Chapter 13. This Is No Longer Chance — This Is Engineering

Hi.

I hope you are well. My blood pressure is under control. Phew!!!!!!!

Engineering

I absolutely love that, as far as we know, everything we see is made of mathematics. The seeds in a sunflower obey the Fibonacci Sequence. So does the shell of a tortoise. So does a whirlpool, being sucked into the sea. I fucking love that. This is what I was looking for. I was looking for something; I could rely upon. Something I could follow and no matter what, I wouldn’t get lost. In fact, getting lost is a prerequisite. But there is always a path. The 12-associations. The object links your mind to other minds. A title tells you the locale, location, shape of the area we are about to explore. And the 8-stations is the geometry. The measurements. Like those of the sunflower seed, a tortoise shell, a whirlpool being sucked into the sea, which is always the new number plus the old number. A form of evolution.

1. 0 + 1 = 1.
2. 1 + 1 = 2.
3. 2 + 1 = 3
4. 3 + 2 = 5
5. 5 + 3 = 8
6. 8 + 5 = 13
7. 13 + 8 = 21
8. 21 + 13 = 34

Blueprint

Creation has a blueprint. A set of instructions. A code of magic. A way to let go while being restrained. The 8-stations at the centre of your mind-map give you a lodestone, a core, they create a magnet, you cannot float off into space. They give you a simple mathematical figure to hold it all in place. They give you movement from one place to another. Their meanings tickle your mind, awaken your imagination. Creation has a wicked imagination. Or is it simply, like the caddisfly, or both techniques, it just melds, welds, one meaning to another and makes a puffer fish to combat gravity below sea, like a star’s fusion combats gravity in space. Like our skin holds our organs in place. It is all flamboyant necessity.

Symphony

I used the 8-stations this week to reimagine THE DRESS decks. To evolve it from something I was proving can work. To something that has its own internal combustion engine. That now has lungs. That now breathes air. That now is alive. But the beauty of 8-stations is I can now go back and make sure its engineering is right. As ChatGPT says, ‘That each movement is harmonious in the symphony.’ That each of the 8 actions in each of the 5 movements that span 8 weeks is melodious, builds, evolves, infuses emotion.

• Movement 1: He’s Behind You
• Movement 2: The Wand and the Pumpkin
• Movement 3: The Elves and the Shoemaker
• Movement 4: Let Them Eat Cake
• Movement 5: The Morning After

That the diagonals speak to each other. That they hold the sphere of its world in place.

1. The fallen angel, 1, is looking for change, 5.
2. The background, 2, leads to the world, 6.
3. The mask, 3, is hiding the ghosts, 7.
4. The cycle, 4, a weapon used against us, and is now a weapon we master, 8.
5. Station 5 changes the fallen angel.
6. The world emerges from the background.
7. The ghosts are removing their masks.
8. You always own a pole; in each lifecycle you practise its uses.

These are today’s interpretations. These are what the Tarot told me today. But when I begin the drawings, these will change. The pictures in the looking glass are always evolving. Inside the crystal ball is always in motion. Sometimes there is a snowstorm.

Last Week’s Homework

Tuesday 03.11.26
A3. 8-station mind-map unpacking the newsletter.

Wednesday. 04.11.26
A5. 12-word narrative.

Title. What do the symbols mean to me.
Object: Ball
12 Association

1. Round
2. Bouncy
3. A way to control material
4. A sphere
5. A planet
6. A globe
7. The Globe
8. Shakespeare
9. The blockbusters of the day
10. Why do we tell stories?
11. Warnings/threats/information
12. Ants

When I first come to this house in Spain, to my baby villa, it is overrun with ants. I buy stuff, pink stuff, I call it the pink stuff, that you put out like food and the ants love it and they come running and you can’t kill them you have to wait for them to take it home and kill the entire nest, the entire family. At the time, I honestly do not believe this is possible. But by the next morning I do not see any more ants. When I say overrun, they are coming out of the sockets, they are coming out of the skirting boards, they are running out of everything. And like a lunatic, I am trying to block the holes. But ants are dynamic, they just fucking get everywhere. They are making lines, tramline, tracks, battalions, across the gradient that leads from the road above me to my peace and quiet in the campo. What the absolute fuck.

The other day, no, this morning, as I am going up the hill I realise there are no ants on the path, none coming backwards and forwards with their information. The threat is over. My daughter says you will never get rid of them. It takes me 2 years. It takes one night to stop them coming out of the walls, out of the electric sockets. And 2 years of persistent putting down pink stuff whenever I see them, to get rid of them. I’m both sorry and proud. But this is my world. My planet. My globe. The pink stuff is the way to control the material in my world. There is one night when I come home and I’m sat at my oak table without turning the light on and my legs keep getting a stab. Eventually, when I can’t take it anymore, I put the light on, the fucking floor is black. I grab the pink stuff and look for the nest. They always walk in a straight line. They are always a battalion. They are coming over the terrace like the last scene in Scarface. They intend to do for me for the decimation of their nation. It is a blockbuster, by candlelight. Like Shakespeare in the Globe. Out, out brief candle life is but … strutting our hour on the stage.

Mrs Haddon loves a good cape. She wears them well. She has a pin. She is always stylish. She has very flexible fingers. She makes me love Henry the IV by acting it out. Every scene. She is Falstaff. She is Hal. She is, I can’t remember the rest. Her passion is my passion. Her passion is infectious. Bouncy. She makes us understand why we tell stories. She is a troubadour. A Helen Mirren in the classroom. She has obviously missed her way. Except, she hasn’t. I would not exist if there is no Mrs Haddon. 1b, 2b, 3b, the streams I am in would stink without Mrs Haddon. I would not know how to unpack a play without Mrs Haddon. She is in my sphere of influence. She is when my angel has full wings. She is the point of change. She is the person I want to impress when I wear a green tartan mini-skirt and a long black maxi cardigan. No, that is what is tartan, the cardigan, the mini-skirt is black, and red platform mules. Sounds vile. It was so fucking trendy in 1971. To see Romeo and Juliet. She is one of my teacher’s pet episodes. She shows me how to control material in English literature. How to open a play. How to organise my thoughts. Mrs Haddon is probably the impetus for a chart, a wheel of fortune, the 8-stations before I know there will be 8-stations. And ports where you must call. Where things change.

There has to be a protagonist. There has to be someone making the journey. Someone who will reach the ball. There has to be a background. Something that the painting, the blockbuster, is painted on, the backdrop. There has to be something hidden that will reveal itself. That the king drips the poison into the old king’s ear. And Hamlet suspects. But so far, it is hidden. And a ghost comes and tells him. And he tells a story as a play to reveal the truth. To expose the murderer. And come on Hamlet’s mum you know as well as him that he has killed your Goddamn husband, but power, power, who will you be without power and her looks are fading, she isn’t young, will she have this chance again? Mrs Haddon explains the hidden like this. That Shakespeare is telling one story, but underneath is a million alternatives, a million termites, ants of interpretations. All coming out of the walls. But what you make of them is the house you live in. Is the references you are born to. Are the Bedruthan Steps’ wind that makes your hair stand on end, or lie down, or your gut protrude cos you are well fed, or you gut stay slim cos there is enough food in the fridge. And maybe if you are Hamlet’s sister you understand Gertrude. You have no power of your own. You must remain wed to power not to clean floors or be beheaded. Mrs Haddon sees it all. The cycles of life. The things that come and go. The seasons. What is open to a woman then? The politics. The social standing. The food. The Globe burning down.

We clear the round and head for change. The Doldrums of the planet, this planet where the sea is thick like mud and it feels like nothing will change. Then everything changes. I can’t fucking remember what changes in Hamlet and if there is really any reason for any of the changes? Talking to Rachel at the table, my table, my cute oak table in my real homely home where she is learning to be a psychiatrist. Her first stage. And she is on a break and we are beginning again; we are beginning our life again. We are talking about the insanity of people believing what is in this world, the syntax, the societal syntax, when really we are an animal and we all know what is happening in a room and we are driven by our associations.

Her course has just done a similar exercise that takes her to Porthmadog beach near Dublin where she buries her dad in the vast expanse. The vast expanse of the universe. Her words, not mine. Her words, not mine. How wonderful to hear my daughter say these words. Not mine. We have changed. We have profoundly changed. We are each other’s best company. In this world. Where one tropic is up and one tropic is down and the equator cuts the world in the middle and in some places people live fully in day for 6 months of the year, and fully in night for the other 6, and they have to tell stories to pass down how to store the food when nothing will grow and they have no pen and they have to make sure the next generation survives. Survives. We don’t know why it is such a full-blown imperative of everything that lives. The survival of the fittest, the strongest. 7 billion years of bacteria living and dying living and dying and we breathe the ozone they make. The unending need for life to keep living, to keep building the mandala of life. Outward. Outward. Outward. Outward. The Mandelbrot Set at each level. Micro. Macro.

And the ghosts of their shadow in our metabolism. The reptilian brain. The caveman brain. Always on the lookout for danger. And the species we have been, that we live through, when we are packed like a chicken in our mother. Back to breathing water. A single cell. Then a double cell. Further back than that when one cell eats another cell. And what is passed on is the lookout for danger. Like my toilet won’t flush at the beginning of the week, but now it does, and when I go near it there is a shadow, a fear of the need to make the phone call and call the landlord and then watch dutifully as he does that old man thing that my dad used to do. And just that it is broken. And having to go downstairs to my second toilet, yes, to the other bathroom. I have 2 bathrooms now. And that twinge, that broken toilet twinge is gonna take a few days to be released. And if you don’t begin to understand that this is a passing moment, not the whole of your life, the ghosts begin to strangle you.

And the sword, that is now a pole. A pole has many uses in this life in this time cos bad shit is gonna happen to you if you start wielding a sword. But you can punt with a pole, you can punt yourself slowly out of the flooded tunnels. The tunnels lost in a sudden downpour. Without warning, a blackened sky in the light, then there are torrents, torrents, torrents, torrents. Apocalyptic. Crashing. Then dead calm as the black clouds float away. And the broken gate becomes your raft, and your pole your life saver. You feel it hit the floor. You feel the floor. You don’t have to push hard. There is warmth in the deepness of the colour of the sky. There is a depression that makes you alone, that makes you feel that a campfire would be nice, but the flowers needed the rain.

Thursday 05.11.26
A3. 8-station mind-map unpacking what the symbols mean to me.

Friday 06.11.26

A5. 12-word narrative.

Title. The Canary in the Tunnels
Object: Cage
12 Association

1. Tweetie Pie
2. Sylvester
3. Wile E. Coyote
4. Gambling
5. No idea what a straightforward life is like
6. The short cut
7. Pension
8. A steady stream of income
9. Spent, every red cent is spent
10. Heart and bypasses
11. Blood pressure
12. Making decisions from fear.

Yesterday, on the bus from Nerja to Frigiliana, carrying the flapjack from Good Stuff that her and Rachel will share; it is 2 pieces — they both hate people who share one piece. They both hate people who are frugal. They become mum and daughter in the good years when they sell weed. When they eat out every night and no matter what the newly installed kitchen looks like it is never used. Bought from a reputable firm. No amount spared. Designed by her. She loves design. It has a kind of leopard print door. Not quite that obvious, a bit more in the background than that. And a little house next to the back door, she is gonna turn into a brick Wendy house for Rachel. She is gonna give Rachel all her dreams. All the things she missed out on. Then the other bastard is pissed as a fart and an absolute cunt. But he is funny on a Sunday morning when he creates the Chef who becomes Zum. Rachel’s best friend of all time. And they wait in bed for her to bring the breakfast, the home cooked Sunday breakfast, upstairs. See, the lies we tell ourselves. They do use the kitchen sometimes. They use it to be ordinary again.

Yesterday on the bus, Ian, the retired-cop with the pension, makes one of his jokes. Something about going straight. Rachel probably tells them when she is ‘Pissed Rachel’ about her life. Someone to blame. There is always someone to blame. But it is kind of an accident how Rachel too becomes pissed. Or is it her dad’s genes or her nanna’s genes or her dad’s mum’s genes or her dad’s dad who dies in the pub. Our protagonist always sees it as an accident. As one of the lads, her era, Rachel’s era is one of the lads. In fact, they’ll drink the lads under the table. Zoe Ball and Big Brother’s Davina McCall and Janet Street Porter. They’re not like their mum. Her with one foot in the 50s housewife and one foot in the Germaine Greer put it all on show. Push-me pull-me. Dr Doolittle talking to the animals. Like Tweetie Pie, ‘I t’ought, I saw a puddy cat.’ Sylvester. What a twat. Why the fuck does he try so hard? Why doesn’t he just get a job? With a pension. A fucking nice quiet job. He’ll live a long life. Keep his fur in one piece more of the time. Have a better life. Not live in chaos. Not put his sympathetic nervous system out of joint. Not sweat at night — is he gonna make it through tomorrow? Not gamble his life away.

Okay, she thinks Ivan is over, the story of Ivan is over, but there is one last little bit to say. The reason, the only reason, you can possibly be a gambler is because you wanna make it in one fell swoop. Swoop down like an eagle and snatch it all in your talons and carry it away to your hidey hole for another day. Like Wile E. Coyote. But, yet, again, the fucking cliff falls away. Get a job. She has no idea what a straightforward life is like. Ripped away, given away, the day Ivan dies. She never goes to work again. She tells Supervisor Sheila, I have to go to hospital for an operation. Sheila replies, ‘I can see why.’ She thinks she looks all right in her real acrylic green suit jacket and skirt bought at Bus Stop. £80 even then. But when she looks in the downstairs bathroom mirror she can see the bump. Everybody knows. Jesus fucking Christ everybody knows.

The last person she ever sees from British Engine is Bev. But she keeps her face to her hospital bed wall, as her tits bleed milk onto the warm towel. The short cut. Is this a short cut, not to look at the kid that will look like him. She has to start again. And she wonders this many, many times — is the Reno self-imposed punishment? Is she not to be included in polite society ever again?

As her blood pressure soars, even though she tries not to look at the pressure gauge, but she doesn’t have to, it sounds an alarm, the nurse goes into the doctor and comes out with 2 pills. She thinks of the heart bypasses, her numbered days, wishing, like Wile E. must feel as he is falling, falling, falling, no safety net in sight, just that final puff, what the fuck, my time is spent, every red cent is spent. All her decisions made from fear. Never to have a steady stream of income. Always gambling the short cut. Only just, aged 67, escaping the cage.

Homework

Monday

Read newsletter. In my case, compose and post newsletter.

Tuesday

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

Wednesday

A5. Sacred hour sacred space.

• Title: What do the 8-station symbols mean to me?
• What object do you see?
• What 12 things do you associate with the object you see?

In the first person so we feel it, you and I, we are gonna investigate the possibilities of the 8-station symbols. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is right. Just keep writing. You must use all 12 associations and your object under your title. You have 30 minutes.

Thursday

A3. Sacred hour sacred space.

You and I, create an 8-station mind-map to digest and unpack yesterday’s: What do the 8-station symbols mean to me?

Friday

A5. Sacred hour sacred space.

This intensive practice releases a 12-word narrative of a different calibre from chapters 1 — 8. Written in the 3rd person so we have distance and perspective, let rip in your 12-word narrative:

• Title: This Is No Longer Chance. This Is Engineering. [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 1st person.)
• 30 minutes to write. (In the 3rd person.)
• You must include the object and all 12 associations under your title.

Ivan would have been 70 today 09.11.2026.

Thank you for listening to me.