Facebook?

Good Friday

Facebook is fine.  I resisted it for a long while.  I both resisted and detested it in equal measure. I joined it and I left it but now I have given in and surrendered.   It’s an entertainment, an exercise in distraction for me,  an act of procrastination which is at times fun but can also be serious, annoying, amusing, depressing, uplifting, negative, positive, pleasant, unpleasant, informative, anger-inducing or trivial in the extreme but mainly it is a good way to keep in touch with some lovely relatives, the few who are on Facebook and also the many folk I never/rarely see.   I have also recently found some people who I lost touch with some years ago,  a wonderful bunch of fellow bloggers of old, some of which who, like me, are still at it.  So Facebook is a great place to while away (waste) lots of time.  I should be spending this time trying to be creative instead of sharing little ‘snippets of fascination’ which are passing round the Facebook arena.  I have been doing a lot of this lately and a very dear friend was even rather worried about my sanity recently :-).  No need to worry, I told him, I know I am mad, it's when you don't know you have to worry.:-)

I am also using Facebook to advertise my new genealogy/people tracing venture which my daughter and I have started recently.  The local paper did an article about us this week which I hope will generate a bit of interest. We have a website, a blog and a very new Facebook page as well.  I would love it if  you would visit and if you go to the Facebook page could you Like it? I hate asking these sort of things as I hate promoting/publicising myself in any way.

But I am being called to my own blog today and coming here is like coming ‘home’ to a safe and cosy place, sometimes serene, sometimes not  -   but a place where I welcome special people who I feel blessed to have met within this space that they call the Blogosphere, a place from where I can go out and meet and visit like minded folk and read their wonderful writings.   I cannot imagine leaving this world as I would miss it so.

I also feel the need to be positive and to start posting Blessings again as I did in the old days.  I have been reading A Year of Doing Good  by Judith O’Reilly – a blogger of some standing of Wife in the North fame.  Her book is written as a diary of her attempts to perform a good deed every day for a whole year; it is an inspiring book which is  funny but is also very moving and one which I can (positively)recommend.

Anyways, I shall start posting blessings on here again, daily if possible (!) even if I can only think of one and I shall also endeavour to record, like Judith O'Reilly, the good deeds which I have done or which others have carried out – the latter of course being blessings in themselves. I apologise if I am repeating blessings which I have posted years ago, I have been blogging since 2007 so there are bound to be repeats but heyho there must be a limit to the blessings in life,..............or are there not?

Today’s Blessings?  – the day is still young  but so far there has been

Sunlight

Robins

This is my special one

 

Melting Snow

Friends and the ability to communicate, chat even, online. While I was writing this post I was chatting to two friends at once on........... yes you’ve guessed it -  Facebook.

I think it’s trying to tell me something don’t you?

My much loved music brought to me freely now by Spotify.  (I am working on adding it to my blogpage for you to enjoy also).

Words,

Pictures.

Good Deeds.

And my Good Deed for today?

Keeping my wild birds fed all year, so it’s a daily thing.  Am spending a fortune on fatballs (that word always makes me smile) and wild bird seed but it’s worth it for the pleasure I get from birdwatching.

That’s what giving is all about isn’t it, much lovelier for one’s soul than receiving?

Before I go, a poem.

 

I Taught Myself To Live Simply

 

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,

to look at the sky and pray to God,

and to wander long before evening

to tire my superfluous worries.

When the burdocks rustle in the ravine

and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops

I compose happy verses

about life's decay, decay and beauty.

I come back. The fluffy cat

licks my palm, purrs so sweetly

and the fire flares bright

on the saw-mill turret by the lake.

Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof

occasionally breaks the silence.

If you knock on my door

I may not even hear.

Anna Akhmatova

 

Bye for now,

Go mbeannai Dia duit,

Happy Easter,

Cait.

The Healer

Meal Beach, Burra Isles, Shetland by Robin Gosnall

The Healer

 

They called her the Lightworker because she

always healed with the Light. At her touch, woman,

or man, any whose lives were grey and flat like

sand were drawn into her Light. You did  not

so much see, as sense its reflection as

your pain and suffering were carried away over

the distant hills until you could barely

feel them.   As they were fading, their heavy

storm clouds were changing to the softest meringue.

On hearing her whispers, the wildest white

horses would quieten and become gentle

in her wake, the rough seas would calm, giant

waves become fluffy, till all that was dark

would start shining and sliding out of the shadows;

riding, gliding, deftly drawing into

the glimmering light and dancing slowly,

softly, into peace and enlightenment.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

 

Poem written for creative writing group Magpie Tales in response to the photo prompt.

 

Notes of a Therapist

 

I started by asking what her interests were,

how did she spend her days? She told me that

she didn’t much like days. These were the things

she loved most of all: bedtime and dreaming

and sometimes, before nightfall, like the proverbial

shepherdess, she would gaze with an artist’s eye

upon the pinking of the summer skies which

called to her camera and for solo

trips into the hills. On her return she

spent time online with her secret ‘friend’

‘Jiminy Cricket’ whose real identity

could be anyone. This is what she said

she despised, that fact and the two stuffed squirrels

 which he said he kept in a case on the

wall and the way he was always disappearing

 to put fish food in the tank. (He sounded real

creepy to me).  She told me that she had

cried recently because she had seen her

daughter’s  copies of Cosmopolitan which only

reinforced her lost youth with all its past passions.

I left it there, when  the tissues had run out.

 

Cait O’Connor

To Irish Mothers

Happy Mother's Day

I make no apologies. I am posting something I posted on Mother's Day five years ago.

Feelings about mothers never change do they?

Do revisit the page:

http://caitoconnor.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/to-irish-mothers.html

Shadows

Shadows

 

There are many  writers-in-cyberspace;

words flow like a proverbial, perpetual

fountain but one poet- soul, a wise one,

who weaves his words with skill and feeling, said

that the shadows racing over sand were

thoughts that the land is having. I marvelled

at what seemed to me a revelation

for I live amidst mountains and am often

found watching shadows as they cross, soft-hued,

quiet and tender, covering and changing

the landscape in their wake, from dark to light,

from light to dark and back to light again.

Now  I imagine the land’s emotions:

the wind is its anger, the sun is its

benevolence, the breeze a tease, the snow  

its strong urge to hibernate and always,

always I shall see the rain as its tears.

From a penumbra in the poet’s mind,

something ghostly, insubstantial, half-glimpsed

and half-hidden, just an inkling of an idea

became pure poetry,transformed itself

and flew on a journey to me, through space,

reaching my mountainous place from the sea

inspiring me, from those  thought-shadows in the sand.

 
Cait O’Connor

 

Written in response to a poem  Shadows at Pics and Poems .

 

 

 

 

A Little Request

 

View from the Sugar Loaf on a Winter Sun Day

I am sorry that I haven’t blogged as much lately but my daughter and I have been busy working together setting up a website for a planned mother-daughter small business enterprise.

I would dearly love you to have a look at the site and give your feedback on it  as I really value your opinions and any suggestions you may have.  I won’t explain here how the business idea came about but all is revealed on the site.

This the link; Google is not picking it up yet as it only went live a few days ago.

 

Find Your Family

http://www.findyourfamily.org.uk/

Many thanks,

Cait

 

 

 

A book I think you would love

I have just finished this book; it's a first novel, it's a real page turner. 

 

On the back it says:

Ireland

America

Family secrets

Laughter

Tragedy

Swimming

Dogs

Big beaches

Loneliness

 

A story of unexpected life-changing love

 

I loved this book and would like to recommend it to you.

Dido - No Freedom

Lenten Lilies

 

Lenten Lilies

(For Frances)

 

Ceramic, smooth and milky white

 a jug of promise holds green daffodils in bud.

They draw me in as I pass the table

but I cannot watch and wait

to capture such a slow changing.

I pass.

Days pass

in hope and anticipation,

I can only imagine what will be,

what will create a swift  lifting of  my heart

the gift that is a flower.

I will love each one

for its colour,

for its beauty,

for its scent,

for it is a miracle,

lenten like the lilies,

a promise to me, soon coming,

 

Cait O’Connor

Essentials

 

Essentials

 

An old cottage that always welcomes you.

Flowing water, flowers, trees and a view.

A baby in the cradle and birds in the wood.

A dog, a cat, a hearth with logs stacked.

Books to lose myself within, words to weave.

Red shoes, Guinness, family and friends.

Health and happiness, music, kind words and hugs.

Compassion, understanding and sweet, sweet laughter.

Days of soft rainfall, wide rainbows, sunshine, sunsets.

Images of beauty, colourful and bright.

Voices of velvet, dreams and memories.

Candles, night skies, stars and silence.

The moon and its magic, fairies and the angels’ touch.

Nivea, perfume and a warm, warm, shower.

Earl Grey, goose down, poetry and sweet, sweet sleep.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

(Written in response to a blog by Pamela Terry and Edward).

 

A Meme

A Meme

 

One of my favorite things is solitude.

Outside my window it’s dark;  a night owl’s delight.

I am thinking  detachment must be the order of this night.

From the kitchen come the sounds of silence and the distant echoes of a chime.

I am wearing layers and layers to keep me from the cold.

I am reading the life of Edna O’Brien who weaves her words with magic, beauty and mysticism.

I am hearing a voice, a sigh.

I am hoping all will be well.

Around the dimming room are swirls and curls, reflections from the bamboo shades.

I am going to linger awhile on my creation.

I am creating a dream,

I am thankful  every moment for so much, so much, so much.

Here is picture thought I am sharing.

 

Do share your thoughts in words and pictures too.

 

Two Poems

 

 
Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance
Carl Sandberg

 

Dear Diary,

I have discovered a poet, a writer I hadn't heard of even though she is from round these parts.  I borrowed one of  her books from the library and unusually for me with poetry books, I loved every one of the poems within this one.  Have you heard of her I wonder?  Chris Kinsey. She was BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year in 2008 and lives in Wales.  She is also a rescuer of greyhounds though Greyhound Rescue Wales and a commissioned sequence of poems Houndlove was included in Poems of Love and Longing (Pont Books, Gomer Press, 2008). Chris Kinsey has been dubbed ‘Greyhounds’ Poet Laureate’

These two just right-for-this-season poems are from her book I borrowed,

 Cure for a Crooked Smile 

One February Night

To appease a hunger

brought on by reading about snow

I start making porridge.

Sensing the wolf in the blizzard

I watch my dogs asleep at the hearth,

muzzles twitching, honing dream scents.

I stir till the pelt thickens,

scatter almonds and pumpkin seeds,

twirl in honey and lick the swell.

Wind snuffles at the door

snowflakes scratch softly

icicles drool.

 

Chris Kinsey

 

Moonlighting

When the New Year rolls over on dark mornings

I wonder how much is coaxed

by moon’s second-handlight?

Snowdrops appear after the first full circle

as if the force which tugs tides, sucks white

up their stalks, draws them on to swell and drip.

This play of pearling

sets the birds rehearsing

long before dawn.

The moon wanes; snowdrops open wing-nuts

on a bit more day.  By the big, mirror-moon,

of Candlemas, they’ll still be hanging parachutes.

Courting birds will chorus light.

Last February flood, bubbling curlews

waded through quicksilver midnight.

 

Chris Kinsey.

Home Safe

Dear Diary,

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

I do apologise because I can’t remember who recommended this book to me (probably via a booky blog post?) but I just want to say thank you. Someone out there who I hope will come forward.

Elizabeth Berg writes sensitively and I very much enjoyed Home Safe.   It caused me to stay in bed half the morning and to feel sad when it ended, always a sign of a good book. The blurb on the book possibly wouldn’t have enticed me to read it but it is a fine book and she is a fine writer and I would also like to recommend this title to others.

Some tastes from the book below:

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead.”

― Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe

When Suzie introduced Helen, she told the audience that one of the best things about books is that they are an interactive art form: that while the author may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own. "That's why we so often don't like movies made from books, right?" Suzie said. "We don't like someone else's interpretation of what we see so clearly." She talked, too, about how books educate and inspire, and how they soothe the soul-"like comfort food without the calories," she said. She talked about the tactile joys of reading, the feel of a page beneath one's fingers; the elegance of typeface on a page. She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read, and reminded them that if they gave up half an hour of television a day in favor of reading, they could finish twenty-five books a year. "Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance-and the relief!-of real, tick-tock time.”

― Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe

I just want to say one thing. If I ever write a novel again, it's going to be in defense of weak women, inept and codependent women. I'm going to talk about all the great movies and songs and poetry that focus on such women. I'm going to toast Blanche DuBois. I'm going to celebrate women who aren't afraid to show their need and their vulnerabilities. To be honest about how hard it can be to plow your way through a life that offers no guarantees about anything. I'm going to get on my metaphorical knees and thank women who fall apart, who cry and carry on and wail and wring their hands because you know what, Midge? We all need to cry. Thank God for women who can articulate their vulnerabilities and express what probably a lot of other people want to say and feel they can't. Those peoples' stronghold against falling apart themselves is the disdain they feel for women who do it for them. Strong. I'm starting to think that's as much a party line as anything else ever handed to women for their assigned roles. When do we get respect for our differences from men? Our strength is our weakness. Our ability to feel is our humanity. You know what? I'll bet if you talk to a hundred strong women, 99 of them would say 'I'm sick of being strong. I would like to be cared for. I would like someone else to make the goddamn decisions, I'm sick of making decisions.' I know this one woman who's a beacon of strength. A single mother who can do everything - even more than you, Midge. I ran into her not long ago and we went and got a coffee and you know what she told me? She told me that when she goes out to dinner with her guy, she asks him to order everything for her. Every single thing, drink to dessert. Because she just wants to unhitch. All of us dependent, weak women have the courage to do all the time what she can only do in a restaurant.”

― Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe

 

Bye for now,
Cait

 

 

Bird Cake Recipe

Bird Cake

(I call mine Robin Cake because they literally go mad for it).

 

First make a crumble mix with plain flour and margarine ( or butter if you are rich).

Rub in half fat to plain flour with hands or in mixer – as much as you want, I generally make a Delia Smith recipe and leave a fair amount over when making one just for the two of us.

Add oats, any fresh or dried fruit, nuts of any kind, whole or ground, but not salted, cake or biscuit crumbs, breadcrumbs, grated cheese, cereal, anything really that birds like. Add any oil you may have lurking in a frying pan or similar. Suet goes down very well.  Raid the fridge and your cupboards for suitable additions.

Add a little water to bind and then roll in oats (or flour if you have no oats) so it is reasonably firm and not sticky. Make a nice cake shape.  No need to harden in the fridge (!)  -   just stick it out on the bird table, preferably one in view of a window.

Watch it disappear.

 

 

 

Snowscapes

These four pics below were taken with my zoom on full so they are not very good.  I just wanted to show you the hilltops which can be seen from my home.

 

 

 

 

 

IRISH FOLK FURNITURE

Words and Pictures

Just a  pic taken outside first thing this morning and a poem by the Welsh Poet Laureate Gillian Clarke (one of my favourite poets). This poem is from her latest collection 'Ice'.








Ode to Winter 


We hoard light, hunkered in holt and burrow,
in cave, cwtsh, den, earth, hut, lair.
Sun blinks.  Trees take down their hair.
Dusk wipes horizons, seeps into the room,
the last flame of geranium in the gloom.

In the shortening day, bring in the late flowers
to crisp in a vase, beech to break into leaf,
a branch of lark.  Take winter by the throat.
Feed the common birds, tits and finches,
the spotted woodpecker in his opera coat.

Let’s learn to love the icy winter moon,
or moonless dark and winter constellations,
Jupiter’s glow, a slow, incoming plane,
neighbourly windows,someone’s flickering screen,
a lamp-lit page, drawn curtains.

Let us praise intimacy, talk and books,
music and silence, wind and rain,
the beautiful bones of trees, taste of cold air,
darkening fields, the glittering city,
that winter longing, hiraeth, something like prayer.

Under the stilled heartbeat of trees,
wind-snapped branches, mulch and root,
a million bluebell bulbs lie low
ready to flare in lengthening light,
after the dark, the frozen earth, the snow.

Out there, fox and buzzard, kite and crow
are clearing the ground for the myth.
On the darkest day bring in the tree,
cool and pungent as forest.  Turn up the music.
Pour us a glass.  Dress the house in pagan finery.

Gillian Clarke

Our River 

 

 

More pics on my photo blog.

New Year Resolutions

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

Albert Einstein

The Leaf Charmer

New Year

The rats have gone  from the rafters,

the mice from the midden

and sun before seven no longer has to mean

rain before eleven.

How does this New Year’s morning pass?

She sweeps the leaves into the river

while listening to the robin sing.

Half-hidden in the magnolia,

he is alone and she is alone

and it is to her alone that he seems to be singing.

She thinks as she sweeps and the robin sings

and the river flows past her.

She thinks of words,

the ones that she will sweep away

like should, ought and must.

She retains the ever-present why and for good measure adds why not?

She stocks up on the cans and the coulds, the wants and the wishes

not forgetting the needs.

All nevers and buts are banned;

when, where, how and now loom large.

There are to be no more cannots, must nots,

should nots, ought nots,

ought tos, never agains;

all are quickly brushed away

along with the far too many ifs and worries, sorries and regrets.

They journey away so quickly,

downstream they go, along with her leaves

at a comforting and such a steady speed.

Cait O’Connor