mexico city in the past

I was in mexico city recently with my mum and dad and aunt and sister and we did all the usual touristy things, for me some of them for the fifth or sixth time.

One place we went where I had only been once before was the templo mayor in the Zocalo beside the cathedral. It is the old centre of the aztec civilisation and is now of course tumblind down and in ruins. There is a good museum attached to it with statues and finds from the area. I love the old statues from old mexico. The faces are so expressive.

These were my favourite. Stone knives with faces on them, they look so comical, like childrens toys.

And of course the ever present spiral. Had a thought about this one, like the spiral was been received by the bottom piece.

Of course if you are ever in mexico city you have to go to the Museum of Archeology. Amazing place and standing in the place of honour right at the back gallery is the sun stone. It is the aztec calender stone and was found buried under the zocalo in 1760. It is impressive in its size and carvings.

Had a thought about the mayan calender when I was there. All the meanings of the mayan calender will not be relevent after 2012. They will have to start again. New beginning, fresh wind, rewrite the world.

clouds’ illusions

I was standing on a kerb yesterday waiting for Marie Therese to pick me up to go out to Ballyvaughen. A car passed by with a family who were black. Mother, father and a pile of kids in the back seat, my mind wandered off on little thoughts of immigration, and how ireland is changing and how I am never here either but living in another country to the one I was born in like these folks and then I saw another child in the back of the car and I remembered on long journeys when we were little the back of the car was the best place to lie down and sleep.

Then the next car had a young man in it and I thought about my brother who drives very fast and is trying to acheive something from his life.

The next car had an older woman in it who looked like my aunt and I wondered did she drive the same way as my aunt (my aunt constantly puts her foot on the brake so the car always seems like its trying to go but she stops it with little jerks of the brake)

A few more cars passed by before I pulled myself back and realised this is how projections work. I didn’t know these people at all. I had never spoken to them or met them or probably was never going to meet them but yet seeing them triggered a little story in my head which would change when the next one came into my range of vision. The story triggers an emotion and all of a sudden I am hooked on the emotion and the story and they have become my reality.

This realisation triggered a thought of ‘mm, must write a post about this’ the mind never stops trying to create the world, thoughts are like clouds they shift and change and move and dissapear and create shapes and illusions. They take us out of the moment and into the past and the future.

I shall leave you with a quote from Joni Mitchell

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

misty walk

a wet cloudy day in the mountains, it felt like being back in ireland! I went for a walk and took some pictures, it is so different in the rain, much cooler and refreshing after the hot sun.

the egg

I haven’t been able to breathe properly for months. Feeling a certain level of fear and frustration that I hadn’t felt before. So I did a cleaning on myself with the egg and a cord cutting and then another cleaning an hour or so later and hey presto I immediately feel lighter and calmer and able to catch my breath properly.

To explain all this when a man has sex with a woman they have a cord connecting them and this cord is a conduit that transfers emotions and energy back and forth. Most of the energy goes from the woman to the man to support him (I don’t know why but somewhere in our past we humans made an agreement that this was to happen) but also when one of the partners is not processing emotions then it gets passed onto the other. This is generally from the man to the woman because in society it is more acceptable for the woman to be emotional so she becomes ‘the emotional one’.Now just to be clear, this is not an emotional attachment cord, this is a cord of energy that connects a man and a woman after intercourse. Cutting this cord does not mean ending the relationship. If you cut the cord it will connect again the next time you are with that person.

The egg cleaning is a form of healing particular to mexico and central America. It is a shamanic technique and after the egg is used you break it into a glass of water and ‘read’ it. I don’t know how to read it yet. There is a book I am thinking of buying here that explains it or at least probably points me in the right direction to use my intuition. You don’t have to know how to read it to use it though. You can do it to yourself in your own home. Has to be done with intention of cleaning and you rub it over your whole body. The shamans here do it with smoke and chanting.

So to me personally I was holding all of Pauls’ emotions that he wasn’t dealing with and processing them for him. But the thing is I can’t process someone elses’ stuff. He has to do that himself and I had a conversation with him last night about it asking him to do that and did he think it was time. There is nothing harder in this world than to turn around and face yourself. We are all taught to project outside of ourselves, it’s her fault, they need to change, go to war and kill a few thousand people; but in reality there is nothing outside of ourselves except us, what we project onto the world.

So it is time also for me to stop holding onto his stuff. It is tempting to do, if I look after his stuff then he owes me, he needs me. If I supply him with energy then he will stay with me and I can control him. It is not fair on him or me. If I hold onto his stuff then when will he ever need to look at it? I am denying him the chance to grow. It is time for me to ask him to do it himself and for me to keep the cord cut that joins us until I can properly distinguish between his stuff and my stuff, process my stuff and ask him to take responsibility for his.

The egg can be done by anyone, the cord cutting needs to be done by someone who knows how to do it. Think about it, every person of the opposite sex you had sex with in the past seven years you are still connected to and you are indirectly connected to everyone they had sex with. All the unresolved emotional energy that nobody else is dealing with is searching for a release valve, is going to the one person who is expressing emotions. Explains why sometimes women are emotional basket cases doesn’t it? You know, we all know someone who is sooooooo emotional they can’t handle it or are constantly crying or expressing emotions to a point where it’s too much? Well maybe they are expressing for others and maybe they need to disconnect for a while to find out what is theirs and what is someone else’s. I remember the first time I got it done for me I felt like a balloon that had been let go and had no attachment to the earth. It was an amazing feeling.

You can read about the egg cleansing below. I looked for links to the cord cutting but couldn’t really find any. I guess write an email to my teacher Luis and ask about it if you are really interested. His link…

http://www.eggcleansing.com/

http://www.newconnexion.net/article/11-03/eggcleansing.html

the cat in my swimming pool and this blog a year later

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?

my dogs

My dogs make me happy. They are such pure emotional beings unfettered by reason or what ifs or any of the other things that stop us from being truly happy in the moment.

I have a big slobbery Rottweiler called Cubo who just wants the love. He comes over, barges in between my legs and then with a sigh collapses slowly down onto the ground at my feet. If I move away a few feet and stand still he slowly gets up comes over and does exactly the same thing again.

I have a rescue puppy called Pala who is the dancy dog. She wiggles and turns and dances her way over to me her tail going in circles and her happiness overflowing. I am trying to train her a little but to get her to sit is an impossibility. She collapses onto her back legs in the air, smile on her face. She follows Cubo everywhere and sleeps curled as close as she can to him.

They are happy when we are there and they wait patiently for us to come back when we are not and, except when the kitchen is cooking lunch or breakfast (we live in a camp at the moment for miners) they are my two shadows. Of course when there is food available at the camp kitchen they are a permanent fixture at the door and selective hearing comes into play.

lots of pretty colourful things

I have become the proud owner of a collection of umbrellas! I have had cool umbrellas in the past but only ever one at a time. I had a pink polka dot one for about two weeks before I lost it and for a while I had kids umbrella with a ducks head on the top and two wings out either side. I would walk down the street to a symphony of nudges and cries (in tough inner city dublin) of “would ya look at the state of ‘er”. It made people smile though, made a rainy day a happy escuse to use my bright yellow duck umbrella.

Women use the umbrellas here as Parasols. To stay out of the sun and I have taken up this habit. When you live in the sun you actually spend most of your time staying out of it rather than taking your clothes off and smathering yourself in quick tan lotion and lying very still for hours. I never had the patience for tanning.

Here they are in a row from big to little. The smallest one is a kids one and the blue one was my first and the brown one is a very pretty parasol and the yellow one I just bought in Los Mochis because it was raining.

Paul after I persuaded him to let me take it.

He said I could put this one on my blog if I put another one of him looking tough and being a miner so here is one of him looking tough at his son Arthur and Art very obviously taking him seriously.

I also bought some new oil cloth to make some new purses from. Very excited!

Here is a fish I have done in the last while. It is good to get back to fabrics. I got some cool new fabrics in mochis too.

My butterfly embroidery.

On the way to the mine in the morning the air is filled white big white butterflies. They are beautiful and fragile. I used a fabric that dissolves in water to do the outside lacy effect (i wish I had more of it now) and then the butterflies and background were done on chiffon that I pulled and stretched and embroidered over. I want to explore these fabrics further…

Los Mochis

We are in mochis, finally took the train the other direction. Its an amazing journey.

Mochis is not very pretty but shopping heaven after being in Temoris! I went fabric shopping and clothes shopping and we went to the cinema and saw the new mummy picture, which we reckoned was exactly like the other two but what a treat to go to the cinema! We got to the beach late yesterday. If we had had more time we would have headed down to Mazatlan which is beautiful and right on the ocean. Mochis is about half an hours drive away. The beaches are wonderful but for snorkling I think Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta are better.

Today a storm rolled in and this city is definitly not built for water. We went out to do stuff and got soaked and waded through ankle deep muddy water for most of the time. Cars stalling in intersections and buses ignoring the water and charging through it at their usual speed.

I have no photos…. been sick for the last day or so, a cold. we have actually spent more time in the hotel room than anywhere else.. sleeping… I did have some photos of my new butterfly embroidery but they dissapeared. I got my camera back! and the rashes are going slowly.

Advice should I get rid of the key hole of this oh so very cute commision I am sending into threadless? I was going to submit it and then I thought the keyhole is just not necessary…

artists block and black widow spiders

First my newest embroidery. I was having artists block, feeling stuck, a bit down about my art, not going anywhere, not knowing what to do when I said Hey! I can do a picture about it. Because sometimes the best thing to do to get rid of a block is just do something, anything to get the energy flowing again. This image poped into my head and I got out the sewing machine and got to work.

Her hair is flowing looking for ideas and she has a paintbrush in her hand ready to paint and the colour green is good because its the heart chakra colour and that is where all the best images and art flows from.

I go through cycles with art. i want to paint big and loose for a while and then small and detailed. I want to do pretty purses and colourful nice things and then i want to express meaningful truths and deep meaning. I like the flow of paint and then the texture of fabric. I like writing and then thats not enough and I want to draw. I lose all inspiration and get lost in doing other work for a while. Like being a waitress for a few months or being a secretary and pure logic, organizing files and putting sense onto chaos. Then it is time to toss the order and explore the unformed and possibility again.

In the Toltec work that I do it says we are all artists that we create our lives every second, every minute, with every thought and word and choice we make. So when we create a piece of artwork or a meal or write we are extending ourselves outwards into the world to leave form on how we are as people. So for me being a secretary or a waitress or working in a shop is not abandoning my art but it is exploring me as an artist and my life as I am creating it right now. and if you think, but I am not an artist look around you at your life and see what you have created. Even the fact that we are here and have existence is a huge act of sorcery. Now if we could only stop taking it for granted and worrying about the little stuff (whats that quote.. don´t stress the little stuff.. and remember its all little stuff)

I finally got pictures of the beautiful spider outside our house. I had thought she had made her egg sac and died but no. Yesterday I saw her legs sticking out from behind the brick and then looking closer her black shiny body. You can just see a shade of red on her belly (she is hanging upside down) from the hourglass mark. She is a BIG spider. Not as big as those hairy wolf spiders but large enough and more threatening looking.

One of her babies and an egg sac. There have been two egg sacs that have hatched but apparently they eat each other and she eats them so they are lucky to survive.

as one more picture of the valleys from around here. I have sooooo many cloud and sunset pictures. This one is from early in the morning when the clouds haven´t lifted yet. Wonderful looking from the outside and grey and misty from the inside.

united we dance

my new threadless design. From a brief about democracy. Its in the running at the moment so you can vote for it!!!!!

I figured a worldful of happy people all dancing. That would be great, wouldn´t it?

also photos from Naica which are caves here in Chihuahua. They are huge crystal caves so far underground you need to bring oxygen with you to breathe.

I would love to go.

I have been workng the past few days and now can go back to my sewing machine. looking forward to some days just sewing. i am finishing one at the moment.

x clio