What I've Been Up To Lately.

Sometimes Life amazes me.

Picks me up by my tail and whirls me around a bit, then deposits me somewhere unexpected and never-seen-before, and so, a bit ruffled, and maybe even somewhat bedraggled, I pick myself up and dust myself off, check for injuries, and then Proceed With Caution. It doesn't happen very often in life that there is a significant change, I mean, a really, really big one. Usually it's the slow meander along the winding little pathways, with occasional wanderings off into dead ends and loop-the-loops which bring you right back to where you started. And there are lovely woodlands along the way, with leafy green and yellow light dancing up there above you, and sometimes there are banks of the sweetest flowers nodding their heads in the balmy breeze, and sometimes there are puddles of muddy water you have to wade through in your favourite shoes, or stones that trip you up or find their way into your shoe and hurt your feet. But sometimes it turns out that the little beaten track you are on suddenly opens up into Wonder, a great grassy plain with a smooth road and the sea sparkling in the distance, and suddenly everything feels Right, and Good, and you find yourself skipping along, kicking up your heels and skirts, and warmth blooms in your heart.

Sometimes Life amazes me.

And I find myself doing something I could never have dreamt of, only a few months ago. And the phrase, In My Element, suddenly has meaning. 

A few months before we moved to this town we began meeting weekly with a bunch of rather splendid folks who had a rather splendid idea about what this town needs, and so, we have spent almost a year now, talking talking talking about just what that might be, and slowly something began to take shape, and then it began to grow, and to our collective amazement we are now in the midst of Something Splendid that is now fluttering out there, above our heads, stretching it's gossamer wings and testing the air. 

We have no idea where it will take us, or what it will bring, but it is exciting and inspiring, and speaking in a voice that, it turns out, many people can, and want to, hear.

We are part of a growing community co-operative that is still finding that voice, but that is strong and clear and determined. We started out as a wholefood buying club, and then we put on an event, a vegetarian feast with music and dancing and singing, and we started to tell people about what we were doing, and all around us these little lights began to go on, in people's eyes and hearts, as they listened to what we were saying, and they began to add their voices too, and now we find ourselves here, with a gathering crowd of good intentioned, hopeful folks who know that this is the way forward. Sharing our resources, our skills, our experience, sharing those tender seedling ideas that we carry around in our hearts, sometimes for years, not knowing what to do to help it grow, because some things need more than one person to develop and grow into that wondrous something that has untold potential. But then, when we gather together, and begin to talk, magic happens, things do begin to grow, and faster than you could have imagined. And we all realise that it is possible to do things differently than we are told. It is possible to do business another way, that things don't always have to involve money, or multinational companies, or foreign businesses, that we have everything we need right here on our doorstep. We have the community we need, right here in our town. And you know what? So do you!

The most exciting thing we have discovered is that as soon as you begin to speak, to ask for what you need, you find it's right there, down the street from you, in your community, and it has been all along. There is a network of amazing people all around you who want the same things for themselves and their families that you do, and all you need is a place to come together to talk. A Common Ground to talk about the common ground you share, the back to basics, real, stuff, like how to feed your family, how to provide a real and rich experience for your children of what the world really is, and how people really do want to help one another, because it benefits us all, in the end. And in doing so, we discover how to pare away the unnecessary, stifling, consumer mentality we are all infected with, and to get real again, connect with people in a heartfelt way that brings untold riches of the kind we haven't felt since childhood. 

Last Saturday evening we hosted another event, this time a pop-up restaurant, a seated, four course, vegetarian meal for 30 folks, in a studio in what was once a factory that made the rather famous Beverley Bags in the 50's and 60's, and I found myself In My Element. Seeing all these people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered together and talking talking talking, connecting, sharing food and drink and laughter, stories and ideas and intentions, well, I thought my heart would burst with happiness.

It's all true, you know, what we know in our hearts; that we all want the same thing in the end. A safe place, with love and support, a community that lifts us all up, collectively nurturing and sustaining us, and that carries us forward into a hopeful future where we are doing things the way we want to.

Together.

–*–

Local friends, and anyone interested, you can find us,

Common Ground, Bray, on Facebook, here. 

And online on our website here. 

Just Before You Go, Summer.....

Well, these last few mornings there is a definite autumny shiver in the early air, the top of Bray Head has a wooly cap of damp clouds just sitting on it, and the milky sunlight filters through the apple boughs that are literally bowing under their swag. School is looming, literally imminently, and we are getting ready to embrace our first autumn in a house with heating in it! Suddenly, my love for this season has grown tenfold.
Fittingly, a whole new chapter is beginning for me, in so many ways I couldn't list them here, their microscopicness adding up to a Significantness that thrills me and excites me and has me revving to go.

But first, as a Last Blast before that school business is upon us, and to celebrate the return of my man, we took ourselves off on a little adventure, back across this island of ours again, this time out into the west of Ireland. Poor Jay missed all our traipsing and trekking, all our adventuring on beaches and down boreens, and all the fine, unexpected weather we had, so we just had to squeeze something in. And if this mild weather continues into the autumn, we will just do the same, we will take it and run with it for as long as we can.

We rolled along the winding roads, under those white skies that shower occasional fine rain, that sit high and hard above us, not gloomy, but with a bright glare that turns the landscape into a glowing, magical vista. Everything about it so familiar to myself and Jay, though it's been two decades since we were here, and I found my heart filled with fondness, with tender memories of those young things we were when last we walked the streets of Galway city. Oh how we have changed!

And of course, there had to be a beach, and an extra special one this time, a glowing wonder of a coral beach, the likes of which I'd never seen. The water appeared tropical in it's hues, set as it is against the glow of the coral sand, but I can vouch that it is by no means tropical! It was cold! But in we got, regardless, and it was delicious.

We took a winding road back, the scenic route, stopping whenever we fancied. Meandering, I think is the word, and I savoured the pleasure of unhurried meandering, for I know it is coming to an end now, for another year.

But in the midst of my lament for the end of summer, I admit, I have never felt so ready to get back into the swing and routine of school, of all that autumn brings.
In spite of missing Jay, or perhaps because of it, along with the good weather, we have had The Best Summer Ever. We had to, or it would have been unbearably lonely without him. I have never been more grateful for the brilliant timing of a Random Act of Nature, for this out of the blue amazing summer we had, for it allowed us an excuse to make the most of it, and get out there and enjoy it.

And so, back home now, it's the first day of school, for some, and as I sit with my steaming cup, looking out my window at the slightly worn and fading green that looks partied out and hung over,  the early morning sun is now creeping over the top of the headland, and I hear the first stirrings upstairs, the creak of floorboards above my head, the murmur of sleepy voices. 

And so it begins.

Seventeen Days In Virginia.

 An Appalachian visit to my sister, her daughter, and their red dog.

Some days we drove,
my mother and sister and I,
skirting the Blue Ridges,
layers of smokey blue that rode away into the horizon like a tide.
Through rolling hills of green that fold back and forth onto themselves
as far as my eye could see.

Miles and miles of trees that thronged with birds,
red birds, blue birds, yellow, brown.
Birds as unfamiliar to me as the very air here.
And overhead, birds of prey wheel and cry like falling stars from some ancient tale we never knew.

On the way, we sang songs to our small travelling companion,
our little stalwart passenger whose bright presence was our totem, our lucky charm.

We delved into caves,
great endless milky caverns where we stood enthralled
listened to the rocks as they sang to us
a deep melancholy song,
a song we could not decipher,
a story as old as the earth itself.

And I could not help but dwell in my mind,
ponder, on what these lands were like
when smoke rose in the distance,
when the earth ran with blood
and your sons marched away over the mountains,
those boys of yours, tenderhearted, naive, awash with bravado and terror.
Marched away and did not come home.

Everything I saw was new, yet so familiar, like a memory, or a deep knowledge I had forgotten, that now stirs with something like hope.
The unfamiliar birdsong, 
the clamouring, legendary brood II cicadas, heard with disbelief in the place Jefferson heard them, 
fireflies in my bedroom, 
the scent of skunk that greets us on the doorstep in the morning, 
the kindness of strangers,
but most of all, those mountains.
I will hold on to those.

It is morning now, and today I will be returning to my home,
back to my dearlings and my sea, my heart sore and yearning for them now.
Though how I will say goodbye to my sister, and to this other tiny dearling who has a hold on my heart,
and to the red dog, I do not know. for they are leaving this place too,
beginning a new part of their story when they join her husband in Mexico.  

And it's true also, I find myself heartbroken to be leaving these mountains,
these blue endless, mysterious mountains that are not mine, yet somehow have a hold on me,
have burrowed under my skin a desire to come back.

And I thought my heart was already full.

A Brief Sojourn Before Uprooting Ourselves.

Not so long ago, we took the winding road south, down through the belly of this island of ours, through damp, mizzling hills that rolled under us and away to the glowering east. The rain ran down the foggy windows, the grey and the green flew past us in a rush as we sped towards the Atlantic coast on the southern rim of Ireland.

We spent the weekend with new friends, the warmest, loveliest of people, we took our time, we savoured every minute, we reminded ourselves of how much we love this place, memories returning of distant weekend visits to my sister when she lived here, so many years ago.

We passed through the wet, through the green, as though flying like ghosts, through virescent memories that clung to our hair, our skin, in the very drops of rain that hung in the air about us.
A heady combination of the newness of friendships lately found, and the deep hum of history stirring under our feet, all bound by the verdant magic of where we found ourselves.

A briefest of sojourns before we returned home, to the mammoth undertaking of uprooting our little family, of deconstructing all we had spent our parenting years building. Our Home.
An exciting, daunting endeavour, that caught us up in it's momentum and carried us onwards, of which there will be more, anon.

Returned to this, a most splendid of evenings that held a promise of spring. An evening that gave me perhaps my most favourite image of this view, in all my years photographing it.


A view that will always be there, behind my eyelids, when I close them against the sun.

What Happens When You Forget To Breathe.

You know sometimes how magic happens right there where you are? When the world takes you gently by the chin and tilts your head at just the right moment, and you find yourself suspended in something of such heart-stopping beauty that you are transported somewhere else, for just those few seconds.
And always just when you need it.

There we were, on our daily commute through this most beautiful valley, that has held on to autumn for weeks now, the colours singing from the trees, 'the rainbow trees' as The Smallest calls them. The morning had been a bit fraught already, with just too many things to fit in, and tempers frayed from early on, and the sense of rushing just permeating everything. This part of our journey always provides a little bit of solace in our daily run anyway, but this time there was something else.

Inexplicably, at this point on the road, for two minutes, the traffic all but stopped, slowed to a crawl, and out of nowhere suddenly the air was filled with golden leaves that danced over the cars, that stayed in the air, dancing like snowflakes as the sun hit the mountain, and we stared in awe, our hearts filled, overflowing.

Let Us Talk About The Sea.

What is it that happens to you, when the cold saltwater hits your skin?

When your breath catches high up, and every nerve ending tells you to stop! 

What is it that happens when you literally take the plunge, and envelope yourself in the briny, endless silence of water, suspended, nothing below your feet to hold you up, and there you float.

No matter how far you stray from the edge of the land, from the places where the sea begins, no matter how many years without it, or how many babies keep your feet on dry land,

you cannot ever take the salt out of your skin.

You will dream about it, run there in your sleep, 

until it finds you again. 

Moth Season.

There is a small window in my kitchen that stays open all summer long, unless the wind is chilly and from the wrong direction. It opens, just where I stand to make my morning tea, onto a wild and barely contained rugosa rose bush, that conceals all of the garden view, except a patch of sky. On rainy days the dripping green outside this window is like a doorway to an emerald kingdom where tiny creatures scurry and creep and scuttle. The scent of roses is subtle, but so intoxicating it transports me without effort, holds me in a green dream, even fleetingly, as I make tea, or prepare meals, like a small anchor in this sea of moments.

This morning is the first morning in a while that I am up significantly early to noticed the touch of autumn in the air that drifts in as the sun rises, and I am reminded of the swift approach of the end of the holidays, of school, ahead. Once again, each morning the walls of the house are lined with dustly moths, and in the evenings, the spiders line up along the windows like sentries. We are entering the cooling season, my favourite time of year, and the reeds in the marsh are almost at their fullest, the sound of now a late summer hush, as opposed to their winter rattle.

We have had a particularly wonderful summer. There has been lots of camping, lots of gatherings of friends, where we cram as many of us as possible into houses and tents, around kitchen tables, under gazebos, and make it last as long as we can, squeezing as much fun and games and food and laughter into our time together as we can. There has been a lot of rain, but lots of sunny days too, and we are excellent at seizing those and running out the door, so there have been lots of impromptu beach days too, the kind where we go up a hill and end up down on a beach, and then we cannot leave. The beach bag has a permanent spot in my car, just in case. And we are not done yet.
The result is a dusty house with the words Bare Minimum stamped in all the corners, on every pile of laundry and papers, a neglected blog, a car full of sand, but sun kissed, happy faces round the dinner table in the evenings.

We have also had a family wedding. A heartwarming, momentous wedding that was most definitely the highlight for us all.

So now we face The Winding Down, and I am eyeing those other to-do lists that involve the word 'school' in them, knowing I have put everything off until the last minute, knowing that this autumn brings significant changes to our little household, for me in particular, for, among other things, I must get a job. A proper, paid job. Something which every mother who stays home with her babies must do when the day comes, something which I have put off for a year and cannot justify any longer, and the artist in me balks at as I dream about the Making/Writing Hours to myself that I am giving up. But it is also something which I am excited about, albeit completely bemused by.
We shall see how that goes.

I am working on some other significant changes here at Milkmoon, too. Something which just seems like the right thing to do. I have come to realise that my dwindling commitment to this blog is nothing more than the fact that it hasn't evolved to reflect how things are changing for me personally, that I became little stuck, in terms of what I blog.
It's all good, and I do hope you think so too! It's something I am very excited about and look forward to  launching the all-new-and-improved Milkmoon in the next month.

Well, it's turning into a blustery day, but the sun is out, and so we are taking ourselves off out again.
That to-do list, and that pile of laundry, (okay, mountain of laundry), and all those dust bunnies, they'll have to wait another day.

What I Love About The Summer Holidays.

Although the weather has not been good, the days are whizzing by. Days of a little sunshine and a lot of rain, in spite of which we have been making the most of no school and long hours of daylight that stretch away from us towards beaches and woodland and picnics-whatever-the-weather. We are good at that, ignoring the weather. We can't change it so why complain? But I can tell you, it is the unremitting topic of conversation, no matter where you go. In fact, I cannot imagine what this country would come to if we couldn't talk about the weather! A standstill, is what!
Nevertheless, regardless of our unexceptional summer, in terms of sunshine, I do love this time of year in this temperate isle of ours.

I love when the evenings linger, generous with a light that seems reluctant to be gone from the sky, unobtrusively just...not leaving. It is as though the very air we inhabit has swelled, to fill more hours, pushing the limits of what we can call Day, just so we can really make the most of this mildest of seasons. And we have been doing just that.
Whatever the weather, the sea is the place to be this time of year, and even the drizzly days that call for rock pooling with wonderful friends instead of lounging on the sand, they still couldn't resist getting in for a swim, as the first picture above attests.

I love the extra hours that are ours, morning, noon and night, to do as we please. To spend time with friends we don't see enough of during school time, to be spontaneous and drop everything and run out the door when the phone rings to reveal an Idea Of Exceptional Splendidness at the other end of the line. And best of all, BedTime is on holiday too, and so, not always to be found when expected.
The word Relax becomes meaningful.

I love it when the teenagers stay out late into the dark, walking down the beach or to the village shops with their friends, coming home in high spirits to chat loudly in the next room. They have discovered LP's, the sound of vinyl and the riches it holds, discovered our collection of records, and I lie in the dark listening to the murmur of their giddy voices, the thrumming of the bass through the wall, as though splinched somewhere between a time warp. I secretly love that they are, without knowing it, engaging in a Most Important Musical History Lesson. Some day they'll realise it!

I love that we live by the sea, so grateful for moments like this. Is there anything more splendid than this? 'That golden moment' my Dad said, when he saw the above photo. Hours upon hours, just jumping into that cold water. If that doesn't awaken your spirit, I don't know what does. What a way to spend a summers day!

And at night, I love when the bedroom window is open and a cool breeze passes through. For on it comes dustly winged moths and drunken daddy-long-legs, and I lie as though in a summer woodland meadow, wings brushing past, telling tales of the chirruping reeds and marsh and meadow in the dark beyond my windowpane.

I find myself, as I so often do this time of year, travelling through these high speed days in slow motion. Do you remember that feeling as a child when things felt ginormous and teeny tiny at the same time, smooth and prickly, fat and thin, at the exact same moment? (Or was that just me?!) Well, I often find myself in similar intensely felt moments now, where I am in slow motion while all around me is at high speed. It's very beautiful, and allows me fleeting seconds of clarity, to really absorb and feel purest gratitude for where I have found myself on this journey of mine.

I hope you are enjoying your summer, and the weather is to your liking! Do you have any plans? Ideas Of Exceptional Splendidness?
We do. For more days like this.
Most certainly.

A Mixed Bag.

Oh, what a time we have had lately. Thank heavens for school holidays! Honestly, I could write that last sentence here and just leave it at that. 

This blog post was started during the school holidays over Easter but obviously I got sidetracked! We've had a carnival of weather fronts around here, and although it has now settled somewhat, into typical late Spring weather, I thought I would share some of it with you.

A few weeks back we awoke to this, my favourite kind of day, the kind of day when the veils between the worlds melt away and we find ourselves in some Otherworld, where even sound becomes different, and our footsteps echo strangely, the quiet breath of imagined Other~lings cool against our cheek.

These kind of days take my feet on a wander, down to the sea shore, and away into the hills, where People seem to have retreated away from this world and do not walk the streets, but stay quietly indoors away from the damp, the strange stillness, awaiting the return of the sun.

But not me. No, my feet wander, my heart filled with the monochrome silence, happy to be Lost for a while...

And then, one morning soon after, we awaken to find that Spring has arrived, the bluebells nod outside the window, the air stirs a little warmer and the children shed their winter skins, coats discarded in the garden, shoes and socks kicked off, oh joy! at cool, dry grass between their toes!

And the days warmed so considerably that the sea began it's siren call, drawing us to it's shores, promising summer days to come, filled with sandcastles and picnics and lazy days with nowhere else to be.

And even though the days turned wild and stormy again, still the pounding sea could not quell that growing Summer-ing that has taken hold of us all, now that the evenings stretch out their arms, lingering just that little bit longer each day, shyly hoping we won't mind.

And we did retreat indoors for a while, the halls murmuring with little voices, important business of the day beginning early for some, and for a while the focus was on Home, and Time Spent Together.

But as I said, the Carnival continued, and the sun simply could not stay away.

It's times like these, when little boys are being Little Boys, taking life by the horns with gusto, and revelling in the light and the few extra degrees in the air they storm through, building tents and making go-carts, and doing it all themselves when the grown-ups are too busy to help, it's times like these I catch in my heart, hold tenderly and with complete focus, for I know oh too well they melt away all too soon, drift away into teenagedom and a bigger world.

And although it's behind us now, here's a picture of this year's Easter tree.

We had a lovely break, with family time in abundance and not much else, other than good food and attention to detail.

But tonight, with a storm warning in effect, we baton down the hatches, and await the next dip in this roller coaster that is Springtime Weather, dolefully eye our sagging, leaky sand bags, and hoping the sea stays where it's supposed to, over the next few days!

I hope you are all warm and dry, wherever you are!