clearbluecup

today i went to the beach and got a sunburn. SO GOOD.

after our fantastic day at barley cove beach last weekend, i was so blissed out by the warmth and vitamin D that i didn't think to bring sunscreen with me to Dublin. after all, this is Dublin. i didn't forget my raincoat or umbrella.

it turned out that marcie and i have incredible luck when it comes to the irish weather, and we got the most perfect, cloudless day for the mini marathon. 20 degrees celcius and not a cloud in the sky. which made for a lovely run, but now i've got lobster shouders! i obviously have not learned my lesson about fair skin, and make this mistake nearly every summer. by the time the sun makes his appearance i am dying for a bit of exposure and always get burned the first couple of times i'm in the sun.

not that i'm complaining though. really!

today we took a shuttlebus to newgrange, a neolithic passage tomb that dates back to 3000 BC. very impressive - i'm amazed that i had never been there despite living in the country for three years now. the stones that were used to create the passage and the foundation of the mound itself weighed anything from one to fifteen tonnes, and they were all such regular shapes and sizes. when you keep in mind that this was created by stone age people, who didn't have the wheel, metal tools or horses, the only reasonable conclusion is that modern people from the future created a time machine and went back to teach them how to quarry rock and create vaulted ceilings that have kept the main chamber free of damp for five thousand years in one of the rainiest countries in the world. not to mention teaching them how to calculate the exact elevation required to send a beam of light on the morning of the winter solstice through an opening above the doorway of the passage into the main chamber, illuminating the room on only five days each year.

incredible. and very humbling.

today i woke up at 8:30am to find a misty sky and a hungry cat. the sun was quickly burning through the mist when i walked down to the shop to buy some milk and bananas. when i was mowing the lawn at 10:30am, the sun was hot on my arms and face. i stopped to reapply sunscreen frequently.

when i am at home alone i don't usually play music, at least not during the day. so i worked in the garden, carried laundry to and from the washing machine, cleaned the bathroom and read my book in silence. i checked the internet infrequently. i didn't eat too much chocolate. i cooked a sensible dinner.

on this plain canvas danced a constant gyrating song, themes appearing and dissapearing, conclusions arrived at and lost again. my mouth was silent but this only made the dance more creative and colourful, limbs spiralling through the air with fervour, ribbons and bells trailing behind. my hands pulled weeds from the garden of their own accord. my dancer was busy elsewhere. words and phrases echoed in my mind.

in this stillness, when i have withdrawn from the world of smalltalk and social routines, when my attentions are not being demanded but i give them as gifts to the world around me, i feel my creative force running strong inside me. a powerful underground river, surging in the dark subterranean space below the ground my feet stand upon. i know it's there all the time, even when i am in meetings with management types. in the deepest sleep you are just as present as when you are awake. the essential you is. everything else is just flashing lights and coloured sequins - which are pretty and entertaining, but ultimately a distraction.

i feel myself pulled in so many conflicting directions right now. babies? travel? career? academia? will i just keep on going in the same direction for another year until tom is finished, then embark on whatever path i want to follow at that stage? most likely travel then babies. or will i drop out of society and become an academic, taking courses through athabasca and studying at home by myself? or will i quit my job and start writing full time? i have no fixed goal in mind, no concrete and well-defined dream of working towards writing on a newspaper or the next great novel. but sometimes these things are like starting down a path in the dark, because the cabin you were staying in was rotting and falling down around you. or not even as drastic as that, maybe simply because you wanted to be actively exploring the world instead of sitting inside in that cabin.

if i were to start down that path in the dark, i would hope that i like the direction i am heading in when the dawn breaks. if not, i guess i could just change direction. as long as i wasn't about to starve to death, which is pretty unlikely. i might be cold and sore, and might not have as many new clothes as i have now, but probably not starving.

i feel like i'm teetering on the edge of something. i feel like i've got a splinter in my thumb that is just below the surface of my skin, just out of the tweezer's reach. i feel like a scared child in an amusement park. i could run off and ride the roller coaster or the zipper, but i'm afraid and what if i get flipped upside down and all the change falls out of my pockets? where will i put my candy floss? and what will i do when the ride ends and i don't have any change or candy floss any longer? what if it isn't actually a ride but a passage to narnia, and i never return to my classmates? i'm not afraid of a journey to narnia, but I am afraid of throwing up on myself and ending up without any pocket money. which seems rather backwards, now that i see it written out. puke can always be washed away and money can be earned again, but i couldn't necessarily return from narnia once i've gone there.

so. safe but boring cabin? or frightening but potentially world-expanding path in the dark woods?

while i decide, here are some links to entertain you:

LIGHTHEARTED: when crafting goes wrong

MADE ME THINK: a "recovering homosexual" minister. my first instinct was "this is lame", but i kept reading a little longer and got past the guy's writing style (italicised and bracketed notes to self are a little annoying but i guess it gives his blog that genuine diary feel), and then i read this woman's letter to the world and thought that she had a few things bang on. she used to be a lesbian, she's got a shaved head, and the members of her church are giving her a hard time. she truly believes that Jesus is her saviour and yet she nearly left the church due to how she was being treated. she says:

As I step back from my own painful experience within the church and take in the panoramic view of the Christian churches as a whole I see the stark reality that we have all come to know: history repeats itself. Our Christian churches have come full circle with the times of Christ and it appears that we are reenacting the roles of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes of that time.

At the time of Christ’s ministry, he squared off against these “groups”. His disagreement with them was not about the written law or its strict interpretation. His disagreement with them was about the very nature of God. More importantly, His disagreement with them was about their failure to acknowledge the sovereignty and power of God.

The people of Christ’s day firmly believed in God, but somewhere along the line, they stopped trusting that God was in fact in control and they took upon themselves the role of playing God.

indeed. i'm impressed by her faith and attitude, given all that she has been through.

MADE ME LAUGH AND FEEL SAD AT THE SAME TIME: "How could my heart not melt? Poor little disease carrier, I wept."

still thinking about narnia... will keep you all posted.

here's the last few photos, taken while we were at Barley Cove beach, walking around Dublin and at Newgrange.

also, guess what we discovered?

as an update on my indecisiveness and reluctance to leave this lovely bubble that is summer holidays, i've decided to postpone narnia for another little while. several factors were involved in this decision:

1) practicality. it's good to be earning a regular paycheque.

2) new developments at work. a colleague called me at home to let me know yesterday. this means a better situation for me when i get back.

3) potential for negotiation. i'm trying to learn how to be less "all or nothing" and more "let's see what we can work out".

4) a realisation that if i stayed home now, i would probably end up surfing the internet and doing laundry all day, especially if i didn't have a concrete goal or plan to work towards. doing this would probably make me feel unproductive, then worthless and depressed. i don't need that.

so, two more days then back into the rat race. how much zen can one possibly fit into two days? i'm not sure, but i think it is correlated with the amount of watercolour painting and flower arranging done in those days.

wow, i am so not used to working ALL DAY. like from very early to dinnertime. there's no time for anything but work and a very small bit of chilling in the evening. I'd forgotten about this. yesterday at about 3:45 i was working away and just had to stop and examine the spelling of the word "scheduled". After typing "scheduled" many times, and then typing "re-scheduled" a few more, everything lost all meaning and my whole training course became a crazy mashup of letters. I felt a bit faint and had to go to the kitchen for a cup of tea. it was a close call.

yesterday i got my first package from Athabasca, which included a student handbook, various forms, pamphlets, program charts and a writing guide. suddenly it's sinking in: I'm becoming a student again. I will be spending my time reading books for assignments and writing papers and preparing for exams. will I be ready? will I be able to discipline myself without regular classes to attend and classmates to debate with? I think so. i hope so. i'm encouraged by the burst of excitement i felt when i opened the box and discovered a book inside. i'm such a geek.

last night we called by to maura & gavin's for dinner and when we got back late at night I heard a strange mewing as I was opening the front door. I looked around me, checked behind the potted plants, and couldn't see the cat. "nevermind, i'm sure it's just an auditory hallucination" i said to myself. "nothing to be worried about." then i heard it again, this time much louder. and looked up. to find louis on the roof above my head. there was a quick flustered panic, a chair was produced, and after a short bit of hand wringing and reaching up while calling "louis louis louis!!!" the cat calmly paced back and forth, stared at me like I was humiliating him in front of all his friends, and proceeded to hop off the edge of the roof onto the garage, then onto the fence and down to the ground. he had sauntered into the house and started eating his dinner before i had climbed down off the chair. never underestimate your cat.

tomorrow i'm heading down to kinsale for fuelling the future, an alternative energy conference that is being held over the weekend. i don't know anyone else who will be attending, which is a little daunting, but i'm hoping to meet some interesting people and learn more about permaculture and localisation and the role of biodiesel and renewable energy in the peak oil crisis.

and a quick training update: the 10k mini marathon went very well, i had a longish run last weekend of 11k in 1hr 5min, and i got a pair of techy double-layer socks that are the best piece of running gear i've bought since the lululemon sports bra. happy toes all the way. i'm planning to run a half-marathon at the end of september, which gives me lots of time to train and get comfortable with the idea of running for two hours straight.

At the opening of the peak oil conference I attended over the weekend, the host asked everyone to think about all the ways that your life is influenced by oil. Try to identify the ways that you are affected by oil and ask yourself what you would be unable to do if oil was prohibitively expensive, or gone.

By the time I came home I was trying to plan how I would be able to buy a farm with a mountain stream without going seriously into debt in the next five years. why a mountain stream? easy hydroelectricity. i want a veggie patch, with ducks, chickens, cows, and sheep. i want solar water heating and south facing windows. i want to learn how to make soap and spin wool. i want to plant apple trees.

it's hard for me to talk about peak oil without feeling like i'm scaring people. i think i might need to work on my powers of persuasion. Richard Heinberg suggested that one thing we could do when we went away from the conference would be to tell 10 people about peak oil. He said that telling 2 people would make a difference, but most people won't actually listen or believe that peak oil is a reality. By telling 10 you might actually get through to 2.

But if people actually looked at the facts, listened to Colin Campbell speak or learned a little more about geology, they would clearly see that a) oil is a finite resource and b) production tends to peak 40 years after the discovery peak. World oil discoveries peaked in the 1960's. where does that leave us now? right about here:

I'm still processing a lot of what i learned at the conference. there was a good balance of theoretical talks and practical stuff - I learned all about composting and discovered that there was a reason my green bin is full of green fuzz. I've been throwing all kinds of stuff in there without any attention to the balance of nutrients. I learned about permaculture, and listened to the story of a man who built his own cob house, and saw that a lot of people have been concerned about energy usage and sustainability for a long time. In the next 20 years the people who have already been working on creating a sustainable lifestyle will have a serious advantage over those who are completely and utterly dependent on oil for heating, food, employment and transportation.

One of the speakers described the "energy descent" as a return to the NORMAL human lifestyle. that really struck me hard. what do you mean? we're not actually meant to be able to fly across the atlantic ocean in 8 hours? it's unnatural to spend several hours a day commuting across congested cement landscapes? television is bad for children? i shouldn't really be eating apples grown in new zealand while i live in ireland? so many of the sessions were proposing a return to a more agrarian lifestyle centered on local sustainability - grow your own food and get to know your neighbours, because you might need each other soon. This change could be better in many ways than the high-powered civilization cranked on amphetemine that we live in now. The main challenge will be getting through the transition with the things that really matter - love, hope and a few solar panels. call me a crazy hippie, i don't care. i'll be over there looking at a piece of land with a mountain stream.

I am very sad.

June 23 is a traditional midsummer solstice celebration night in Ireland, dating back to pre-christian pagan and celtic times. Large bonfires are built and burned as the sun sets to ward off evil spirits and honor the Goddes Aine, the Irish equivalent of Venus and Aphrodite.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was heading home from work, I noticed an enormous pile of junk piled up in the green space beside a housing estate. It was like everyone who lived in that estate hauled out all the stuff they just couldn't get rid of and didn't want to pay removal fees for - old couches, broken shelves, televisions, building foam. I couldn't figure it out - I didn't know about the tradition and I just thought someone was renovating their house or something.

In the evening, on my way to yoga, my eyes were stinging and burning. Tears, I thought. But then I noticed the smell - horrible acrid smoke was filling the streets. Everywhere it smelled of burning tires and melting plastic. As I balanced in the tree pose, fire engines went wailing by. It felt like a state of emergency.

This morning, I walked past the same place where the pile of junk was yesterday. In it's place was a still-smouldering pile of blackened crap, half-burned furniture frames with the wires still strung between, everything else melted and burned beyond recognition. A few flames still flickered in the center.

Last night I dreamed of electrocution.

knowing others is intelligence;

knowing the self is enlightenment.

conquering others is power;

conquering the self is strength.

know what is enough, and you'll be rich.

persevere, and you'll develop a will.

remain in the center, and you'll always be at home.

die without dying, and you'll endure forever.

i'm sad, but i'm trying to remember the good times, not mourn the loss.

who knows where life goes. my solace is in the cycles of nature: birth and death, summer and winter, and so is joy and suffering.