Almost Samhain

And another long pause... I'm running out of excuses! I guess I'll just have to find my previous blogging rhythm again, that's all. The truth is that I haven't had a lot to do, or any stress - it's just that part of my life seems to have been suspended by my mum's illness. There's no news really, and that's just the thing. It's becoming more and more obvious that she won't recover much at all. My mother is going to require constant care for the rest of her life, and it seems that her mind is affected as well; she's often clear and remembers things very well, but at other times, she seems confused or tells stories of events that never happened.

It's not something I can do much about. My siblings and myself are e-mailing regularly, trying to figure out what is going to happen, but the actual organisation of things falls to those in Germany. What I am left with is a life resembling normality, even happiness, and I feel content and grateful about a lot of things. However, at the same time there is the constant awareness in the back of my mind, like a slight headache that's always present, that someone close to me whom I love very much is sick, and suffering. I don't expect it's going to go away any time soon, and I must learn to go on, keep on living, participating in life - blogging too! - because being in limbo doesn't help mum one bit.

I'm back in work again too, which definitely helps. My company is just wonderful, I love them to bits and I'd give a lot to be able to stay here. Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future there'll only be contract work and pauses in between, and so I'm still looking around for something else as well. It'll all work out for the best, I'm convinced of that, and I have learned to wait if it's necessary. That's quite a biggie for me, seeing as Impatience is something like my middle name!

In the meantime, there's a lot to look forward to. For one thing, it's Samhain tomorrow! It's not one of my favourite sabbats, as it is for many pagans, but I do like the communication with my ancestors - which this year is going to include asking them to watch over my mum and, when her time comes, help lead her onwards into the next world - and the feeling of "Summer's End" (Samhain) and being on the threshold of the dark time of the year. It's the time when the whole autumn/winter thing still has a certain appeal to me, with candlelight and incense. By the new year (I don't see Samhain as the new year but celebrate at the common calendar's new year), I'm usually sick of winter and long for spring so this is the time to enjoy the cosiness of sitting inside with a mug of steaming tea, looking at the grey clouds and the rain through the window and hearing the wind howling around the house.

This year, I'm doing something special too on Samhain: I'm volunteering at the Féile Draíochta tomorrow! Nearly every pagan I know in Ireland is going to be there, and I'm looking forward to hugging them all. It'll be great, talks and workshops and wonderful people, and the best thing is, it happens during the day so in the evening I'll be back home to do my ritual. It's a very important ritual for me this year, for the above mentioned reason, and I will start with my usual walk when I get back on the train. Luckily, the train station is right next to the beach so I won't have to go far!

If I find the time and the energy, I will once again share my ritual here in my blog. I did this when I first started blogging, on Samhain three years ago, but since moving the site those old entries have been lost. Maybe that's a good opportunity to start blogging rituals again, for those who are interested. It's doing me good too, provides a kind of outside perspective on my ritual if I'm expressing it in words to share with the general public. There's a lot of clarity in writing things down.

I'll leave it at that for today! Tia and Mirias say hello. The above picture was taken before they started to moult last week. We're over the millions-of-feathers-everywhere phase by now (I've considered stuffing a pillow with the feathers. Would probably get together an entire bedset with what those two drop during one moult. And that's only slightly exaggerated!) and into the endearing cactus look, with new feathers sprouting and showing their black heads through their white and yellow faces.

Have a magical Samhain!

After A Long Pause For Breath

This is a picture of a rowan tree growing in the grounds around the company I worked for recently. Isn't it gorgeous? I'm glad I remembered to bring the camera as long as the leaves were still mostly green.

Apologies one more time, for the delay in updating. Things had been so intense for so long, I needed to withdraw for a bit, and that's what I did. After returning from Germany, I spent time on my own, took walks, or simply spent entire weekend days gaming online.

The break has done me a world of good! And now I'm beginning to get a little restless, which is a good sign. It means I'm ready for whatever comes next. I'm "between projects" now, meaning that I'm trying to allow things and trust life to bring along my next opportunity, and to not let me be without work for too long. There's a project coming up in the company I worked with on the last project, and they said they'll call me when it comes through. I've also applied and interviewed for a completely different project with a major company, a three-month contract in customer service which sounds very interesting. We will see.

As for my family, I don't know who benefited more from me being in Germany for four days, my parents or me! It felt wonderful to finally be there physically and able to help. I was on my feet all day, and far from being exhausting, it was a tonic. My dad has been holding up great, but he is a "classic" husband and my mum never allowed him near things like the washing and ironing, and so I "ordered" him to give me every piece of clothing he'd worn and proceeded to wash, dry, and iron it all. Then I cleaned the house from top to bottom and had a look at my parents' finances - another domain of my mum's. I explained to dad what has to be taken care of, and he is actually doing that now.

My mum was very weak and slept almost the entire time. When she was awake, she seemed to be clear - she recognised everyone who visited her and answered questions, also remembered my parents' wedding anniversary correctly. I spent hours every day sitting on the side of her bed and holding her hand, getting that physical contact I've been craving. It seemed to be doing her good too; she often squeezed my hand even in her sleep, and when I had to get up for some reason, I saw her grabbing a bit of the covers to "hold on to" until I came back to take her hand again.

In other things she was confused, for example she insisted she could get up when the physiotherapist had tried and failed to even have her sit on the bedside. I actually think that's a rather clever move of life, giving her the impression that she can stand and walk. If she sees in in her head, she has a much higher chance of recovering some movement than otherwise. While I was there, she even moved her left arm a bit; something she doesn't seem to have done again, but it was an encouraging sign.

It wasn't exactly a shock to see her like that at first, I know enough about strokes so I was prepared. But it was still terrible to see my active, capable mum so helpless. She couldn't even swallow at the time, and had to be fed through a tube down her nose into the stomach. In her sleep, she kept tugging out that tube, causing extra work for the nurses who ended up tying her right hand to the bed. I understood completely but still found it horrifying - not to be able to even scratch oneself or do ANYTHING! My greatest relief was when my brother e-mailed last week that mum could now swallow again and got rid of that tube. She's now in rehabilitation and making very very slow progress; there's not much hope that she'll regain much of her mobility but we will have to wait and see. In any case, I feel so much calmer for having seen her!

There's not much else to report, really, other than that my new flat is wonderful and I love it to bits! I never thought I'd be so happy here, I thought of it as a rational solution to save money. Objectively speaking it's nowhere near as beautiful as my old place, but it FEELS right. Tia and Mirias love it too, they fly around the room all the time, chasing each other, and otherwise sit on top of the cage for most of the day. I'd almost forgotten how much they used to be outside when we were in Tipperary, and I'm very glad they are once more. The exercise is doing them very good.

Enjoy autumn, everyone, as we are moving towards the dark time of the year. I'll write again a lot sooner than last time, promise!

Equinox

This picture not only shows the beautiful Killiney beach 15 minutes walk from my new home; to me it also represents the last of the carefree late-summer days before the Equinox came, and with it a great shock in my life. My dear mum, who had just come out of hip surgery with no problems in spite of her general poor health and her 78 years, had a severe stroke and is now in a special unit in hospital requiring constant care. She can hardly speak, is sometimes confused, and can't swallow properly. My dad is completely helpless, he has always relied on mum for everything and she's already been away for several weeks due to the hip surgery.

Now my mum hasn't been well in a long time, and I always knew that something like this might happen. But even though I might have thought I was prepared - in the end, when it does happen it always comes as a shock. I guess it's just not possible to prepare for something like that. I love my mum very much, although we are as different as if we were two different species (well, we are, seeing as I'm a hag, haha!). Perhaps because we're so different, our relationship has always relied very much on physical contact. My mum is a cuddly mum, which is probably one of the reason I turned out to be such a cuddly hag, and I think that what I'll miss most if and when she should pass away, is to just hug her and breathe in her mum-scent, the physical representation of the fact that she is the rock in my life, the one place I could always come to, no matter our differences.

And so when I heard the bad news, my first impulse was to go there and BE there for her, again in the physical sense. With Alan being wonderful and lending me his credit card, I was able to book a flight straightaway, for Thursday. I'll be back Sunday evening and until then, I'll spend lots of time in the hospital with mum and otherwise look after my poor lost dad, cleaning the house and doing the laundry and things like that. A lot is going to change, and we'll have to think about who's going to look after my parents in the long run. My brother and sisters and I have been e-mailing back and forth about that and I'm sure we'll sort something out.

Of course, this news on the day that I had planned my annual eve-of-the-Equinox ritual caused a lot of confusion. I was sad, shocked, and at the same time accepting, knowing that while there is pain, there is no bitterness in what I feel. My mum has lived a long and relatively healthy life until the very last few years, and even then she's always managed to live and look after herself and dad really well. She has achieved what she wanted in this life and has been happy. Now we'll have to make her as comfortable as possible so she can spend her remaining time in peace and dignity. In a way, this is her "harvest" and so it fits in with the time of the year. The year is waning, and so is my mum. It's our turn now, as her children, to show our gratefulness for all we've received from her, and our turn to give.

In that sense, my slightly melancholy autumn feeling has "only" been enhanced, but I was still incapable of doing a proper ritual. I just didn't have the focus and concentration for it. So I've decided that while I'm very much aware of the season and the sabbat, I'm not going to have a formal ritual this time. When I'm in Germany, I might try to find the time one evening to go for my customary autumn walk and collect decorations, maybe even do an impromptu ritual. I shall see.

That was my rather sad update; I have to say though that before I got the news of my mum's stroke, I was very happy. The last week has been a challenge, with work and also moving my things to the new place, but I managed and on Saturday finally took the rest of my things as well as the budgies. Tia and Mirias were real troopers as always, and this time they also seemed to fall in love with the new flat right away. I'm so relieved that they are already out of the cage and flying around! The smaller room with lower ceilings seems to suit them. Maybe the spacious living room in the Dun Laoghaire flat was a bit too daunting for two little budgies? I don't know but I'm glad that they're adjusting so well.

And with that I'll close and wish everyone a beautiful Equinox! May your harvest be bountiful and give you much to be grateful for.

The Wind Of My Soul

That's how the song "The Wind" by Cat Stevens starts, and I find myself humming it under my breath quite a lot these days: "I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul. I let my music take me where my heart wants to go...". I am in such a state of bliss right now, it can only come from the knowledge that I have found myself again, found parts of me that I had almost forgotten, and I'm so very happy and grateful!

I guess it's time I let the cat out of the bag and told you all what's been happening. In a nutshell, I have stopped putting up with the state my life was in, the constant financial pressure because of my debts and consequently the push towards jobs I didn't enjoy, mostly in Sales. And I've embraced what I realised a while ago - those who read here regularly might recall my attempts to go back to teaching German as a foreign language (nothing has come of that yet, but they are keeping me in mind) - that I don't want to be in Sales, that I am all about language and languages and want to work either in online advertising/copywriting again or in anything else language related.

And then my "great" new job turned out to be NOT for me after all. I won't go into details here, I just think it's telling that in a previous blog entry titled "Working For The Harvest" I thought I had made the best of things but really felt so bad that it was palpable to the more perceptive people. Catherine actually e-mailed me to ask if I was okay! I was surprised because at the time, I didn't even see that I was in the wrong place and desparately trying to make sense of it. In short, my software company was the right company but the wrong job; and the new job was the right job but the wrong company.

When I left the third job in a year, I stopped and REALLY thought. And I realised that "permanent" jobs aren't very permanent or secure at all in the current climate, with recession as the majority's reality. And so I might as well take freelance, contract, and temporary jobs that are closer to what I really want to do. In order to do that, I had to significantly cut my cost of living. Now I have already cut out all possible expenses, and the one thing left was the rent. Six months ago, my flat was the cheapest I could get. Now, the prices have dropped dramatically, and I was unbelievably lucky to stumble across a lovely young family who are looking to rent out the little "granny flat" attached to their house. The rent includes bills and even wireless internet and so all in all I will save OVER 300 EURO EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

The flat is nowhere near as nice as mine, it's a little further South as well and more like a 15-minute walk to the sea, but it looks like I'll be able to sleep there because instead of three neighbour flats with shift-workers I will only have my landlord and his family who seem to have a more normal sleeping rhythm. Another thing I'm really excited about is that it's only partly furnished so I'll get to put in my own stuff for the first time in years! I'm going to get a bed and a wardrobe from Ikea and I can even afford it.

The "afford it" part comes from working almost around the clock on a project for the past two weeks. The company I'm with - on a freelance basis, but I hope they'll have lots more jobs for me because they're great - "localises" video games. In other words, a game is translated to, for example, German, and then has to be checked to see if it's not only a correct translation but fits into the context as well and makes sense in German, and also doesn't offend any cultural sensitivities etc. I work all hours at the moment but since I'm getting paid by the hour, I don't mind at all! As for what will happen after the current project ends - who knows. I have a few applications going but they're on MY terms now. Criteria are: Do I like/want the work and how far is it from where I live? If it's close to my home, I will consider less exciting jobs. For language jobs I would commute.

You see, the whole bollocks that there's no jobs is just that - bollocks. There's ALWAYS work. I've even registered with a temp agency for office work, and if all else fails, I'll do some audiotyping until the next role comes up. If at all possible, I'd like to stay in the localisation industry, I love it here. Freelancing gives me the chance to take up work for them whenever there's anything available, until perhaps some day there will be a permanent opening. But I'm in no hurry.

The great re-discovery I mentioned at the beginning is this: Life is looking after me and provides for me, as long as I stay true to myself. I am once again learning to trust. And I'm outrageously happy! No, I didn't want to move AGAIN, but the new apartment is just 2.5 miles down the road from the old one and I have over a week to move, so every day I load a few boxes into my car and drive down. Next Saturday, my bookshelves will be moved and I'll bring the budgies, and then it'll be all done. I'm sorry to have to uproot Tia and Mirias again but there's no way around that, I'm afraid! In the meantime, I'm taking pictures of them in the Dun Laoghaire flat, as you can see above.

It's as if my life has slowed down to a relaxed, happy pace with lots of time to smell the flowers. And that although I've been working 65-hour weeks! I'm not stressed in the least. Julia would say I'm in Easy World. Needless to say, I'm loving it.

Just A Quick Hello

Sorry for the missing updates! The situation is that I don't have internet at home at the moment and it can be a challenge to sneak online during breaks at work. If any of you who read this are waiting or a reply to an e-mail or a Facebook message, apologies, and now you know the reason. I should be back online between the 15th and the 20th of September, just in time for the Equinox.

I can't write much today but wanted to let everyone know! And of course I have news too, but some of them I'm keeping to myself for now. In fact, I have a rather big secret but as with my holiday before summer, I'm going to keep quiet about it until, well, until it's all sorted out. In the meantime, here's a brief recounting of what I've been up to.

Last weekend, my little town hosted the Festival of World Cultures, and I loved having all the music and life at my doorstep. While other people had to fight over car parking space, I strolled out of my house and didn't even have to leave the square I live on, because one of the many stages was set up in the little park right in the middle of it! Even while I was at home, I could hear the music but it never got annoying because the bands that played were for the most part amazing and the whole thing stopped around ten every night.

There were plenty of events that cost an entrance fee but also a lot that were free. Maeve, Brian, and Claire were up from Cork and the four of us went to see a lovely Ethiopian band on Saturday evening. The band played on a stage just by the sea promenade that I usually take my walks at, and to our left was the sea. At six thirty, the sun was still shining, and it was so unbelievably beautiful out there, I couldn't believe it! I danced to the music amongst happy people of all ages, quite a few of them male and with long hair, just the way I like it, haha! I had a great time.

Afterwards, we went on the Ferris Wheel that had been set up a little further down by the sea, and then on a "traditional" carousel which wasn't so traditional at all because it went about three times as fast as it would have in Victorian times. We had the time of our lives, as you can see:

It was a great evening and we decided to go again the next day. Sunday was the last day of the festival but it was as busy as Saturday had been. We went to the same stage we'd been at the evening before and were incredibly lucky to catch the performance of Dulsori, a Korean drumming band whose name means literally "heartbeat of the land". Does that sound like me? You bet it does! For years and years, I've been looking for good, sensual, exciting drumming that I could dance to during my rituals. And I found it in a South Korean combo, what was the likelihood of that? They are absolutely, breathtakingly amazing, just do a YouTube search on Dulsori and you'll know what I mean. The picture of this entry is of them of course, you can't see much but they were basically drumming with their entire bodies and with a precision that was almost frightening, it was as if they read each other's minds. If you are a musician, you'll understand what I mean when you listen to a sample!

The weekend was a welcome break from all the planning and organising of the aforementioned secret that I have. This week, I'm also working like a horse, I come home late every evening and it's a bit tiring but I enjoy it and so it's all good. Just now, I came home to the most amazing moon in a clear sky. It was quite breathtaking and for once I wasn't just looking towards winter with dread, I saw the mystery of dark evenings and the comfort of tea and candlelight in the months to come.

And now I'm off again, sorry again for the long breaks between entries right now, and for this fly-by update. It'll all get more regular once I have a broadband connection again!