsy, just so hard for me to get to a post office and forget about decent packaging supplies and then even finding a good printer to print high quality copies of my work. Now its all done for me! hooray! I can also order promo from them at wholesale prices.

I have a section specifically for clocks with words instead of numbers. I use the image to inspire the words and I love doing them. If you have any ideas or might want a specific image with your own words let me know!

I am getting some publicity together but finally the shop has some sections and blurb and looks like how I want it. I am sure I will tweak here and there over the next few months but I am getting very close.

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I missed one world one heart!!! I had this post written with this magnet below to give away and went to the site to get the link and low and behold the entries were closed because so many people had signed up.

Here is the link if you would like to go check it out and see the list of people taking part. You can leave comments on the posts to be entered for the draw on each blog. Its fun.

xx clio

….is a very special friend

well, ok, its not actually animate and it doesn’t say anthing and it doesn’t actually do very much but after three years of lookig for hot water bottles in this country I went and bought my first electric blanket yesterday. I plugged it in, low, and preheat and then a few minutes later got into bed and oh what bliss and luxury!! this morning I woke up still cozy snuggly and actually quite reluctant to get out of the cocoon of warmth.

You see generally I have beside the furnace that is better known as ‘Paul’ but he isn’t here at the mo and It is cold here at night and my poor feet take an age to warm up.I will be taking it back up to the mine with me too. Paul gets so hot he throws all the blankets off and I am left shivering with breezes making their way on through the gaps.

But now I have my shield of protection,my layer of heat, my upgraded next level of the technological scale from the hot water bottle/bed pan… the electric blanket…

all hail!……

…uFor a place surrounded by trees, in a warm place but not too hot. It gets cool in the evening and dusk and dawn are the best times to be out doors. There is a spring there gushing clean clear water from deep in the rocks and a well full of life and greenness where the frogs come to play and raise young and goldfish swim in lazy circles in the cool water. A fig tree overshadows the pool and is a beautiful shaded spot to sit during the heat of the day and my dog spends most of his day crashed out in the shade watched by my cat from the branch above.
The land surrounding is large full of huge old trees and I let it go to wild. Grow however it wishes with paths winding their way through the trees and art work hidden here and there. A carving of a face hanging from a tree, a sculpture made from old tractor parts being overgrown by trailing plants and a tiny seat and a house for elves under a tree somewhere. Nobody else wanted this land because it was ‘useless’, because no crop plants would grow there or it was too steep or for whatever reason but it was waiting for me to come and live there and there is magic in this place and power and I nurture it with benign neglect. I plant trees like fig and orange and pecan and avocado and passion fruit and lychee and mandarin.
Attached to my kitchen is a greenhouse for the birds to live. Canaries fly free in the high domed space of the greenhouse and the stream from the spring winds its way through the floor and out the other side. The house is old and comfortable and there was love in the building of it. Little nooks and crannies await precious things to fill them, a stone, a light, a candle, an ornament, a found thing from the garden. I have a space in which to make my art, maybe off the greenhouse so the birds are free to fly in and out. The bathroom is huge and has a huge bath in which to soak and a steamroom.
A little ways away on the land is the circular workshop space. The centre is roofless and has a small pool fed by a diverted arm of the spring and around the edge of the circle are spaces for beds and hammocks screened by netting for privacy and protection from the insects. One section of the circumference is a room for yoga and meditation and has an old stove for warmth during the cold season and in the evenings. The smell of warm wood smoke and incense permeates this room and it welcomes all who enter. The walls are white and the floor is wood with cushions and rugs on the floor. Connected by a round passageway to the entrance to the circle is the kitchen with an oven and a huge wooden table in the centre. The floor is stone and the walls are curved and soft. A herb garden is just outside the kitchen door with chives and parsley and oregano and basil and rosemary and dill.
Coyotes wander through the land and deer and Tlacuaches and all insects and animals are welcome. There is protection on the land which protects all who live there from harm and a peace which works it way in on the spirit of all who come and visit, staying with them when they leave to go back to their lives again. The sea is close, a quick drive away down the mountain to get to a beautiful beach where I snorkel and swim and relax in the waves.
I think that just about covers it!
I wish for the above and I call it into my life and I ask for the support of the universe to manifest this into reality. I thank you and I am open to receive all good in my life. X Cliodhna

So I did something yesterday for the first time in my life. I bought stocks on the stock market! I was quite excited by it, it made me feel grown-up and important and a getting my life together feeling. I am now an investor, I told myself, I own stocks. Two phrases which when I heard them when I was younger had a mysterious magical feeling to them, they belonged to a far away grown up world of money and business and running around talking on phones and mysteriously making money doing nothing really. The stock market is a bit like that, it’s pure abstract energy, money in its most purest form, nothing, a concept of trade and exchange and by buying stocks and selling them I am playing with this energy.

I am coming to see the more sinister side of it also though, because it is so abstract we forget we are playing with people’s lives and businesses and some of the stuff I have read while I was researching how to do all this and what stocks to buy and all that reflect this attitude. Make money from the recession!!! While everyone else is in dire poverty you can make $$$$$$$ I can actually see how maybe a group of people with lots and lots of money could play with the market and push it this way and that. Of course I can also see how the reason they could do that is because the market place as a whole lives in fear and will respond with panic at the sign of imminent losses, get out quick before everyone else does.

Also made me think about my own ethics; what companies did I want to give my money (and support) to? How did I want to make my money? I have never thought about this before except in the most vaguest and idealistic form. If I could make ten thousand dollars tomorrow but it meant endorsing a company I didn’t like and didn’t agree with would I do it?

Its like the eternal dilemma every hero faces in his/her quest for the golden grail/ princess/kingdom. Or the old fairy stories where there is three sons head out to fulfill a quest. The mother always asks them before they leave “Do you want the whole loaf and no blessing or half the loaf and my blessing?”

The first and second sons say the whole loaf of course, it’s a long journey, we will need the food but then they come to a test of character and fail. The third son says half the loaf and your blessing and then he meets a hungry person along the way and gives the bread to him and receives valuable advice as how to pass the test.

The first two sons do not trust the journey, they don’t realize they will be looked after and they guard their possessions from fear. The third son is the fool, the eternal hopeful, the trusting one who lives from an open heart and is taken care of, who ends up getting the princess, the kingdom and rescuing his two older brothers along the way.

I thought there for a second as to which I would say or do and it just occurred to me that none of the three ask their mother could they have both. The whole loaf and the blessing, we can have it all if we ask for it. So I ask for the whole loaf please and the blessing that I deserve it and I would like to make some money so I can create my space in life. I will stay away from the companies I don’t like and trust the journey.

How do I want my space? Tune in next chapter in this ongoing saga of life!! X

so, finally I have uploaded, resized, put on Flickr and ready to post, pictures from my helicopter ride in Montana.

Paul’s daughter Rachel is learning to be a helicopter pilot which I think is a totally super cool thing to be learning. She loves it and she took us up on one of her training flights when we were there. It wasn’t scary at all, its like a little sports car inside and very comfortable if a bit cramped. That’s me in my new North face coat which is like wearing a large fluffy warm cloud. I love it, I hardly took it off the whole time I was there.

Anyway… here are the photos. Missoula and Bitterroot from the air.

a stream, really black against the snow.

can you find the deer? there are four of them just about dead centre

cows feeding have left patterns against the white

missoula at night when we were returning to the airport

the panel of the helicopter

there is a cat trapped in my swimming pool (which is empty, by the way) and I listened to it yowl all night long thinking it was a neighbours cat pissed at being left outside for the night. This morning though I get up to go look. A cat usually doesn’t care whether its been left out and sure enough there it was, the invisible cat I have been leaving food out for the past week or so.

I get down into the swimming pool thinking I could catch it and make a pet of it, it is only a kitten. But no, this cat is wild, and by wild I mean a hissing spitting ball of teeth and claws looking at me furiously. I might be 30 times its size but its not going to go without a fight.

I haven’t caught wild things in a while. I used to be an expert at it when I was younger, but recently I haven’t scaled my walls or hung upside down off trees in hunt of a stray kitten that needed catching ( I even remember falling into a wasps nest once and couldn’t see out of one eye for a week, but i caught it!). I round up the kitten saying reasuring things and making mommy cat noises with my shawl held out to throw it over it. I miss the first time and then the second time there is an intense flurry and I have kitten pinned down on the ground safely. You have to be firm but not too strong and the end result must look like your hand on the back of its neck… this is important. So then I make the mistake of being too… whats the word? to try to make friends with something too soon, or kinda hippy thoughts of poor little kitty witty, anyway I tried to scratch behind its ear to calm it and I know have a hole in my thumb. It actually managed to bite through the nail, I am sure its teeth met in the middle somewhere.

Reality check. Wild thing, give it some food and space and hang a blanket down over the swimming pool, it will figure it out and it will probably go back to being the invisible cat I leave food out for. I can see it now, it ate the food I gave it but it hasn’t tried the blanket and it is sitting quite comfortably in the curve of the pool like a dusty black rag.

So on to this blog a year later. Can’t believe I have been doing this blog a whole year. I have gone through stages of only writing about my art and craft, to wanting to write about my own journey, to running away from said journey and putting posts up about You tube or other fillers to returning to the point and the heart of the matter. I have made some virtual friends I have no idea what they look like or who they really are except what I see from their own blogs but I like their energy or maybe we are all disparate and separated around the globe but we are all really on the same path and that’s why we gravitate towards each other.

So I wonder where I will be in another year? or where this blog will have gone? Or who I will be? probably me but with a little less weight on my shoulders and a little happier and following my dreams still.

I had an idea of something I would love to do. I have always wanted this but never really figured it was for me or I could get the money to do it. I will set up a workshop space, my own little sanctuary, my space, but to use it for workshops for the toltec work or for yoga and I will have my own studio there too to work in. Somewhere really beautiful, beside the sea? or at least near the sea on a mountain side somewhere or in the jungle or… don’t know yet.

I have joined the stock market to invest some money my mum gave me to work towards this goal. Cool huh? online broker, small start up accounts. You see its interesting how money is so relative. I thought ooooo 100′000 dollars would be an amazing sum to have but then I check the leading stock broker in Ireland and they want minimum 125′000 euro as a start up fund. Gave me a start, and made me realize how really money is just energy and we call it towards us or not depending on whether we think we deserve it or whether its important to us. I never really cared about being rich in the past but also never saw myself as a person with lots of money, that was kind of unattainable, out of my reach, for the whizz kid bankers or older people, not me. I guess maybe I also felt a little superior to them, I didn’t need money to do what I wanted to do.

Anyway I change that agreement. Now I want money. Not for itself but to use it to construct my own dream and make my life the way I want it. To be self sufficient and in charge of my own finances, to take responsability for how I want to live and think ‘I can’

It started with a question my teacher posed us in a letter at new years. What would you do if you had unlimited finances at your disposal and all the love and support of the universe.

Well, what would you do?

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.

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.

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.