Two months into Ireland

Hi everyone,

The following was written after we had been here two months. The stress of setting up was over and we were starting to feel more at home in our new lives.

Sunday 19 March, 2006

It has now been a month since our container arrived from the US. I think in whimsy I will name this the month of daffodils as we have had them blooming inside and outside our house for the entire month. Now we are down to two inside and I am heartily glad to see the end of them for this year. Outside we have the late blooming ruffled edge variety going and they will take us through to the 24^th which is the official Daffodil day in Ireland. Lots of groups will be out on that day selling real and artificial blooms for charity.

Today is lovely and crisp. The sun comes out from light cloud cover periodically and when it does the bay shines silver in its path. The tide is in, making the waves roar (or as close to a roar as we get here in our little bay) but loud enough to set a soothing backdrop of sound to the morning walk up the hill with the dogs. Staying in the present moment is a challenge, one with which I have wrestled for years. Part of moving here was to slow life down, to allow more ease on the “staying in the present moment” side of that equation. Perhaps it is similar to tides – at times they are in and I can stay present to the air, the sound, the light, and then they go out, and I get caught in the challenges we face with the granite counter top at the apartment, our taxes in the US and setting up the c computer equipment in my office.

Our home is cozy, the apartment will be done, or mostly done this week, in time for our first renters. Indeed, life in general has progressed. I have attended my first Rotary meeting, and this week Margie and I will go to dinner with my new club members, if all goes well, and we have a good time without the more conservative types standing back in dread of our partnership, then I will soon make my first foray into building fellowship with others outside of our neighborhood, by joining Bishopstown Rotary.

I came here to write and to do artwork. True to the way in which I move through life, I have a vision of the life I want to be living. Corny to say it is somewhere between Murder she wrote and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Not that I want to have dead bodies regularly popping up or mysteries that need to be solved, but that I see myself as becoming such an intricate part of this neighborhood that, as a much older woman, I lead a fascinating and worldly existence while firmly rooted in this little place.

Writing and art require daily discipline and that is my next step. I am working on setting up my old laptop for artwork, and the new one for personal writing with the desktop taking the brunt of the business writing. Writing and art bring me back full circle to the challenge of staying in the NOW. NOW the sun is shining the little birds are enjoying the birdfeeder, although a beautiful larger bird just vacated a place where he was looming over it, in hopes that somehow the food might do for him as well (which it won’t because of the squirrel proof features of the feeder.

What would I like to capture in my art? The brilliant sunshine and the sense of fresh beauty that accompanies it when it breaks through the clouds on a day like today..

What would I like to capture in my writing? The subtle tensions of life, those that define us by how we handle them. For instance, how do I learn to be sole loving to Margie even when I am full of worries? How do I learn to relax even when I am worried about some small aspect of the future? How do I forget these tensions completely and live NOW. And so it goes, back to the tensions with NOW once again.