cliodhna’s wave

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”

I have a picture in my head waiting to be painted.

A woman standing with her feet on the earth and her head in the sky. She holds her heart in one hand and the other points to the stars. The land is flat and ochre and there are mountains in the distance. The land only comes up about a fifth of the picture and then the sky starts so my woman is standing in the sky it looks like. Her head goes all the way up the top of the paper. Her hair flows into the sky and becomes part of it. She looks out of this image with a proud expression, not an ego ‘proud’ but a sure ‘proud’ a sense of herself and her place in this world and her connection to earth and the stars. She is rooted in her own self and nothing can shake that.

Her dress is light blue with butterflies of white and yellow. Her feet are bare and around her neck is a necklace of green jade stones with a carving of the head of a jaguar carved from leopardskin jasper. The night sky swirls and moves and the stars twinkle and shine and the earth has faces that emerge from the dirt and the rocks, some eyes open some still shut but all looking upwards to the sky.

I have taken a break from constantly sketching ideas and drawing pictures to wait to see what comes in its own time. When I have an idea it comes fully formed into my head with only the details left to work out and how best to get across the original idea. It’s a new one for me; normally I am trying to have lots of ideas just in case I need them and I don´t feel good unless I have one in the process of being painted. This way is slower but I will see how it goes and what happens.

One resolution I made on my recent trip was to stop ‘doing’, to stop constantly trying and instead see what happens. Make room for opportunities to come into my life, stand still so they would know where to find me instead of constantly spinning like a top trying to get somewhere not really knowing what I was doing or where I wanted to go but doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

Anyone else care to comment on a picture they have in their heads?

letting go to flow free.. open hands and let the bird fly away, no point in making wishes and then holding them so tightly they smother!

I wish for a gift of clarity

I wish for a gallery to show my work in, to have an exhibition to work towards

I wish for success for my business

I wish to write always from the heart so even if I get it wrong sometimes I have done my best

I wish for a happy life for me and Paul

I wish for a really cool old car to drive around

I wish that my puppy and my cat will get on when they meet.. I anticipate fireworks!

what do you all wish for?

There was once a beautiful woman who wanted nothing more than know love and to love and be loved in return. She wore her best clothes always and make up and surrounded herself with jewels and the finest most expensive objects and love did not come to her. She was cursed.

If any man looked at her with love his heart would turn to stone and he would turn into a statue. She did this to them with her eyes. If she looked in their eyes and saw the love there that was the end. She would have them taken away and put somewhere in her gardens and soon the power of the curse became known and no more suitors came with roses in their hands and love in their eyes.

She lost hope and her wiles became desperate. She would have her picture painted and hung in palaces around the country in the hope of finding her love. She spent longer and longer each day on her toiletry to keep her looks and her beauty but to no avail, she grew older and began to grow ugly.

One evening, just as the sun was setting, a young man arrived at her door. He knocked politely and, when she beckoned him in, entered quietly and kept his face to the floor. He did not look at her. She anyway, did not want him to look at her, she had come to hate herself and believe she was the ugliest foulest creature on this earth. Nothing would love her ever and she had come to accept that bitterly and that knowledge and bitterness turned her evermore inwards and the lines on her face grew deeper and her eyes smaller and pinched.

He said, “I have seen your picture my lady and I thought it sad and lonely and I have an answer to your problem”

She did not believe him and was about to kick him out, angrily she hissed at him “how do you know what my problem is, and how dare you think you can fix it”

He did not move but, still with his face to the floor, said “Please let me try, what have you to lose? Let me try”

She was suspicious but agreed to let him try. He took a small round mirror from his bag and gave it to her. “It is very simple but very hard” he said “It will hurt a lot, are you sure?”

The woman was still suspicious but something in her really wanted to try and so she took the mirror and said “What now?”

“I want you to sit and look at yourself in that mirror until you look at yourself with the love you wish to see from someone else’s eyes” he said

“Easy” she snorted and he said nothing but just smiled at the floor.

“I will be back tomorrow” he said “It will take a little while, be patient and you will know when you get it right” and he left and closed the door softly behind him.

She went and adorned herself with her favourite necklace and earrings, did her hair just the way she liked it, she used rouge and eyeshadow and blusher and lipstick and when she felt she was ready she sat down and held the mirror up in front of her eyes.

At first nothing happened, she began to get bored and her arm began to ache, she looked at herself and looked at herself and she looked at her hair and her eyeshadow and her lipstick and her jewels and she thought how good she still looked despite her age and her lines around her mouth.

Then she began to see imperfections, this line too deep, this line too long, her mouth thin and bitter, her teeth yellow and that gap that she always tried to hide with what she always thought was a winsome sideways smile. Her eyes were too narrow and deep-set, the eye shadow only served to accentuate their positioning. She began to look at her make-up as ridiculous, who was she to try to beautify herself? It made her look like a doll or a clown. She put the mirror down and thought “this is stupid, I have never thought like this before, why am I doing this” and she went to get up but instead something made her sit down and she found herself looking at the mirror again. She looked so ugly! Her eyes like black holes with all the eyeliner, her mouth a hideous dark purple colour that stained her teeth, her nose too pointy, her skin pasty and caked with the paste she used to make herself fashionably pale. She remembered her skin when she was a child, how brown and smooth and clear it had been.

She got up and went upstairs and removed all her make-up and jewels and undid her hair and washed it. She washed her face completely clean and went downstairs again where the mirror was waiting for her. She sat down and again lifted the mirror to look at herself, this time with a little trepidation as to what was waiting for her. She sat and looked again and this time saw herself as old and pasty and wrinkly and bitter and lonely and she started to cry that no-one would ever love her. She had been living a lie all these years, how everyone must have laughed at her; seeing her look for love when she was so plainly ugly and desperate and unlovable. She wept and wept and she said to herself, “I will never leave this house again, I will stay hidden till I die, it is my fault all those young men are dead, they looked at me and I was so ugly they turned to stone in fright, I was selfish”

She cried for a while and then she began to get angry. It was not her fault the men had come looking to her for love. It was not her fault their hearts had turned to stone and they had become statues still adorning her garden. How stupid their faces looked, with their puppy dog eyes gazing at nothing adoringly, their hands outstretched that once held flowers or a gift for her. So much hope. Some had the beginnings of fear in their eyes where they realized what was happening to them but most were too stupid she thought. Stupid men. That was her stupidity, she thought, that she wanted to find love in the first place. Well, never again! She hurled the mirror in the ground where it smashed and she went round the house looking for other mirrors to break. Soon all of her mirrors lay in shards on the ground and she had to be careful where she walked so as not to cut herself. She sat down feeling pleased with herself. When that young man came back with his eyes to the floor she would give him a piece of her mind, how dare he come and upset her like that!

She sat there for a while lost in thought and then a great emptiness opened inside her and she felt she was looking into an abyss of nothingness. All her clothes and jewelry and hard walls and make-up and opinions could not protect her from that abyss and she felt herself fall into the darkness, a nothing, a spark of light extinguished by the oppressive blackness. She began to cry once more. I am nothing she thought; it is only me and nobody else to help me. She felt sorry for herself, she had been abandoned by the world and forgotten and rejected by it and it hurt her in every cell of her body to think that she was not worth the slightest bit of attention from the universe. I failed, she thought, I am a failure.

She lay on the floor looking out the window at the stars in the night sky. She began to feel something else strange to her, something she had never felt before in her life. She began to feel truly alone, but not in a bad way, she realized she was enjoying this sensation. Nobody else was here; she did not have to ‘be’ anything, not pretty or clever or dressed in the right clothes or, horrors, that anyone should see her without her make-up and jewels and with her hair done correctly. She felt peace, she thought, I can look after myself, I have been searching for someone else to look after me for so long, maybe I just have to look after myself from now on and not need anyone else in my life. She sniffed again, she could feel the tears of self pity starting, no-one would love her, but that was ok, she would love herself. She sat up and picked up a shard of mirror that lay close by and looked in it. And how strange, she thought, that a piece of a mirror shows the same thing as a whole mirror, maybe it is the same for us, that one person reflects the same as the whole thing, that we are all just shards of mirrors broken up into pieces yet we still reflect the whole. She began to see herself as part of everything and to look at herself differently. She saw her faults and they did not bother her, she saw past her outside into her real self and she cried for all the years she had spent avoiding herself. She whispered ‘I love you’ and smiled at her reflection, I will never again turn a heart to stone she thought.

But thinking this thought, her mind became fearful and doubt crept in, how can I love myself after all those years of turning hearts to stone, think of the harm I have inflicted, they must hate me!

Her fear came to the defense and with the same power she had used to turn to stone the hearts of the young men who had looked at her with love it used the mirror to turn her heart to stone and her last thought was it was too late, she would never know love, and love someone and be loved in return.

The young man came back the next morning. He did not knock, as if he knew what he would find. He stepped over the shards of broken glass and came across the statue of the woman lying on the floor with a piece of glass still in her hand, still staring that direction with one tear frozen on her cheek. He smiled gently and taking a small hammer from his pocket he took careful aim and hit the statue hard, once, over the heart. It cracked and the cracks spread and spread until the body was covered in a fine layer of cracks. He stood then and went to the garden and took a bowl of water from the fountain and carried it back inside. He stood over the body and sprinkled a little at a time over her until she was wet from head to foot. Then he leant down and whispered in her ear “come back”

She sat up in a shock. She was wet and covered in mud but alive and happy and feeling lighter than she ever had before in her life. She laughed and the young man in front of her looked at her straight in the eyes and laughed back. She had a moment of fear that he would become hard and still like all the others but it passed and he didn’t and she stared in wonderment at him

‘thank you’ she said,

he shook his head ‘I didn’t do anything, I saw your picture and thought you were beautiful but I had heard all the stories and I did not want to be turned to stone like the others, you had to break the curse, you and nobody else”

He took her to a mirror and there she saw herself young again, clear skinned and clear eyed and smiling, happy and free. She cried a tear of joy at the feeling of release it gave her.

He took her out the back and she freed the statues out the back of her garden and apologized to each one in turn. Then she turned to her new found friend and said “What now?”

He smiled “Now is just the beginning” he said

A girl sits on a stone on the sea shore, lonely for her friend who moved away. She sits and remembers and feels very alone. The sea is grey and the waves are endless and there is a chill on the air that makes her shiver. She makes up a story about a sea creature, the spirit of this place who also has lost a friend. This friend left the sea shore and went on search of where he belonged in the world. The sea has no answers, only shifting moods of colour and tide.

She tries to write the story to avoid the ache in her own heart and she can write endless reams of dream prose, of sea grays and blues and pangs of loss and loneliness and all from the perspective of the creature left behind who cannot leave the shore and must sit and wait endlessly for the friends return.

The creature bemoans the fact that she had ever met this ‘other’ because before that she had no memories. She thinks she might have been happy. She remembers light and darkness and water and wind and movement of crabs and anemones back and forth across the shore but no more than that. She remembers warmth and cold and the bright sun and the silver moon that changed shape as the sea changed shape and the waters inside her also were pulled back and forth.

The first real day the creature remembers in full, as a whole day, from dawn to dusk with awakenings in-between was the day the ‘other was washed up on the shore and opened its eyes and looked straight at her.

Here the girl becomes stuck and cannot go any further. She cannot imagine what these two would say to each other. Maybe she does not want to imagine. It would make too real what she has just lost and so she reads and rereads what she has already written and she skips to write the end where the ‘other’ has gone again and she is back with her creature on the sea shore mourning its loss and now awake and conscious of her loneliness.

The other is made of what people have thrown into the sea and brought to life by all the unanswered unfulfilled dreams that the sea holds for us until we are ready to receive them. The creature is the soul of the sea and can’t understand why the other would need to go in search of something that was already here.

That was then and this is now and the girl healed her heart and resolved her loss and found what she was looking for. The moon made her a gift of a silver heart, a little battered but still whole, the sun made her a gift of wisdom, the wind gave her a push out into the world and the world gave her a true friend to share her life with. Now maybe the story can be written from both sides and brought to an end. x.

A story about a woman finding her heart

A story about a dog with one eye and a curly tail and one white spot on it’s back

A story about a life

A story about a mayfly that has one day to live, it watches the day getting brighter and brighter then darker and darker and then over

A story about water, deep and clear with frogs in it and dragonflies that are bright and purple and orange and yellow. The water is a cool shaded place in the heat of the sun.

A story about a boy who loses his parents

A story about a child with a rocking horse that comes alive

A story about me

A story about the end of the world

A story about the beginning of the world

A story about the morning after an intensely emotional night. Dawn is relief

A story about a man who can’t see his own life clearly

A story about a woman who can only see her life and nobody else’s

A story about a woman who can’t stop crying

A story about a path that is uphill. The day is hot and the hill is steep. Nobody is coming to help

A story about a dragon in a dream in a book that can’t be opened until the right time is here and the right sound is made

A story about a sound made at the beginning of the universe that will continue till the end of time

A story about a story that never ends

A story about a song that the stars sing, that my heart sings and I cannot hear it until I open my ears

A story about ears, the wind, the sound of crickets, of a cats howl, of a dogs bark, of a city where the streets make music

A story of seeing reflections in water. Calm still water, the reflection is in front of me but I have to see it as reflection and see past it.

A story about how we are all connected in time and space

A story about time and space being an illusion, how we are all light and eternal beings fluidly shifting from one form to another, from one existence to another.

A story about remembering. Seeing time as a deep pool of water rather than a straight line we travel on. Seeing our continuous existence.

A story about learning how to let go.

A story about a black widow spider and a mouse in the kitchen and a dead swallow chick in it’s nest.

A story about death, about diving in, about dreams and a cat called Xoconostle.

A story about my dream with the two cats I had to choose between. One friendly and social and the other smoke grey and hardly visible and spitting fury and in defense. The fact that I knew I should pick the social one but really I admired the energy of the other, its fierceness and unwillingness to obey.

A story about love and the light that comes from the sun that gives us life and energy and is our connection to the unknowable.

A story about the unknowable.

http://www.cyberthing.net/video-play.php?id=89

a funny short animation I found….

I have been self exploring lately, always a good thing to do and always there are some gems waiting to be discovered in the knot of my tangledom.

Paul asked me to write him a few lines about the workshop I had done and I was thinking about what to write and then I thought hey i could write a post and then tell him to read it! (hi gorgeous..x)

The weekend workshop was called the Language of Love and so people arrive maybe expecting how to make their relationship better with their partners but end up looking at their relationship with themselves. How can I love someone else if I don’t love myself? or if I am working from fear and a need to keep men happy how can I truly be myself in a relationship. This is the stuff we looked at.. ourselves. The beloved inside that so often gets silenced and ignored to try to control our partner and change him instead of just loving and being happy.

Women sometimes keep themselves small so men will stick around. I know I have done this and I remember realising I do this, stay in a place of needing help or not truly expressing myself just in case I end up on my own with nobody to love me. boo hoo poor little cliodhna .

It is important for me to express myself for me and express myself with my partner, I am too used to keeping secrets, and not even big secrets but just things I don’t want to admit to myself and so definitely don’t want to admit to anyone else, especially not a man I am having a relationship with. I might lose control and he will see me as weak and not want to be with me. But the thing is every time I push myself to talk and be really open it actually brings us closer together. Maybe I am slow learner and I have run away from commitment in the past but its a really nice discovery, oh look I can actually talk about this and it makes it better.

What else did I get from the weekend, a wonderful connection to me that I had been struggling to find and a sight of the wonderfulness of everything. we walk around in our boxes and thats all they are, a thin layer of cardboard between us and the hugeness and marvelousness of the world. that beetle song.. all you need is love.. true and thats all there is too but we create our worlds out of it and construct our shapes to live in and all it really is is light/love/energy we can make anything we want out of.

I am taxing my car tomorrow so no more excuses and this is another place in my life where I have let other people be in charge and didn’t take responsibility for my life. Fear of the future ‘what if’ , fear of being truly in power of my own life. No more! I am trying to think of a name for the car, I think she is a she, she is a gusty she with a rumble in her voice I like.

So I hope this is a good few lines for Paul. I push him quite a lot I think, but I think he can handle it. He gets a nervous look on his face when I say I need to talk, like he’s in trouble, and then a look of relief when he sees I just need to vent. Hey, maybe I can persuade him to write a post about it! What do you think Paul? huh? huh? x

Here is a story to keep you all entertained for a while my best beloveds…

How the Whale got his Throat,

Ruyard Kipling

HOW THE WHALE GOT HIS THROAT

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a
Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish,
and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the
skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the
really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in
all the sea he ate with his mouth–so! Till at last there was
only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small
‘Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear,
so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his
tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And the small ‘Stute Fish said in a
small ’stute voice, ‘Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever
tasted Man?’

‘No,’ said the Whale. ‘What is it like?’

‘Nice,’ said the small ‘Stute Fish. ‘Nice but nubbly.’

‘Then fetch me some,’ said the Whale, and he made the sea froth
up with his tail.

‘One at a time is enough,’ said the ‘Stute Fish. ‘If you swim to
latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West (that is magic), you
will find, sitting _on_ a raft, _in_ the middle of the sea, with
nothing on but a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders
(you must _not_ forget the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-
knife, one ship-wrecked Mariner, who, it is only fair to tell you,
is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.’

So the Whale swam and swam to latitude Fifty North, longitude
Forty West, as fast as he could swim, and _on_ a raft, _in_ the
middle of the sea, _with_ nothing to wear except a pair of blue
canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must particularly
remember the suspenders, Best Beloved), _and_ a jack-knife, he
found one single, solitary shipwrecked Mariner, trailing his
toes in the water. (He had his mummy’s leave to paddle, or else
he would never have done it, because he was a man of infinite-
resource-and-sagacity.)

Then the Whale opened his mouth back and back and back till it
nearly touched his tail, and he swallowed the shipwrecked
Mariner, and the raft he was sitting on, and his blue canvas
breeches, and the suspenders (which you _must_ not forget), _and_
the jack-knife–He swallowed them all down into his warm, dark,
inside cup-boards, and then he smacked his lips–so, and turned
round three times on his tail.

But as soon as the Mariner, who was a man of infinite-resource-
and-sagacity, found himself truly inside the Whale’s warm, dark,
inside cup-boards, he stumped and he jumped and he thumped and
he bumped, and he pranced and he danced, and he banged and he
clanged, and he hit and he bit, and he leaped and he creeped, and
he prowled and he howled, and he hopped and he dropped, and he
cried and he sighed, and he crawled and he bawled, and he stepped
and he lepped, and he danced hornpipes where he shouldn’t, and
the Whale felt most unhappy indeed. (_Have_ you forgotten the
suspenders?)

So he said to the ‘Stute Fish, ‘This man is very nubbly, and
besides he is making me hiccough. What shall I do?’

‘Tell him to come out,’ said the ‘Stute Fish.

So the Whale called down his own throat to the shipwrecked
Mariner, ‘Come out and behave yourself. I’ve got the hiccoughs.’

‘Nay, nay!’ said the Mariner. ‘Not so, but far otherwise. Take
me to my natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion, and I’ll
think about it.’ And he began to dance more than ever.

‘You had better take him home,’ said the ‘Stute Fish to the
Whale. ‘I ought to have warned you that he is a man of
infinite-resource-and-sagacity.’

So the Whale swam and swam and swam, with both flippers and his
tail, as hard as he could for the hiccoughs; and at last he saw
the Mariner’s natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion, and
he rushed half-way up the beach, and opened his mouth wide and
wide and wide, and said, ‘Change here for Winchester, Ashuelot,
Nashua, Keene, and stations on the _Fitch_burg Road;’ and just as
he said ‘Fitch’ the Mariner walked out of his mouth. But while
the Whale had been swimming, the Mariner, who was indeed a person
of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, had taken his jack-knife and
cut up the raft into a little square grating all running criss-
cross, and he had tied it firm with his suspenders (_now_, you
know why you were not to forget the suspenders!), and he dragged
that grating good and tight into the Whale’s throat, and there
it stuck! Then he recited the following _Sloka_, which, as you
have not heard it, I will now proceed to relate–

By means of a grating
I have stopped your ating.

For the Mariner he was also an Hi-ber-ni-an. And he stepped out
on the shingle, and went home to his mother, who had given him
leave to trail his toes in the water; and he married and lived
happily ever afterward. So did the Whale. But from that day on,
the grating in his throat, which he could neither cough up nor
swallow down, prevented him eating anything except very, very
small fish; and that is the reason why whales nowadays never eat
men or boys or little girls.

The small ‘Stute Fish went and hid himself in the mud under the
Door-sills of the Equator. He was afraid that the Whale might be
angry with him.

The Sailor took the jack-knife home. He was wearing the blue
canvas breeches when he walked out on the shingle. The suspenders
were left behind, you see, to tie the grating with; and that is
the end of _that_ tale.

WHEN the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside;
When the ship goes _wop_ (with a wiggle between)
And the steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And the trunks begin to slide;
When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,
And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,
And you aren’t waked or washed or dressed,
Why, then you will know (if you haven’t guessed)
You’re ‘Fifty North and Forty West!’

they are honestly.. well ok, in the top five I have seen in my short time on this earth.

The first one I saw at an animation shorts festival a few years ago and have been wanting to see it again but didn’t know the name or the makers. Its the story of the world told through the eyes of two rocks sitting on a hill watching the times pass by. here is the link to the animation. You can make it into full screen.

Das Rad

The second one I discovered on a the telly one night and tells the story of the dog who didn’t want to be a dog and has the help of a gecko to realise his dream. This has minor cult status amongst my family and some friends. By irish film maker Rory Bresnihan.

Guy’s Dog

ok, go watch and enjoy.