Blogroll

He Stole my Laptop

| Mairead

 

1

(The gift)

I was in a cafe in Dublin today. I ordered my tea (giving coffee a wide berth for a while) and noticed the cashier wasn’t giving me her full attention. Her eyes had drifted from my face to something behind me. Then I heard the words “he stole my laptop“. We were both looking behind me now.

3

(Last summer’s rose)

At a tall young man making his way to the front door with three young women in hot pursuit… and the manager…. but no laptop.  Sometimes it’s hard to be precise in the excitement of the moment…. The young man slipped through the door, he didn’t have a laptop.

2

(Raindrops)

When he was gone the words were, “he stole my laptop, but I got it back” and although five people saw the man all we remembered were his clothes, “bright yellow” and a faint sense of excitement or panic. Ours? His? Which pieces are real in our memories? Which pieces do we make up, leave out or change….. to fit the jigsaw of confusion? Our minds want a story with a beginning, middle and end. Not the most useful story, not the true story, not the easy story…. but any story and if it has drama, all the better.

Fool your mind – make up a new story, Mairead.

Happy Pancake

| Mairead

1

(Air bubbles in batter…. essential)

I love pancakes! I love making them and I love eating them. They definitely go on my lovely life list and my list of things I love. Today as I write it’s Pancake Tuesday. In many ways Pancake Tuesday is like a little Christmas. A day for eating all the nice stuff because tomorrow we fast. Or at least that’s how I think it used to be, but no one fasts now. So why is Pancake Tuesday still so great?

3

(Cracked eggs…. imperative)

When it’s possible to have anything you want it’s very hard to decide what you really want. When you have no choice and you can’t get what you want and there’s probably no possibility of ever getting it… then it’s much easier to decide what you want….

2

(Pancake…. perfect)

When Pancake Tuesday was the last day for forty days that you could eat something sweet, that tends to focus the mind… on something sweet. So maybe if you’re having difficulty choosing what you want, it might be useful to go on a decision fast… for forty days (or forty hours or maybe forty minutes). And notice where your focus lands.

You have no choices…. now what are you thinking about? Mairead.

Make Friends with your Obstacles!

| Mairead

1

(Bookshop with very old first editions)

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin….

But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

– Alfred Souza.

2

(Different bookshop… first editions too but not so old…)

Isn’t that interesting? You know, I am sometimes stopped in my tracks with a great creative idea or plan by the thought of the obstacles. “What about the …?” “I have no…” “but no one would….” Emotionally whacking my creativity over the head. What if I considered the obstacles part of life, of creativity, a normal part of it? Then instead of whacking the creativity, obstacles would be encouraging it…. (Because it does seem odd that creative thought would ever be treated in a cruel way.)

3

(I’m making buttons)

So… life and creativity can be lived even if there are obstacles. In fact the obstacles may be a helpful tool that increases determination and creative solution solving! So the question now is… What would you do if you knew that obstacles were a very useful component of your life?

What’s your obstacle today? Mairead.

Lovely space

| Mairead

2

(Watercolour paper with acrylic paint)

A couple of weeks ago I emptied and moved the bookcases from the kitchen. This was a big job but thrilling! Moving furniture around has always felt like going on holidays to me.That’s because when I was little, Maureen, who took care of my brother and me while our mother worked used to regularly rearrange the furniture in our bedrooms as a treat. When I came back to my newly arranged bedroom it was like I was in a new place and I could pretend to be whoever I wanted to be.

1

(Huge tube of white paint)

Now the kitchen has a very spacious feel, there’s even an echo. I had forgotten how much I love space. And there’s more room for my arts and crafts stuff. Having it to hand means I’m getting more hands-on crafting time. Nothing too complicated. But I’m noticing some things, things I love. Like drawing a brush and some paint across paper. There’s a different feel depending on the brush, the amount of paint, the thickness of the paper, even the colour of the paint.

3

(Pretty colours)

Makes me think it’s the little things that make life lovely. A purring cat, a new tube of white paint, smiling baby photos, buttons (I love buttons), blue in the sky and the sea, green moss. Might be a nice idea to list all the little things that make your life lovely.

No harm to remind yourself how lovely your life really is, Mairead.

Quick Fix

| Mairead

1

(The tablecloth in happier times…)

For a while now there’s been a stain on the kitchen tablecloth. It’s one of those plastic coated table cloths that just need a wipe and they’re clean. Unless….you’ve spilled some glue on it. The glue had dried before I wiped, so it didn’t wipe off. Then at the weekend I remembered how nail varnish remover is excellent at removing glue. Well, I remembered it removes glue from glass and I figured it would work the same for plastic……

2

(Cafe in Paris… they probably have nice tablecloths in there)

Turns out it doesn’t work so well for plastic. No. Now it looks much worse… the nail varnish remover seems to have removed some of the colour and some of the plastic too. Maybe a strategically placed plate will solve the problem? Or maybe if I let the cat sit on the table, that might work. Or I could stick a photograph of the tablecloth over the messy bit.

Maybe I’ll just get another tablecloth.

Sometimes it’s just not possible to fix things, Mairead.

Chess and Happinness

| Mairead

1

(Isn’t cabbage beautiful?)

I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping over the last week – sinus headaches. And when I was not sleeping I was watching more documentaries. One about how the FBI were tapping John Lennon’s phone because he was writing peace songs and complaining about the war in Vietnam. Another was about the world chess champion Bobby Fisher. While John Lennon’s story ended in assassination (not by the FBI…. well, I don’t think so….) Bobby’s story was even sadder.

2

(Sometimes we miss the beautiful stuff…)

Bobby Fisher learned to play chess at the age of six, he said he became serious about playing when he was seven. He was incredibly smart and a genius at chess. In the early 1970’s when Russia was still the big baddie he had an opportunity to play against the Russian champion. In Russia chess was a big deal and champions were treated very well. In America chess wasn’t such a big deal but the possibility of beating Russia at any game was a big deal.

The battle was set to take place in Iceland and might take two months to play out. There was a lot of pressure on Bobby and he wash’t coping very well. He nearly didn’t go to Iceland and when he did he nearly didn’t play. He complained about noise and cameras and privacy. In the end he won…. and that was the end of his privacy and possibly his sanity.

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(… right in front of our eyes…)

In the documentary we see him years later, a very angry old man with lots of paranoid theories. He was given asylum by Iceland in 2001 when his own country wanted to throw him in jail.

Being smart doesn’t always make you happy, Mairead.

Be careful of what you don’t wish for….

| Mairead

1

(Callum and Amy)

Ok in case I’ve never told you this….. if you don’t want something, (i.e. I don’t want to loose my kite, my keys, my kids) it is imperative that you stop telling yourself and others what you don’t want. Instead, tell yourself (and others) what you do want (I want to keep my kite, always know where my keys are and keep an eye on my kids, or whatever.) I say it a lot to others….. but I must have forgotten to say it to myself….

Aaron

(This is Aaron… see his cute dimple?)

Only two weeks ago I was telling our accountant my biggest fear about doing the accounts. (I’ll mention it for the last time here just so you can learn from my mistakes but I’ll be whispering it.) My biggest fear was that I’d do something wrong with the calculation of taxes and then “they” (= undefined government body associated with taxes) would come to my house and look at my figures and I would go to jail and have to pay a huge fine and owe money to “them” for the rest of my life. In other words I was saying, I don’t want them to come to my house, I don’t want to make mistakes, I don’t want to go to jail, I don’t want to be in debt for the rest of my life.” Oops.

Calum s Picture

(Callum’s art)

This morning in the post we got a letter from one of those government bodies….. Yes! Someone is coming to our house next week to look at our figures……..

Right so… I want all my figures to be correct and the nice woman to tell me it’s all good, Mairead.

The European Monetary Crisis….

| Mairead

1

(A pony and trap wouldn’t look out of place on this lane)

It will be my mother-in-law’s birthday on Wednesday so we went to Cork for a chat at the weekend. While we were there we also chatted with Denis’ aunt, Ita. Ita doesn’t usually tell us her birthday number and if she did I wouldn’t be allowed to share it here. She was telling us about when she was young, she lived on the farm next door to where Denis grew up and where my mother-in-law still lives. The family farm is gone now, the surrounding fields owned by different families.

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(An old, old post box…. can you see the crown?)

It took us about three and a half hours to drive by car from Greystones to Cork. On the way we listened to a podcast about Mexicans in Alabama and stopped for an americano and a latte. On the way back we filled the car with petrol and stopped at a motorway services to bring the son his favourite….a subway.

When Ita was a child she went to the big town on a pony and trap. When she looked out the kitchen window she could see her Dad ploughing with one of the horses. She helped her mother make butter, she collected the eggs from the hens and when she looked up she could see her home had a tatched roof.

3

(Rocky road… also my favourite treat in Starbucks :])

On the way home we listened to another podcast about the “European monetary crisis”. Not something we would normally be attracted to but this was different. It was created for an American audience who may not be keeping up with the news from Europe. So it included some history and was very easy to understand. It’s possible I now understand the problem, I certainly understand what Bonds are.

The bottom line….. we may have to get a pony and trap, Mairead.

The bread maker

| Mairead

Spelt Bread

(Spelt Bread)

I was watching a documentary about a Buddhist monk who travels around the world going to different retreat centers teaching break making. He told of how, when he was ten, he went to visit his aunt. She baked her own bread. He wondered at the time how it was that everyone seemed to buy the horrible white slices of bread when they could have this beautiful homemade stuff.

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(Through the cafe door…)

He decided there and then that he was going to learn to make bread and teach over people to do the same. So, after the holiday with his aunt he arrived home to his mother and asked her to teach him how to make bread. But…. she told him she was afraid of yeast and didn’t know how.

Eleven years later when he was twenty-one he went to a Zen retreat center. He worked in the kitchens in payment for his food and board and he saw the chefs making bread. He asked if they would teach him. They were more than delighted because to the chefs it was just another chore and here was this young guy willing to do it for them.

2

(I hope there’s no fire – Avoca)

He finally uncovered the secret of bread making and the secret included a way of being in the world that nourished him. Thirty years later he’s still baking bread and teaching others about this nourishment. The seeds of our dreams are in our childhood and if they were not nourished then, it is not too late now. The longing to touch the dough or to play the note or to draw the paint filled brush across the canvas is a calling to yourself.

Listen for the call, Mairead