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Tag: Singing creatures

Long story

“…I had heard whispers over many years about a chamber of female divinity that was said to exist somewhere west of the Shannon, but I could find no reference to it in any book or journal. Then, finally, two years ago I stumbled upon the chamber, as some in the local community in Tulsk, Co Roscommon, had chosen to make it public again. It’s a cavern called Oweynagat in which an ancient goddess energy is said to reside…When the time was right, they were able to point small groups of individuals towards a tiny opening beneath a hawthorn tree in the bank of a field that led to it. The field is down a narrow laneway, apparently leading nowhere.”

Manchán Mangan: Indigenous people, Ireland and guardians of old lore

These are dark days. Sometimes, before dusk, I walk across the street from my house to sit alone in the field. After a while, I feel vibrations coming from a great distance through the earth into my body. The movements remind me there are places where the goddess lives, even in these times. I imagine they are hidden safe houses where she appears. They are not written down in books or recorded in databases – they’re hidden in plain sight – maybe through that small opening among trees that could be a fox’s den. Except it would open to a much bigger place, where from time to time over many centuries, people have sat in silence, holding each other’s hands, listening to the slow, soft whisper of time passing. They are listening for the long story, the one that opens up and folds back, further and further back, into the past until they reach the roots.

In the dark and stillness, I feel afraid. I don’t have time for this. I check my phone, but there is no signal. I’m off the grid. But I’ve already begun to sense the vibrations extending in all directions from where I stand, which is in an ordinary field beside the bike path. It’s as if I always suspected this place was here, and somehow found that fact reassuring. I have to force myself to stay still and not run back to the house, to resist the urge to get back to business. Because this place is deep and asks a lot of me. But I know the world is at stake now. Maybe it’s always been, but we’ve reached the tipping point. We need the goddess who loves gentle creatures, like my little dog who lies in a patch of sunshine on the floor. I love to look into his glassy eyes and smell the warmth of his fur. I need to visit the goddess. I must let time take me back and further back, all the way to its roots.

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Cold Water Can Work Wonders

To help me deal with panic attacks and flashbacks that I now experience more often because of the pandemic, someone gave me an info sheet called the “Distress Tolerance Handout.” In it, I found a page called Cold Water Can Work Wonders:

When you put your full face into cold water . . . or you put a zip-lock bag with cold water on your eyes and upper cheeks, and hold your breath, it tells your brain you are diving underwater. This causes the “dive response” to occur. (It may take 15–30 seconds to start.)

Your heart slows down, blood flow to nonessential organs is reduced, and blood flow is redirected to the brain and heart. This response can actually help regulate your emotions. This will be useful as a distress tolerance strategy when you are having a very strong, distressing emotion.

I tucked this information away somewhere in my memory – maybe I’ll give it a try some time, I thought

I am glad I read about this technique because it helps me to appreciate the movie, My Octopus Teacher. In it, Craig Foster, who is both protagonist and filmmaker, talks about returning to False Bay in South Africa, where he grew up free-diving in the kelp forests of the Atlantic.

After many years away he returns, suffering from burnout and great emotional distress. He can no longer do the things he loves, like communicating with his son and making documentaries. There in False Bay, he begins free diving again — with only a snorkel and flippers – no oxygen tanks. He says:

In the beginning, it’s a hard thing to get in the water. It’s one of the wildest, most scary places to swim on the planet. The water drops to as low as eight, nine degrees Celsius. The cold takes your breath away. And you just have to relax. And then you’ll get this beautiful window of time for 10, 15 minutes.

Suddenly…everything feels okay. The cold upgrades the brain because you’re getting this flood of chemicals every time you immerse in that cold water. Your whole body comes alive. And then, as your body adapts, it just becomes easier and easier. And eventually…after about a year…you start to crave the cold.

Foster finds a way to slip inside of nature through his dives in the kelp forest and the friend he made there: a common octopus (octopus vulgaris). As much as I love the story of Foster’s octopus friend, I need to keep this story moving, so now I’ll talk about Claire Paris, another freediver.

Paris, a master at holding her breath, can do six-minute plus breath holds in a pool and dives more than 200 feet down in the ocean on a single gulp of air. Once she gets down there, she feels an immense sense of calm.

She prefers to dive without goggles to enhance the diving reflex, the body’s response to submersion in cold water. This mechanism kicks in when you immerse the nostrils and face in the water. Paris and other freedivers say that so far beneath the ocean’s surface, everything slows down.

I have a friend who lives by the Irish Sea and swims in the ocean every day—he loves both swimming and surfing. But it’s also a way to dealing with the stress of the pandemic. I’ve seen photos of him with his friends, pushing their way into the sea through the big frothy Atlantic waves. Soon enough, I’ll be up near Killaloe, Ontario, where I can swim in a cold lake and catch the last of the summer’s rays. Maybe I’ll try a few dives and see if cold water really can work wonders.

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Learning to play the bodhrán

For most of my life I’ve been a writer. And over time, I’ve learned that all creativity, whether it’s writing, music or something else, is an adventure.

Over the years I’ve seen many Irish music groups, and watched bodhrán players moving their sticks over their drums, performing rhythms and patterns impossibly fast. And they even played with both ends of the stick! I’ve always wanted to learn this instrument.

Just before we were all sent home in the middle of March, I picked up a cheap bodhrán at Long and McQuade and signed up for lessons through the Online Academy of Irish Music (OAIM).

By nature I’m an extrovert and usually find staying home for days at a time pretty hard to do. I like to be out and about, doing things with friends.

But suddenly I had more free time and all of it had to be spent at home. So I began to play the drum, doing online lessons and practising, sometimes for several hours at a time. The first thing I learned is how to pronounce bodhrán. It’s “bow-rawn.” Hard to say!

The OAIM drum teacher, Brian Fleming, was very good. So I thought I’d see if he gave lessons online. Sure enough, he does! We started meeting via Zoom in March—connecting County Kerry in Ireland with Ottawa for an hour or so every week.  

Since then, my learning has accelerated and I can even play the stick doubled-ended on the drum.

Bodhráns are made with goat skin and they can be finicky things—if the drum is not tuneable, you have to wet the skin every 15 minutes while you play. So, after a couple of months of dribbling tablespoons of water, I was ready for a tuneable drum.

Brian recommended bodhrán maker Ben March who lives in Country Clare. I gave Ben the specifications, he made the drum and FedEx delivered it a couple of weeks ago.

I was able to have Ben put an inscription on my bodhrán: “on the adventure.” I can’t wait to see where this drum takes me. Already I’ve visited the seaside in Ireland and discovered my favourite bodhrán player, Ronán Ó Snodaigh.

My husband plays the mandolin and we are learning jigs and reels so we’ll be ready to join an Irish session at our local pub when we can all finally get together in person again. Check out a video of us playing the Ashplant Reel together on our front step.

In the meantime, my wonderful drum will be my portal to a new kind of creativity and way to connect with others both at home and far away.

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We have the most in common with our enemies…

It has often been said that we have the most in common with our enemies. This is, in many ways, true of Israelis and Palestinians. They occupy the same part of the world, have similar desires for nationhood, identity, safety and freedIsraeli times articleom, and even follow religions that are very similar. With a few changes, this angry letter from an Israeli could have been written by a Palestinian:

“But I will not apologise for surviving. For surviving missiles intended to kill me. The fact they didn’t kill me doesn’t mean they weren’t sent with the intention to murder. I will not apologise for living and surviving thanks to being prepared because we have a culture that celebrates our lives and cherishes them…I will not apologise for having a business, a home, a family and friends here who want normal lives and to live in peace with our neighbors. I will not apologise for existing and I want nothing more than to co-exist quietly with neighbors who accept me here.”

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/shalom-motherfr/

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