cliodhna’s wave

the house from the beach

So, by hook or by crook, I am not sure which, I have found myself living in north-west Ireland for the next three months. A stormy, rocky, wave beaten, wind scoured, almost desolate, treeless, sideways landscape it is too. Yesterday, were it not for the rain battering against the french doors into the back garden I could have imagined that the ocean and land had traded places and and the squalls of rain were sea currents and the birds being tossed here and there were fish. the view from my back window the beach down from my house The birds fly backwards, its easier and doesn’t get their feathers ruffled so are we going or what? the beach at the end of the road I went down to look at the waves and crossed the rocks to get nearer. The ocean is a scary heaving beast with a life of its own and a casual disregard for all things small. I would be a pebble, an annoyance, a fly, a speck of dust to it. The waves got closer and sprayed me with sea foam.. I got scared and backed off… a lot… to the safety of the grass. The waves are huge here closer and closer

The rock here has fossils in them. Apparently they are famous for it.

Louis the dog

I have a dog and a cat into the bargain, which stops me missing my own dogs and cat too much (though I still look forward to getting them here) and there is a stove to warm the house. Perfect to make art and relearn my songs on the guitar and dream away the nights as the wind howls outside. There is silence now, but I can hear the waves thundering onto the rocks in the distance and a clock ticking somewhere in the house and the dog sighs as he sleeps. And to top it all of two fields away (to quote Margo) is Ellen’s Pub which has a session every Friday night I will go when I have a few songs mastered and when Paul brings my fiddle to me from the states.

Good Night!

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It has been raining pretty constantly here in Galway and I finally realised yesterday why mexico is so dry. Because all the rain is here in Ireland! I am looking forward to going back to hot dryness now.

It is one thing I have learnt doing this work and seeing myself more and more clearly, that women keep themselves small so that men will love them. We blame the men but really it is us that need to stand up and reclaim our power. No more victims, no more ‘poor me’.

I have also been asking myself why I write this blog. Does it really help what I want to achieve in my life right now? It has been really good for me to do this, public expose of my inner doubts and fears which I have always kept secret but now I need to re-evaluate why I write here and what purpose I want it to serve. I think I will keep it ticking along until I figure it out.

What else, I talked to my mother about doing this work, the Toltec path, which I had never done before, fears of their judgment I suppose which is really my own. Also stuff about how we take on things from our parents and how unsaid emotions go to the person who is saying them and if no one is saying them then they rattle around looking for some sort of a release. I was happy afterwards I talked to her about it but there was also a part of me really worried she was going to be angry, and I could feel myself wanting to run and reassure her.

I need to reassure myself. I cannot change or fix someone else. Old dream, look after everyone else first and give all your energy away so you have nothing left. New Dream, heal yourself first then you will have energy to give to others from love and not from limitation.

So with love, from a surprisingly sunny morning in salthill, galway…..

There once was a prince that lived in a kingdom of shadows and rain. The colours were shiny and bright when the sun shone and the dark and gloomy and grey when it was raining, which was often. He loved it when the sun shone and he thought how amazing it would be if the sun always shone.

He had a cousin who lived in a far away land and so the prince abandoned his kingdom to go and live with his cousin in the land when the sun never stopped shining and when it rained it was a relief and a joy.

This land appeared at him to be barren at first. With so much sun and so little rain there were very few plants and the plants that did grow were tall and prickly or small and stubby and the animals were thin and scrawny from lack of water and at first he missed the greenness and bright colours of his own land. He loved the warmth of the sun though and so he stayed.

He began to look properly at the land where he was, and he realized thought the desert looked empty it was actually full of life. When he looked closer there were subtle colours he had not noticed before, pale greens and purple pinks and slow growing dry lichen covering the rocks and tiny flowers that grew and died in a day and bright red ants and shiny black spiders with hourglasses in warning red on their backs and pale almost clear scorpions that looked as fragile as water but packed a punch in their curved tails. When it rained the desert burst into life and colour and bright green singing frogs emerged from everywhere by magic and the spiny plants gave forth huge flowers.

The next time he went home to his own rainy land he looked at it differently also and he saw all the colours he had not seen before. Colours that were beautiful, not grey and sad like he had thought before. Earth colours and greens and rich colours and dark brown mountain water from the rich peat lands and mosses a foot deep that were cushiony to walk on and when it rained they glistened and shone with life. He realized that these colours were a part of him also, he had grown up with them, they were in his innermost being and in his dreams and he loved them.

He remembered when he was younger not understanding colours, being afraid of them when he painted pictures and not knowing how to use them and being clumsy with them and he realized it was because he didn’t like his own colours and he was trying to use other colours. He had to understand and love his own colours before he could understand them and use them how he wished in his paintings. He began to use these colours and to look around him for inspiration for his colours and he became much happier than he had been before. Now he can be in his own land and love the colours there or be in the land of sun and heat and love the colours there also.

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.

So i was telling the girls in the office yesterday that on certain kinds of rainy days in Ireland we say it’s a ‘soft day’. They thought this hilarious but then they come from a place that when rainy season hits the rains fall with a fierce purpose of inundating the world. Flash floods, instant lakes, life springs from nowhere to frantically grow for three short months. The idea of rain seeping its way downwards is an alien concept. It’s like walking through a cloud I explained. They got that, they live in high mountains so walking through a cloud is a casual occurrence and is walking through a damp grey mist.

I have been thinking about making choices. About the last post I put up and I would have to add that I don’t think a choice can be made until the moment arrives to make it. When that moment is, is of course another choice, but then choices are the only things that are truly ours in this world. How we choose to live our life from moment to moment. In the past I have rehearsed choices and practiced them in my head and ran over all possible scenarios to make sure I would know the right thing to say or do when the moment arrived. Of course when that particular moment did arrive (if ever it did) then it would be completely different to anything I had ever imagined and sometimes I would get it right and sometimes I would get it wrong. I would get it wrong because I was afraid to live in the moment. At that moment I would have been rehearsing another choice somewhere further up the life stream and so still in fear and making choices through fear.

I don’t want to make choices through fear anymore. I don’t want to be so attached to/afraid of the outcome that I am paralyzed in the moment and my head makes me spin in circles. Sometimes the choice is to do nothing and let it all pass by, sometimes it is to step in and grab and hold, and sometimes it is neither and something completely different. The thing is though that the impulse comes from the heart and not the mind; and that I cannot know until the moment arrives to make the choice.

What is at stake is everything. My life is at stake here. My wishes for myself, my path as a soul making its way along life, that is what is at stake. Not possessions or career or relationships or my self-image or my pride. These things in the end of the day are not important and when balanced against self discovery and growing to be the person I can be are small. It is not what I have that is important it is how I live them.

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”

… is a long slow messy process. Once again I am cleaning up piss at 3 in the morning and getting all stupid and baby talky when he actually does it outside.. who’s the good little puppy wuppy!!

I am of the stick their noses in it, shout NO and throw them outside school. As he gets older a slap on the but gets added. It seemed to take ages with Cubo until he quit doing it inside. I tied him beside the bed at night to teach him to ask me if he needed to go out. They don’t like doing it in their sleeping area and he would whine until I woke up and took him outside. I have to start doing that with the puppy but I am afraid Cubo might step on him (which he does frequently and the puppy squeaks, I was joking yesterday that he is Cubo’s squeaky toy). Cubo is like an incredibly clumsy enormous older brother but the puppy has incredibly sharp teeth which he uses on poor ol Cubo. They play and either Cubo is whining or the puppy is squeaking.

His name actually means ’stick’ not ’spade’ Pala is a spade but that ends in ‘a’ so it can’t be a boys name. Well, it could but I actually thought palo meant spade. I get confused sometimes!

We have moved house, away from all the spiders and alacranes living in all the cracks of the brick work and away from the pond and the frogs to the civilisation of tarmac and a shop just a block away. I did see a big Black Widow spider living in a pile of bricks right outside the house. She can stay there.

Scorpion Charm….. catch the scorpion/alacrane in a jar or something with a piece of paper underneath. Take it outside somewhere dry (they like dry places with crawly spaces) and explain very carefully that it has to tell all its friends to stay away from the house. That they will probably get squished if they come in. Then let it go (carefully.. sometimes they get a bit pissed from being caught) step away and leave it alone. Sometimes you have to do it a few times but they get the message and stay away. This works with all insects, bugs, vertebrates, and all sized shaped wonderfully coloured creepy crawly things.

rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

did I mention it was raining?

the rain starts at approx four o clock every day, the roads turn into muddy rivers, muddy rivers occupy any available downward trajectory. Its cold and wet and the thunder and lightning complete the picture.

All the creepy crawlies are coming into the houses to find dryness. Paul got stung by a scorpion. It fell from the ceiling onto his head. He sits up in the darrkness saying ’something just landed on my head’ and then OWW, something stung me, man that stings, $%#@#$, Light goes on and there it is, an alacrane, pale brown, bout an inch and a half long. Two of us sitting in the bed at four in the morning wondering was it the really dangerous kind or not. He was fine after an injection. He also saw a huge centipede in the sink and there are spiders everywhere…..

I finally saw a whole turtle today after days of just heads dissapearing under the water.

A swallow, who has a nest beneath the house, drinking water sitting on a wire.

A wonderfully coloured beetle. I actually thought it was a fake one until I picked it up. There also dung beetles with big horns on their foreheads a beautiful iridesant blue. as long as your thumb.

There are loads of lizards here, tiny small and so fast you rarely see them. This guy was doing a chest stuck out thing and I wondered what he was doing until I caught a glimpse of smaller brown one dissapear beneath a rock and this one after it. So I guess rainy season is courting season for the lizards.

Another picture of Cubo and the newly named Palo. Palo means spade and Cubo is bucket so I have a bucket and spade, perfect for the beach! Actually they both have the mange and I have stuff to inject them with for the next seven days. I tried to do it but the needle looked so big I chickened out. Paul can do it, he has emergency medical training, he has actually done injections in the past. I was feeling slightly guilty about giving Cubo mange by bringing the puppy home but the vet said he had it for longer than I have had the puppy. All the dogs here, or at least some of the scrawny ones that skulk around my house have it.