Chapter 12. Not Another Fucking Jug

Writing this chapter I have discovered —

1. As instructed, for each day's mind-map, I always use the original gas cloud again. (The 8 linked discoveries I made when I fused my 12-word chapters together.) But some days I have concentrated only on 2 linked couplets.
2. I always begin with my instinct. What I am drawn to.
3. I always begin each arm of the couplet in its original station.
4. I allow its associations to evolve.
5. I am interested in what its evolution landing on an empty station reveals.
6. That thought is my next image.
7. If I was doing this just for me, I would utterly let go.
8. Because I know you are watching/reading me, I am fighting a push and pull dynamic, what to reveal and what not to reveal as I can't take anything back. Interestingly this mimics a star's expansion out, fighting gravity pushing it in.

The Forces Involved

Expansion Out: The heat and radiation generated by nuclear fusion in the core creates immense outward pressure.
Gravity Pushing In: Gravity is the force that pulls all the matter in a star toward its centre, constantly trying to collapse it.
The Fight: For most of a star's life these two forces are in balance: the inward pull of gravity exactly matches the outward pressure of fusion.

Interestingly This Mimics

The statement highlights the star's structure is not static, but a dynamic struggle. 

• This cycle of contraction (gravity winning) and expansion (pressure winning) mimics a breathing or pulsating motion, where the star is constantly adjusting its size to maintain stability. 
• When a star runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core, it loses the fight. Gravity begins to win, causing the core to compress and heat up, which in turn causes the outer layers to expand significantly, often becoming a red giant.

Final Fate

• Eventually, the fuel is completely exhausted, or the core becomes iron, and fusion can no longer provide enough pressure to push back.
• Gravity wins permanently, leading to a massive collapse and a spectacular explosion (supernova) or a, quiet contraction into a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. 
• This analogy describes the star as a living entity struggling against its own immense gravity, expanding outwards as it dies, fighting until it can no longer hold itself together. 

Our Memoir's Destiny

I am absolutely expecting a version of this evolution to overtake our memoir. These are the laws of physics we are following. We don't have to create anything. Just evolve. Evolution is governed by and governs drama.

Monday 02.03.26

Ignites 

I lie in primary school and say he is a doctor. We are not allowed to play out with the riff-raff. Are we the replacement posh kids for the ones she left back home? Are her values the dockets on the kitchen table that she refuses to leave behind?

Weirdly, I love cream and blue porcelain.  I love that jug. I love my life before that moment. I love school. The idyll. The things I make up in my mind. Who are these people? I love the Jewish dream that a documentary tells me is the bottom line of the American dream’s pecan pie. The Irish family values.  She plants in Moss Side. She has to be better than anyone else. We buy a sideboard with prestige. Does the drop-leaf table stand for all we know of mum’s 12-seater table that she plans? It won’t have been the first time she sees it, when she marries him. She has seen it many times. When she comes to high tea with Mr and Mrs Stanners, and their 3 sons and their daughter, the maiden aunt Madeline. She’s hardly gonna say her mum’s a prostitute.

I scream at her, ‘You married a man for money.’ Angie, that fucking Angie won’t go away. Go away. Fucking go away.

Angie’s pram is in the garden. In their big garden. I think she still thinks she has that garden. We are not allowed to play outside with the riff-raff.

School is taking us to the zoo. I am sat, from inside out, in new clothes with a straw hat with a blue ribbon around. She has beaten the shit out of me in the school grounds because I have got on the bus. Then she washes my face. No. She drags me home in a duffle coat he has bought me. She brings me back without any lunch because there isn’t enough time. I am dressed from inside out in navy and white, with a straw boater. The other kids are wearing what they were wearing when I left.

Tuesday 03.03.26

Ignites

I am 40. She is 63. 3 years younger than I am now. 1999. She has cut the cord. I have been presuming I don’t stop her. But she doesn’t call in to see me either. We are on different paths. She is turning the clock back to her nana, and her marigolds in the priest’s garden that her nana tends where they live before they are thrown out because of her mum’s shenanigans. Her mother, my nana’s shenanigans. And I am on the path back to the little girl who is amazing in school. Who wins Mousetrap at the end of her primary school. She is on her way back to God. I am on my way back to my audience. We have converged away from being in her tummy. Her tummy no longer matters to me or matters to her. Her soul is her primary concern now. Saving myself from the prison of work is mine. Money my goal. Salvation hers. Our sand dunes replaced by stairs. Steps cut into mountains. Secret goals we don’t share.

Wednesday 04.03.26

Ignites

When he comes off the boat he must have told her people were staring at him. ‘I cried living eye-water.’  When he comes to this country. To the United Kingdom. He cries living eye-water. He has one grey blanket. Maybe, she becomes a doormat by accident trying to staunch his eye-water. Trying to be a tissue. A handkerchief for all his pain. For all his grief. For the hundreds of years of being less and not knowing you are when you live in a country where everyone is less. In a rural county. Where everyone is less. Till you come here and you buy whole hands of bananas. Whole arms of bananas. So, they will, so, the greengrocer will, who you know by first name, will think you are a millionaire. You are not nobody. Your kids must be better than anyone else to make you proud. You have a triangle coffee table, and plaster plaques on the wall, of middle eastern men, until the jug cracks the sky above your kids that must try harder than anyone else and the blue and cream jug becomes something the eldest daughter buys in flea markets for decades. Maybe she is trying to stop it from being broken. Trying to catch it in flight. Or maybe it is a twisted fantasy.

‘Not another fucking jug for me to throw away when you die.’ My daughter is putting herself in rehab tomorrow.

Thursday 05.03.26

Ignites

With gratitude to the Art’s Council for funding. No. No. Fucking gratitude. You are just in a job. Getting money from poor people. People who buy lottery tickets not to be poor. Gratitude. It makes me furious. The fucking Art’s Council. Who live in their glacial palace. With gratitude. Are you fucking kidding me. Gratitude. And we can’t talk to you. While you disappear further and further up your own arse. You do not have wings. You are not a saint. A fairy. You are…

We don’t need freedom because of the colour of our skin. We just need the freedom of peace. Demonstrated in the other photos Elaine has been sending me this week of her stylish sideboard and her graceful drop leaf table. And the positioning. Building her new solitary, peaceful country home. And my comments because I am the eldest. Building my solitary, peaceful country home.

Her eyes are wild. My eyes are wild. Looking through the handle of the navy Silver Cross pram. She is tiny. She can’t speak. She can’t walk. My hands can reach the handle. But I can’t move it forward. I can’t move it back. There is probably a brake that requires a lot of pressure.

I bought a new jug today. Gil Vargas. 1960. Spanish Ceramics. 2 euros. I send Elaine a picture. ‘Where did you get the throw?’ 'I’ll take you when you come to stay.'

We are patiently, kindly, building our shared mirror as we kneel by our pond that no longer contains frogs.   

Friday. 06.03.26

Ignites 

My mum marries to become a mistress. She becomes a doormat to a slave. Her anger is expressed in the blue and cream jug. She is fucking furious.

I do what she says. I work hard to be better than everyone else. I am on attachment at the National Theatre. Have a play on at the Royal Court. The Royal Exchange. Win a Fringe First at the Traverse. But this doesn’t feel enough.

It feels enough when I am in sword fights. When the mistresses thinks they have more rights than me. And I cut each down to size. Oddly, I am not remotely interested in the master. The master doesn’t remotely interest me. 

 Creating Our Modern Stars

8-station mind-map the original gas cloud again. (The 8 linked discoveries you made when you fused your 12-word chapters together.) Now polluted by the remains of our first-generation stars, and our second generation stars.

My original gas cloud:

• Chapter 1: Compulsion to be better than others. Links to:
• Chapter 5: Mum telling me I must do better than everyone cos of the colour of my skin.

• Chapter 2: My mum is a doormat for my dad. Using her dead husband’s pension to fund the house he owns. Links to:
• Chapter 6: She may have gone to see her other kids in Limerick cos she genuinely believes her heart will kill her soon.

• Chapter 3: I am already in her tummy coming out of the pictures. Links to:
• Chapter 7: My great nanna, nanna, mum, me, my daughter are Russian doll eggs.

• Chapter 4: Me and Elaine staring at each other through the handle of her navy Silver-cross trolley as the blue and cream jug flies over our heads. Links to:
• Chapter 8: We don't need freedom because of our colour or race. We just need the freedom of peace. Demonstrated in the other photos Elaine has been sending me this week. Of her stylish sideboard, and her graceful drop-leaf table, and their positioning. Building her new, solitary, peaceful, country home. And my comments of encouragement because I am the eldest. Building my solitary, peaceful, country home.

Couplets

• Concentrate on 2 linked couplets per day.
• Take note of what station/symbol their evolutions land on.
• Interpret, tarot like, what this is implying.
• Allow that to be your next drawing.

Log Your Modern Stars

• Daily, except Saturday, in your sacred hour in your sacred place, 8-station mind-map your original 8 discoveries again.
• As couplets.
• Longhand, let go, let your discoveries ignite, once your mind-map is finished.
• Type them up.
• Same rule as 12-words you can’t change anything.
• Pair them with their mind-map as I have done here.
• Create a file.
• Log them there.