Chapter 5. A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels

4 conversations influence me:

1. You lot: my faithfuls who read my Monday newsletter each week.
2. Money Queen Feed: Amanda Frances’ online community where I am being coached to monetise my skills.  
3. ChatGPT: a conversation I have been having in the background.
4. Prem Rawat: my guru of 50 years.

A Beached Whale and 4 Clean White Towels

Log​s my experience in Amaroo using my 12-word technique.

12-words Technique

• A title
• The first tangible object you see when you hear that title
• 12 things you associate with that object
• 20 minutes to write: include the object, all 12 association​s, under the title.

Amaroo. Day 1. Monday. 07.09.26

Written after Prem’s evening session

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to Prem Rawat.

Object: The park

12 associations

1. Walking
2. Tripping
3. Whalley Range
4. Thinking I know it all
5. He was a young Indian lad of 13
6. Tom was a young Moss Side lad of 20
7. How could they know so much?
8. How could they question society?
9. We all thought things were gonna be different
10. Even Mick Jagger
11. He’s longish hair, flat face, sincerity
12. His first remarks about his personal journey 

If she never met Tom, she may never have met Prem Rawat. Though the first time she ever sees Prem Rawat is in her mum and dad’s living room, on Granada Reports, the Lord. Now she knows how these things operate; they just want a bit of news, a bit of gossip, to trade for their jobs. Fancy being a gossipmonger and getting paid for it. Why do people have to know? But it’s to do with preening, small bits of information get you food because you are on top. This is the kind of conversation she has with Tom. They ignite each other’s brains. In lot​s of ways​ they are equal. In some ways he is better than her, like her dad he is instinctual. He either believes it or he doesn’t. He intuits it. He works it out, susses it out. Like her dad who can’t read but you can’t pull the wool over his eye. In many ways. His lack of education makes him more fertile. The lack of education in both Tom’s and her dad’s constitution is like organic food, missing GM, missing fertilisers, missing all the stuff that is supposed to enhance it, but just makes it sterile. Him nor her dad are sterile.

They walk in the park. Already an item, but no one saying they are an item, since the minute he pulls her to the side, no, he whispers in her ear, pulling her to the side makes them conspicuous. Not that they don’t become conspicuous dressing in second hand clothes, unironed, in a club that functions on cool. On looks. On status. They go there, now, to fuck up the status. The game is on, the fight is on, everything is gonna be different in this​, their real world​, as well as that unreal world outside the door, the black door of the Reno.

She chooses him, Tom, on Easter Monday. They are going up the stairs, still friends. He whispers his immortal line into her ear, ‘They are all masquerading.’ It saves her from taking her life when they are laughing at her, all the cool kids around her age, ones without dads who try to educate their daughter. Her dad insists on her education in school, her good marks. He rewards her good marks. He gives her money for her good marks and there is only one thing he loves more than good marks, money, keeping his money in his pocket for as long as possible. It takes her years to work out this is fear, this is fear born in poverty.

They are going up the Reno stairs. It is Easter Monday. They both base their intelligence in the Bible. Both her dad and Tom their upstanding, their understanding, they blend it and move it and look at it and quote it and rue the day and wait for fire and hell stone, brimstone, all kinds of stone to fall on these ungodly people while having perpetrated ungodliness in the name of their own pleasure but they don’t dominate anyone they can’t dominate, so there is no one ever to put them in question.

They are going up the Reno stairs. Dawn is arriving. It is coming down the stairs through the open door. Blindingly. Between his legs as he turns around to look at her. She turns around to look at the good fucking looking bastard who is also real cool who is also a possibility. For many years later she is glad she didn’t, cos he would have been the death of her; like she gets into Prem with Tom, she would have got into heroin with him.

Before you know it, they are tripping in the park, walking in the park. He has theories. He explains there are missing pages in the Maccabean Bible. The answer is in these pages. And Mesopotamian, and the pages turned upside down. She is interested but not interested. She is interested in the clip of her shoes on the ground, and he is a WW1 soldier, and she is keeping him company cos when he is drafted, she may never see him again. And they entertain each other in the realms of what is possible and what isn’t possible in these realities that these cool lot don’t seem to get or care about, while masquerading. These two are gonna be real. If there had been a revolution, they’d be shot all ready.

When they meet Mac in the precinct at the record shop opposite the cheese counter where they shop every Wednesday when they get their dole, cos they’re living together now in her £10 bedsit in Whalley Range cos he spends his deposit going to Bournemouth to visit his best friend who alternates as his worst enemy, especially since he is gonna be a chiro-practitioner and make dough. Fucking sell out. Masquer-fucking-rading, all these fucking years. How can they question society if one of them is society? But she is onto him now. Or is she? There is truth in what he says. You can’t be pure if you make dough, if you follow dough. So, when she is pregnant, he makes their crib, fashions their daughter’s crib like Jesus’s manager, like the lambs will visit. They are already into Prem by then. They pull the huge steel frame off the picture in the antenatal clinic for the picture of Prem in his red Maharaji suit where they see him in a Malaga bullring. Tom the young Moss Side lad of 20, leads them to the feet of the young Indian lad of 17. Incredible. He is 19. Prem is 19 when they meet. She is 18. Tom is 20. They all think things are gonna be different. Even Mick Jagger. They have not seen his longish hair, flat face, of sincerity, in person yet, only his voice, on tape, when Mac from the record shop guides them to Manchester Town Hall. She can’t remember anything he says, like she can't tonight on the Amaroo amphitheatre stage where his 68-year-old face is age spotted like everyone else, and he stands, maybe to show off, to a pulpit when many of the others find it hard to walk.

There are some young people. A handsome boy beside her laughing knowingly at all Prem’s moments, his authentic moments, these moments that cut you deep. Prem’s funny as fuck. Cruelly. She can’t remember any of it. Except that his first song, the songs he is composing like Rumi and Kabir, in his time, of his time, even R+B, are the first remarks in 50 years, his first remarks about his personal journey, she has ever heard him utter. How he steps one foot in front of the other, not knowing how it can turn out. ‘How could he?’ she says to the Denver Colorado couple who have followed him all over the world since the early days. ‘He has such vision. Even just seeing and keeping this land. How could he know so much?’ She keeps her torch on the road for the 3 of them. She laughs. She has got them lost. ‘I’m like one of them people he was talking about, thinking I know it all.’

Amaroo. Day 2. Tuesday. 08.09.26 

Posted in Money Queen Feed after Prem’s morning session:

The melting has begun. 

My heart is opening. I realise I talk in 4 different languages.

1. Premie language. (My spiritual community of 50 years)
2. Money Queen Feed language.
3. Consulting with AI language.
4. Newsletter language.

My goal is to talk in one language.

Literally. But also, each language must learn to feed the other.

1. My early beliefs as a Premie said money is a bad thing — spirituality concepts. However, how the fuck am I gonna go to gigs like here Australia without money?
2. It is safe to show Money Queen Feed all aspects of my spirituality including Prem Rawat. For example, how it soothes me to hear him say today I must experience heaven while I am alive.
3. It is safe not shameful to acknowledge in public my fantastic AI conversations that help me explore my process extensively.
4. My next newsletters, written in real time, 1 per day, while I am here in Australia, will incorporate all 4 languages.

Written after Prem’s evening session:

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to Prem Rawat.

Object: Dungarees

12 associations.

1. Sunglasses
2. Music
3. Dancing
4. Showing off
5. Rhythm
6. Feeling part of it all
7. Maggie
8. The Appian Way
9. Falafels
10. Gay man and table
11. Paul Hogan
12. Picked up and special

She has just left Maggie after the veranda and the toilets where she looks in the mirror and she looks a hundred years old and they laugh after she nearly cries when this morning that woman off the bus with the great sunglasses — ‘I love you sunglasses’ — says to her, ‘I love your style; I was watching you get on the bus.’

She decides to walk to stay out of the crowd along the path the bucolic path that looks like a Constable but is the Australian outback and she knows she is going to be late cos she’s had such a leisurely shower after watching Maggie though she doesn’t know she is called Maggie yet. Maggie who is big and brash and holding the stick so she can talk and she will never let the others have the stick. Then she has her long shower cos she doesn’t want to get caught with them, then she is walking down the road feeling cool, but in a kind of a hurry so she tells the universe I need some transport then a bus is coming in her direction and it drives past her but she knows it has to drive back and then it is behind her and she gets in it when it stops and she explains she had the long shower and knows she is late but today is all about her, she can feel it like a message, today is her day she is special the universe has decided she is special. They used to think like this when they were Premified. Sally, New York and Cheri, New York, love the word she has made up. It describes them perfectly, the 1970s Premies. The little rules and regulations, things they thought possible when they were young women influenced by Woodstock. That young women, now, labelling it as manifestation, teach. As her mum would say, teaching someone how to suck eggs — she can’t remember how the saying goes.

She doesn’t like that she has made an entanglement. She likes it in the moment, then she likes it to stop, but now Maggie has said we have to swap numbers. How disloyal. To Maggie. She catches herself thinking shit like this. ‘Whose voice is saying this to you?’ asks a line of Prem Rawat’s lyrics. The frustrating thing about Prem is no one outside the moment can see, feel, hear what a bang on stand-up comedian he is. Until you experience him. His technique is brilliant. It’s who he is. Like who she is. It’s taking the most serious shit and making it more fucking serious. Tell the most most most absurd truth about the truth. You can’t be funny when you’re thinking about funny.

She can’t seem to stop being on show today. But why not. Why not? The woman in the sunglasses thinks her dungarees stylish. Then the gay men, the couple who keep trying to befriend her, who come to sit at her table in the pavilion, can’t sit in the sun. So, the next thing they are moving the table onto the grass so the parasol will stay up. And Paul Hogan and his conspiracy theories.

But yet, but yet, her and Prem talk about the vastness of the universe. Not physics. No, it is awe. It is reality. He is keyed into reality. Him first. Her second. He has given her permission. No more permission.

She realises as she journals after the afternoon show that Paul Hogan makes himself her jailer after he fixes her parasol before the gay couple come over and take over her table. The impositions. The entire impositions of who they want her to be. Who they think she is. She is just funny. She has to sidestep like a rugby player the body slams to the ground.

But loves it really, she loves everyone loving her. When she passes the guy walking with an umbrella against the sun and he says she’s brave she smiles like Liz Taylor like he is one of her audiences. She even tilts her head slightly. And she keeps real rhythm in the audience when people are dancing. She is dancing in her seat. Showing off cos she has real rhythm they have no rhythm. They have that terrible Woodstock, I'm away with the fairies’ rhythm. She has the rhythm of someone from clubs.

Even the walk back along the Appian Way between the amphitheatre and the pavilion where she buys the falafel is for display. Not that people are watching. She is watching herself being stylish. Her ego walking. Her glorious ego that takes her from someone who can’t afford a pea in the Malaga bullring to someone who stays in a £2000 tent that ain’t worth the money but the fact that she has paid it is everything.

Amaroo. Day 3. Wednesday. 09.09.26

Posted in Money Queen Feed after Prem’s morning session:

All my life is staged. I even do it when I am on my own. I love staging. I love costumes. I love bowls that don't match but look great on their own. But cos their mine and I love them they look great together. I love great denim items. I love bags not shoes. I love listening to Prem Rawat today say know thyself. I've always interpreted this as a Delphi mountain thing with goddesses. But I am the goddess. I love my audience. I love being worshipped. Even when that is by me.

Written after Prem’s evening session: 

Title: She Wonders What Binds Her to Prem Rawat

Object: Feet

12 associations

1. Tom’s smelly feet when he is a drunk
2. She keeps seeing him everywhere
3. His glasses, his grey hair.
4. His brother
5. 13 years old
6. White wife
7. Learning to fly
8. On paper he looks like a cunt
9. But he’s cute, not good looking cute
10. He has a weird little walk
11. She sees it today as she waits in the Darshan line, in person
12. Just before she enters, she feels afraid

Darshan Religious and Philosophical Meaning:

• In Worship: refers to beholding the inner sanctum (garbhagriha) and image (murti) of a deity in a Hindu temple or receiving the sight of a revered guru or saint. It is considered a two-way interaction where the devotee receives a divine blessing
• In Philosophy: The term designates the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy (Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta) as instruments of spiritual vision.

It is tall. He is tall. Imposing on his throne a bit like the Madonna carried in Spain on Easter Monday or is it Christmas, something to intimidate. It is hard to stay away from abuse and cults with a western mind. He is tall, off the floor. His feet at her chin. The person in front kisses his feet on top of their own hands and is moved on quickly; they have to move the line. She has never known what to think about this ritual. Never had the big experience. She tries to force it once when she is much younger like the girl behind her now. Crying. Making a show of herself. Making herself on show. Like she keeps walking near the security guards who are not Premies because she wants them to love her, to flirt with them cos that is what people of their age do. It isn’t the younger person who watches her but the older person. Does he fancy her or is he just watching the movement? But now she is crying. Before she is crying, the young woman is blocking the vision of Prem Rawat getting out of his top-notch car and going through the back door with his weird little walk. He puts his feet down slightly to the side and his whole foot, or is it heel to toe. It isn’t fake. It isn’t like a guru-guru.

She keeps saying to the people she ends up sitting at tables with during meals, ‘He’s just this short of saying I don’t give a fuck.’ ‘He said something similar once, I think it was in … ‘the person can’t remember. ‘He didn’t swear obviously. He said he is too old to care.’

They can’t fuck with him now. He hasn’t fucked with her in all this time. He hasn’t shagged anyone else; he has always been with his wife who travels with him; there are no scandals; his kids are big now he hasn’t put a step wrong. A 13-year-old boy when he comes to the UK. He’s supposed to go back after the holidays, but then he contacts his mum, his real Indian mum, and says he isn’t going back. His dad, the perfect master before him, tells his son to take it to the world; his dad only takes Knowledge to India. Prem comes to the UK. Is on Granada Reports. Where she sees him. The Boy God.

She is in front of him now. She’s not quite sure what to do, so she touches his foot. He never looks down. He looks ahead. This is his blessing. Nothing happens. She just feels lighter. At the table, to the Irish guy, she says, ‘The melting has begun.’ He laughs. The melting has begun. She thinks she sees Tom as she is walking away, but he’s been dead these last 3 years. She keeps seeing him. His glasses, his grey hair. And his brother Dessie. The 3 of them used walk from Alexander Rd in Moss Side to Moorlands Rd in East Disbury to attend satsang before any of their kids are born. Before Tom’s feet are smelly with the drink. Before they all receive Knowledge and don’t practise. Dessie is dancing like everyone else. Dancing alongside the living on the back row, where she sits rocking. cos she is tired. The melting has begun.

There is no big experience anymore for those old enough to know not to fake it, their meditation carries them through. She doesn’t like the songs to begin with, but he’s getting quite good. His legacy. Like Rumi and Kabir, his hero’s. He’s ramping it up tonight. Tom is not dancing. He is making a roll up out of the corner of her eye.

Wow the vision of a 13-year-old who confesses in the first song he reveals to them, his captive audience, on a land where nobody but they exist for 7 days, where they leave their belongings on their seat to queue up knowing no one will steal them as they queue up for Darshan in the baking sun, nobody talking. Waiting. Watching. Then his little funny walk, he is cute, not good looking cute, like a funny doll, especially when he walks between his dead tall minders. She sees it today as she waits in the Darshan line, in person, she sees how subtly he is changing like her. She keeps remembering his line, ‘It took me 68 years to learn not to upset myself.’ The line she most identifies with. He can afford to be this human now. Time is running out. Fuck it. Time is running out. Fuck it. Fuck the pretence.

 The 13-year-old boy that says on Glastonbury stage, ‘I have what you are looking for.’ His accent is thick then. The accent he uses to tell his Indian mum that he is marrying a white woman; he is 16 years old. The accent that tells them, his devotees, to raise the money for the plane that he will learn to fly to complete his dad’s bidding. On paper he looks like a cunt. But sitting at the back, he looks like a man who … What exactly has he done? The old men, who can’t dance, are dancing.

Prem produces his music with AI. Each evening, she asks AI to feedback on these logs. Two aging clever people using AI to express themselves.

Amaroo. Day 4. Thursday. 10.09.26.

Posted in Money Queen Feed after Prem’s morning session:

 The bliss has kicked in.

Written after Prem’s evening session.

Title: She Wonders What Binds Her to Prem Rawat

Object: Blue dress with green leaves

12 associations:

1. Second-hand shop
2. Becoming her own person
3. Style
4. Practising style
5. Being who she always wanted to be
6. First showing this person to the world
7. Prem
8. Bliss
9. Her deathbed
10. Holding onto the experience as long as she can
11. More bliss
12. Just fucking bliss

Okay, what matters the most in the world is bliss. This is her conclusion tonight. But how the fuck is she gonna tell anyone? Would you know Jesus if there was no Bible, and he’d not met a terrible end? And what if the Lazarus story is what she witnesses last night a load of old people with Parkinsons and all other kinds of diseases, what if they are Lazarus and the lepers. What if the cure is not a miracle and what if they aren’t cured what if they are so blissed out that they appear cured for that minute cos suddenly they can dance. Pick up your bed and walk. What if that is caused by seeing their perfect master Jesus. Her perfect master is Prem.

She always feels slightly ashamed, more than slightly, about this whole situation but when she is with Prem she is blissed out and she thinks about her deathbed cos he always reminds her, them, that they are gonna die and they must make the most of it when they are here. But this is a platitude — not as a platitude. She never knows how to do it, how to bring him alive to others. All this week she wants to describe him as Daryl Van Horne and nobody can remember his name and suddenly the woman that doesn’t believe in him is spewing up cherry pips.

He has the same kick start of your heart and your style and who you want to be. Becoming your own person like Susan Sarandon eating gherkins in the shop from the jar and the real women the village women knowing she’s a whore, her feeling like a whore, the big demonstrative it’s the who she wants to be, first showing this person to the world. Her style. Practising her style. ‘Make big booby dolls.’ Cher making big booby dolls. Practising her style. Making her heart loud in the world. Walking in bliss. Like sucking lassi on the shuttle with her two new gay couple friends. And wearing her blue and big green flower dress, she buys in a second-hand shop, on the second day and knowing people love it. The dress she wears to have darshan.

First practising this person after beginning her hour’s meditation. First, she can only stomach 5 minutes. It is hard to sit still. Motionless. Her or Tom haven’t practised their meditation for 9 years. She doesn’t want to think of him., them, the past, tonight. She wants to live in the moment. Live in the moment. The past is a picture. The future​, a dream.

She is sitting in her bed in her tent holding onto the experience of the last few days as long as she can. Letting it live in her. Letting it be her reality. It is her reality. The rest is delusional. There is bliss, bliss and more bliss. She wants to walk on bliss until her deathbed. Just fucking bliss.

They are like 3 happy, contented children on the bus. Sucking mango lassi through straws. Discussing Prem and what he means. Like Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher knowing they have the same lover. But, and this is an important but, in 50 years there has never been the snakes and the manipulating their weak spots, like Michelle is afraid of illness and he gives her pain. ‘He has never disappointed me,’ she says and they have to agree.

Amaroo. Day 5. Friday. 11.09.26

Unlike the rest of the week when she has her breakfast first, she does her meditation first. Immediately after she posts in Money Queen Feed:

What if He didn't actually turn water to wine; what if He raised the vibe so much everyone thought they were pissed.

What if He didn't raise Lazarus from the dead; what if Lazarus just thought he was dead and buried and depressed as fuck, and He rolled the stone back and breathed life back into him.

What if He didn't make an actual blind man see; what if He washed the fear and misgivings and lies blocking the bliss from my eyes; so, I can see the gifts given to me, freely.

Ears that can hear people weep, and hand them the tissues in the form of writing techniques that show them the path to his feet. (If they want it.)

Title: She Wonders What Binds Her to Prem Rawat

Object: The Bible

12 associations

1. Crying in the cot cos he isn’t alive at the same time as Jesus.
2. The gentlest of guys.
3. Sick now, so many are sick
4. Lourdes
5. Hope, near death experiences, facing death
6. Many aren’t sick
7. There are young people
8. The lepers
9. The Sermon on the Mount
10. Stop pussyfooting around it, it has to be the bottom line of all the religions
11. You wouldn’t go to a dead doctor
12. Bullshit detector

Her and Prem Rawat have one single thing completely in common: they have a really healthy bullshit detector. She keeps hers to herself a lot of the time, but here she has been able to show it. To work out the in between. Let’s look at it. Subtext. All transactions are based on subtext. They are asking something and in return you give something. A lot of these older people here are not simply here because they are in love with Prem Rawat’s way of thinking, of his delivery, of his message, they are here because it is like Lourdes, it fits a stereotypical way of thinking taught to them with the bible that something will save them. But this isn’t really fair because Prem loves to say there is no way out, we are all going to die, he does not promise them ever, never, everlasting life. He tells them, he tells her, she hears that she is going to die. As he says it, she feels fear, then remembers her dad’s deathbed and the piddling UK stars and looking up at the stars and knowing you really do die.

Here he is on stage, and he is gonna die with them too. He is admitting that his knees hurt too, so it isn’t fair to say it is a Lourd​es situation. Though it will be for some. For some with near death experiences it will be a second chance experience to set the clock straight for the next go. Like Maggie’s aneurysm. What is her reason? She has completely forgot why she has come. But she knows one thing, she has been distracted from her path as she chases money with the Money Queen Feed, as she takes her eye off the ball with the Money Queen Feed. What fucking ball? She’s confused again. But there is one great story.

The gentlest of guys, tells this strange story for no reason, with tears in his eyes, as she eats her lunch cos she manages to attract little crowds now, little pools of people who love the ways she talks, how she swears, how she laughs, how she listens. She is listening now to him and watching intently the tears welling up as he explains how he is crying in his cot cos he isn’t born at the same time as Jesus. She says to him, ‘But you are in this time, you are here. In that cot you are asking the creator, the universe or whatever you want to call it, and it answers you.’ He agrees. His eyes still sad. It is a moment. A moment when 2 hearts meet. Their eyes hold each other. It doesn’t matter what is happening at the rest of the table. There is no hope, it is not a near death experiences, his Parkinson diagnosis is telling him he is facing death

It isn’t long before the rest of the table distract to their own superhero story and it’s here she no longer cares about superheroes. She cuts the rope bridge and lets the superheroes drop. His boy, blue eyes are soft and pale as he begins his journey into the disease. Yet all of his body looks like a young man. Those men that always look like a boy. He isn’t here for Lourdes, for a Lourdes situation. He comes every year. Him and his wife. They come every year. They go off on holiday. His wife likes Darwin, last year. His wife tells her story of the riptide. ‘How would you know about Jesus in the cot?’ His Irish accent remains soft, ‘I must have been 3.’

Many are sick, really sick. It disgusts her. Sickness means death means ugliness — it just don’t go with her staged life and today’s version of her blue and green dress with a green short jumper over and a dark true blue linen scarf to give it a pop and when the woman has the epileptic fit or whatever it is, she recoils, like the woman who puts her hands to her own face. Like she’s a leper, the sick woman, who has fallen between the chairs. The Indian woman, the older Indian woman, gets up, immediately, and puts them all at ease, the children ones, the westerners.

The slope makes it the Sermon on the Mount. Both the slope of the amphitheatre and the slope of the hill they climb, a gradient. Each wanting something. An exchange. He receives love in exchange. Adoration. He gives so much. The morning session, the afternoon Darshan, the evening session, he stands motionless as he plays his tracks. The lyrics, lines of satsang, cross the screen, they read them. They know what they mean. He knows what they mean. Jesus would have said similar things. There is nothing else to say. She has said many times this week to other Premies cos she can trust that they know what she means; ‘Stop pussyfooting around it, it has to be the bottom line of all the religions.’ Or words to that effect. Even in the food queues the conversation descends to I am so grateful. Together with each other they do not have to defend themselves.

It’s when she is sat in bed on her own, she remembers the line Prem Rawat said many many years ago when they used to call him Maharaji, the name change to make him more palatable to a world that needs him — there are young people here who have probably never heard this name — ‘You would not go to a dead doctor.’ Sick now, so many are sick. But many aren’t sick, they come every year.

It is the best sky tonight; and she’s not scared of it.

Home-time. Saturday/Sunday. 12/13. 09.26

Title. A Beached Whale and 4 Clean White Towels

Object: Hotel

12 associations

1. Money
2. Her dad’s house
3. Her dad’s money
4. Spreading it out
5. 4 equal parts
6. South Africa
7. The Savoy
8. Safari
9. She likes experience
10. She likes to be comfortable
11. Flawed
12. 1^st class

One of the questions that Money Queen Amanda Frances asks is what do you want? You manifest things more easily when you know what it is you want. She struggles with this. What does she want? She wants to be able to pay her bills. She wants to live where there are sounds of animals not interfered with by the sound of the road. She realises this sitting in her tent on Saturday morning.

There is one clean towel on the bottom rung of her constructed bathroom station. What’s the fucking point of that? Like her dad having 20 grands savings when he’s dying. What’s the fuck is he saving for? Spend it. Spend the fucker. But she couldn’t the other day when Qatar first offers her 1^st class for 732 euros. £600 more or less. 2188 euros full price. Around a 1/3^rd. A 1/3^rd of her journey, Doha to Malaga. Just under a 1/3rd. But she couldn’t. Learned behaviour.

When she actually fucking loves rocking up to the Savoy when it is still the Savoy. 20 years ago. In denim. With Doc Martens and a ripped denim backpack and asking how much and it is £300 and its more than a month’s rent. The hotel accommodation for her play reading. She wants to stay in the Savoy with its arched doorways and bath so deep she floats in it and the first time she has ever seen a waterfall shower head. Wow. Bashing her head in. Pounding her back.

When she rings to finds out the price of Safari when she’s on an Art’s Council Develop Your Creative Practise grant to see the Cradle of Humankind. And they greet her at the private lodge like she is in Downton Abbey. There it is — the key — it’s not her money. She is afraid of spending her money. Or afraid of making money. She’s not sure. But if she spends the £732 it’s her money. Her money. Her money. What is going on?

She loves beautiful experiences. You have to pay for beautiful experiences. She loves comfort. You have to pay for comfort. Then she remembers as she stares at the white towel in her wash station, listening to the crazy sounds of aggressive Australian birds, the little 3-year-old who has seen the beached whale and she is in nursery and she’s passing it on. Spreading it out. It is a moment of news. She is freaked out. 'We are all going to die.’ The nursery aids and the teachers calm her, and the other kids shirk her, but she repeats it like, ‘Hear ye hear ye hear ye, we are all going to die.’

If she knows that, if we all know that we are all going to die, we would calculate that 4 clean white towels over 8 days: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday morning equals 2 towels a day so no matter how dirty or clean they remain we should use them equally, in 4 equal parts.

Unlike her dad’s money and her dad’s house. Who does he think is coming to tell him it is finally time to make use of your savings? By then they are no use to him, he has lost his mind. Tom’s mind just fritters away with the preening gossip to keep his hand in, to be seen as a big fish in the small fish pond of Moss Side. Just gone. Just ended. ‘He’d have loved his huge funeral,’ her and her daughter laugh, ‘He didn’t calculate he wouldn’t be there.’

She’s sorry she didn’t pay for first class just off the bat, but maybe she has to go that little bit further before the healed skin reveals itself and she can use her own money to fuel her own life and have her own experiences. What does she want? She likes to be comfortable. But she likes it to be a bit flawed, like denim, so she can sit in the grass. 

Homework

Over the next 5 days, I want you to contemplate death by rewriting A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels.

1. Today: Read this newsletter.
2. Tuesday: In your Sacred Hour Sacred Space (SHSS).

• Title: A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels
• What tangible object do you see?
• List 12 associations.
• I'm finding I need 30 minutes to write.
• Remember you are exclusively in the 3^rd person.
• You are the narrator in the reader’s eyes.
• In your eyes you are both the narrator and the protagonist once removed.

3. Wednesday: In your SHSS, push further and link it to the vulnerable person inside you don't show to anyone.

• Title: A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels
• What tangible object do you see?
• List 12 associations.
• 30 minutes to write.

4. Thursday: In your SHSS, review the favourite book you are listening to now. How are they using their writing to look at death?

• Title: A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels
• What tangible object do you see?
• List 12 associations.
• 30 minutes to write.

5. Friday: In your SHSS. Before you begin, ask yourself what does interrogating the same title over and over again do to me and my writing?

• Title: A Beached Whale, and Four Clean White Towels
• What tangible object do you see?
• List 12 associations.
• 30 minutes to write.

Prem Rawat

 In case you wanna know more. https://www.premrawat.com/