19 Oct 2026 12 min read

Chapter 10. Wax-on Wax-off Becomes the Crane

Introduction

I do not mean to be rude, or unreasonable. You have to abandon all you have learned about how to write before you read my book. Your subconscious, my subconscious, knows the truth. It has been watching life surrounding us all our life. It is an animal instinct. Your gut feelings. Programmed for unadulterated survival. We have been watching out for harm, love, care, food, something to cherish and tell our truth to. Your writing is the place in which you can disseminate your findings. Today I realise this is what my favourite books have in common. There is an acute observer watching, keenly watching, themselves and their surroundings. And you, me, the reader cannot fault, dispute what they are imparting cos our gut knows it is the truth. To emit this as a writer, you have to inhabit this as an observer. Throughout these newsletters I have been looking for a method, an infallible method, that combines my techniques to nourish that gut, one we can rely upon, like eating prunes will make you shit.

Chapters 1 — 8. We repeat the 12-word technique. Wax-on — wax-off. We create narratives that sizzle.

Chapters 9. Junction. I search for my authority and the simplest method to teach you the Crane. I have it. From now on we will:

Monday. Newsletter. Read only. I will tell you some anecdotes, an incident in which I witness the techniques do their magic. Or an invaluable step on my artistic journey. I will always show you my completed homework. My credentials. Reasons for you to trust me more. Think of them as Mr Mijagi fighting, using the pan lid as a weapon.

Tuesday. A3. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. You, and I, create an 8-station mind-map to digest Monday’s newsletter.

Wednesday. A5. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. You, and I, write a morning pages/12-word narrative: What Do the 8-station Symbols Mean to Me? In the first person so we feel and are moved by it.

Thursday. A3. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. You, and I, create an 8-station mind-map to digest and unpack: ‘What Do the 8-station Symbols Mean to Me narrative.

Friday. A5. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. This intensive practice releases a 12-word narrative of a different calibre to chapters 1 — 8. Written in the 3^rd person so we have distance and perspective. Wax-on wax-off becomes the Crane

Reflections

A3 mind-maps and A5 narratives give us a plant’s 2-leaf fractal, immerging through the soil, towards the light. The light that feeds the subtextual roots below the soil, holding its self-creation in place. Both directions’ size, shape, appearance are influenced by everything it interacts with.

I may not have captured this method if I had not accepted one sentence in Chapter 9. The Untethering. Wednesday. 07.10.26 morning pages/12-word interrogating 8-station symbol meanings.

‘She does a gardening course once, when she is first untethering herself. 1995. It is miles away in Wythenshawe Park.’

I barely saw it. I didn’t want it. What the fuck am I gonna do with it? If I had not accepted it, I may not have investigated plant fractals. My subconscious was showing me the way. Showing me what I already knew. Showing me what interests me. Showing me an interesting path through.

Tuesday. 13.10.26

A3 8-station mind-map digesting yesterday’s newsletter.

Wednesday. 14.10.26

Title. What do the 8-station symbols mean to me?

Object. The first object I literally see is 19:19 on my computer’s clock.

12 associations.

Fallen Angel (the protagonist)
Crosshatch Circle (the theme/backdrop)
The Mask (something is hidden)
Crescent Moon (a cycle)
Split Rectangle (change/transition)
The World (Equator, Capricorn, Cancer, ozone = emotional climate)
The Ghost (the presence of the past)
The Sword (the final choice/resolution.) Like Arthur, you can pull it from the stone — but it can still stab you to death.
Symbols
Tarot cards. Nothing is wrong and nothing is right.
Alive
Evolution

Lucifer is the first thing I think of when I think of the fallen angel. It is 19:19, when I start this writing, on the clock on my computer. I really want to write tonight. I really want to live in my life. I really feel like it is my life. I have a new Wise international bank account. This is a change. My pension is coming to this address now. This is a change. My new iPhone 17 is working. This is a change. But the biggest change, the true black to white is not entering the drama with my sister. And understanding how I will seem wrong in her eyes. How it will look like I am taking the piss. But a correspondence address to me, means all your correspondence goes there. But this is the first time she will be able to make all her decisions in her new house. I can make all my own decisions too. I think I have been masking how scared I am about leaving England. And maybe she is masking that too, and why she herself says, ‘You need a UK address, Lin.’ I think she is scared for me. And I am scared for myself. But it’s done now. And we do not have the usual row. And she asks politely. And I say please don’t ring me till I do it. Cos, I know our minds. We want everything yesterday. We are unreasonable. But it is so daunting, and then it takes five minutes.

Black to white. England to Spain. I am walking down the road to the garage to get some chocolate. In any given moment chocolate is my treat. We break a cycle under a crescent moon or is it a full moon. It is a moon. A harvest moon. Harvest festivals. Thank God we are fed. People leave all the time them days, never to see their family again. I think this about dad. How it feels to not see his entire family, his mum, his other brothers, his 2 big sisters, for 16 years. But they have sibling rivalry too. I can tell by the way he heaves up the suitcases from Sue’s. He must look the king. Dresses for everyone. A little 3 up 3 down. The king. Everyone must think well of him. Like the little glasses with the gold rim in the front room cabinet.

I ignore where the chocolate comes from before, my love of chocolate, cos I don’t want to talk about my dad — but you can’t cheat the tarot cards, they are telling me to read them properly. The chocolate comes from measles, Rubella, and chicken pox and he brings home a huge bar, they don’t make these bars now, maybe in the airport. Huge, huge purple bars, the colour of Helen Mirren’s coat when she falls. Huge, huge bars. And we are under an eiderdown. The old motley looking lumpy eiderdown that lives in our bedrooms then. All of us. Except Elaine. She never gets these diseases. Any childhood diseases. She never does what he says she must do, either, as a kid. She is staunch. Always staunch. Makes it into her badge of honour. Her sword that can possibly stab her to death.

My badge is chocolate. Like the chocolates I steal on the run ups to Xmas or Easter — hidden on top of the bedroom wardrobe. I sneak up and promise myself I will only take the purple and the green. But sure, enough, by the time the day comes they are gone. ‘You are selfish,’ she says to me once when I am recounting the story again like it is fun, a fun game, part of my makeup, part of my staunchness. She is staunch the way she holds my gaze.

Yeah, I am selfish. I have never seen it from that angle before. Like I never see all the things coming to her door that she must bring to this visit. And she’s right, I do not ask her permission. I feel like the fallen angel when I realise. My angel is upside down. In shame. On a wheel of shame. Hung, drawn, and quartered on a wheel. But when I don’t try to deny it, the cycle is broken. Except, she blocks me before she reads the text.

The world, hey, the world, is alive with misunderstandings.

My 2014 psychotherapy causes this change. I am able to process things much better these days. Taught by Peter, Paul and Mary in Harpurhey. They get onto carrying my exploded bags, makes me feel special. The red mist is under control. Evolution has happened. Years ago, one of us would scream abuse; one of us would bang on the other's door; start WW2, even though only 20 years has passed since 1919. Or in our timeline 20 months. Our last moment is June 2025. The definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

On my way to the garage to get the chocolate, I can feel the air going out of the blow-up Father Xmas all over again. And my mum mentioning Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer or is it Tropic of Capricorn, like she is learned. She should have been learned. I am no longer gonna behave like I am not. That ghost lives in England now. I am alive in my techniques. Alive in my methods. The background, the theme, is colour washing itself right back to the sugar-paper. To the feet I can’t draw on the senator in Mr Flint’s history lesson — I do capture the toga. To the maths the short teacher makes me excel at. To Mr Morley’s A* — even for the one when I first let go and practice 12-words before I know there is 12-words. When I take what is handed to me, and I let it flow, drop the mask of what I see around me, in my own little world with all the other characters writers evolve. I write about — as if it is happening — our little street gang, grabbing the flour off the shelves to pelt the Singhs who own it, to pelt the … Elaine isn’t under that blanket either. And I can’t freely generate that kinetic energy until I receive the symbols of 8-station mind-maps.

Thursday. 15.10.26.

A3 8-station mind-map digesting What Do the 8-station Symbols Mean to Me narrative.

Friday. 16.10.26.

‘Whether the memory is true is irrelevant: you are the story you have been telling yourself.’ Linda Brogan. Friday 16.10.26

Title: Taking the Seat in the Shade

Object: Snazzy glasses

12 associations

Deep meaningful conversations.
Loudness
Impressing each other
Winning awards and a long table.
Gannets
Jealousy and envy
Sitting quietly waiting for the kill
Feeding upon one another
Keeping, holding back your card so others pay
The little turtles running for their life
On the edge of the water, on the beach in a deck chair
On the beach in the sand

A beached whale and 4 clean white towels. A beached whale. Is it Death in Venice? The main character is sitting in a deck chair on the beach — dying. This is what she remembers. She watches it on her own. Something her and her dad have in common are deep meaningful films. They never discuss them. Impress each other with them. They never have deep meaningful conversations — like the intellectuals (she can tell by their snazzy glasses) on the table she dares to abandon to take the seat in the shade — she just knows he loves them. She just knows she loves them.

He watches French films. The beauty of this being he can’t read, so he can’t read the subtitles, but he must be getting something from them. He must be reading the images. What a mind to have. To sit there peacefully with his pipe. He doesn’t smoke a pipe yet. He doesn’t smoke it till she meets Tom and he keeps offering Tom cigs and Tom keeps taking them, so to keep the cost down her dad smokes a pipe.

She smokes a pipe too. When her daughter is about 6. No, maybe 8 and they buy her cheap trainers on the way to the beach, their only family holiday, led by the youngest daughter and her boyfriend, a bank manager, who likes his dick to be beaten and tied up in a black leather thing. They laugh about it in one of their drunk soirees when they tell each other too much.

She smokes a pipe to be like her dad, maybe. A man she admires. Or like her Jamaican aunts. Or like sophisticated Greek widows who live near beaches where he is sat on the edge of the water, on the beach in a deck chair, on the beach waiting to die. Is Elizabeth Taylor in the film? The worst actress. Until she becomes herself, ageing and in competition with her husband in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Her dad loves this film. He laughs. No, smirks to himself. She is watching him out of the corner of her eye cos this is them; this is them, her mum and dad, bound together in their hate and their love, their jealousy and their envy, their orbit of death, till one will devour the other, swallow it whole, and their secrets.

Their secret knocks on the family home in 1963. They live an idyllic life till then; she is the little star like Bette Davis. The little child star with sticky out dresses and lace topped ankle socks and patent leather shoes, black. And gloriously combed hair. And a little strut like her dad, who takes her and her brother to Bainsess to buy their winter duffle coat. ‘How are you Mr Samuels?’ Mr Samuels inhabits it like he owns a throne. He lives in a throne room. And they are a little prince and a little princess. Then Angie knocks on the door. If there had been a bird, Angie would cook it, no, leave it raw under the hood, the silver hood, for the child, her little stepsister, to lift and scream. Then take her to the beach on the sand to die, in a blanket. ‘Her heart belongs to daddy.’

Angie’s jealousy and envy — the older, neglected, abandoned stepsister, the Cinderella — never finds a prince, but a paedophile who touches her stepsisters’ breasts when they are growing. Our protagonist is never sure if the wicked stepsister is in on this or is oblivious of this. But our protagonist knows that is impossible. It is blatant. But by now they are abandoned as well. The stepbrother-in-law sits quietly, waiting for the kill. A gannet feeding on the titbits his wife feeds him. Angie’s revenge. As her mum and her mum’s lover feed upon each other in the background. Ingrained now. Irremovable. So, Angie keeps them dislodged, unable to put down roots. Like the girls. And her stepbrother who hates her. He simply hates her, because every day when he is going to school, she says, ‘Your mum might not be here when you get home.’

And only now does our protagonist realise what Angie is doing. One day when Angie comes home, Angie’s mum is gone. She isn’t home. She doesn’t come home. 4/5 years later Angie comes to look for her. And though her mum and her mum’s lover open the door, Angie lives in no-man’s land. Listening to their loudness on the other side of the interior door. She is able to see Elaine through the letterbox. She loves Elaine through the letterbox. When her mother opens the door to use her as weaponry, Angie cares for Elaine near the letterbox.

Her mother’s lover is keeping, holding back his card so the others pay. While the little turtles are running for their life. Taking the seat in the shade, he listens to cricket. To drown out his lover’s loudness. Her daughter goes for Guinness. To amplify her mother’s loudness. He goes upstairs and shuts his door.

And one day his daughter will win awards and a long table.

Homework

Monday. Newsletter. Read only. In contrast to my book length conversation with ChatGPT last week, this week’s credentials are my impactful pithy introduction, now that I have found my balls. I have great anecdotes I will tell you over the next few weeks. This week let’s not contaminate the simplicity of our gorgeous wax-on wax-off becoming the Crane.

Tuesday. A3. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. You, and I, create an 8-station mind-map to digest yesterday’s newsletter.

Thursday. A3. Homework. Sacred hour sacred space. You, and I, create an 8-station mind-map to digest and unpack: ‘What Do the 8-station Symbols Mean to Me? narrative.

Title: Wax-on Wax-off Becomes the Crane (If your personal title hasn’t revealed itself yet, use mine.)
Object. What is the first tangible object you see when you hear the title you are using?
List 12 associations. (In the first person.)
You must include the object and all 12 associations under your title.
30 minutes to write. (Exclusively in the 3rd person.)