06 Apr 2026 24 min read

Chapter 16. A Portrait of a Soul

Cowesby St Kids.

Sorry I am late. The typing up took so much longer than I anticipated. And I had to go out. If I am struggling for time. You may be struggling for time too. While I was out, I made the necessary decision to cut a day off sticking pebbles together in the future. Once things become drudgery and hard why the fuck would you want to do it. So, here is a new future timetable.

Monday. You receive my email. You spend time with it.
Tuesday. Day 1. Mind-map last week's 12-word narrative. 8 new discoveries.
Wednesday. Day 2. Mind-map day 1 discoveries. 8 new discoveries.
Thursday. Day 3. Mind-map day 2 discoveries. 8 new discoveries.
Friday. Day 4. Mind-map day 3 discoveries. Isolate couplet. 12-words narrative.
Saturday. Day off.
Sunday. Type and log.

Bigger Pebbles

This week's chapter has 5 days in line with the old timetable, We are making bigger pebbles by repeatedly smashing together the gas and dust orbiting our star. Last week I said sticking together, but it’s all getting to feel much more violent. The action I imagine in space. The violence of the pebbles’ collision. The violence of my narrative’s collision. The violence within my narrative.

How Last Week Evolved for Me

Day 1. Tuesday 31.03.26

He Grabs the Wheel. (Last weeks's 12-word narrative)
8 Vital Discoveries

I know Tommy Brogan the name long before I meet him.
Broadfield Rd. Dark Street. Debauchery. Denzil getting his head smashed in when the car hits him. The Middle Ages. The players. A nosegay. The Red-light District. No hope. No sunshine.
Violence. Chris Otto. Gang. Mysteries. Sexy. Bonnie and Clyde. Frightening. Thrilling. Want to be part of it.
Tom angry when I am late for his spaghetti bolognaise. Wanting to be loved but not trusting it. Wanting to control it.
My tiger’s eye ring in the taxi. Feeling like I live in a different world. Tom has been training me to see.
The courts. Getting paid for not going to work. Buying a Breaker and weed. Not going back to work.
Being blamed for what Pauline did by her defence.
Women. Knights. Kingdom. Fiefdoms. Area. Blocks. Crossing a patch. Warriors. Borders.

8 Discoveries’ Mind-map

8 New Discoveries

Nobody is clean, innocent. There is a cataclysm. The war. The counterculture. From dropping bombs on bomb shelters to protect and survive below your desk in air raids and mattresses at your window. And envelopes for Biafrans, but no mention of why their belly is distended and flies at their eyes. Only judgement on whether your shoes have received polish over the weekend and your envelope is full.
These are the next generation up, older than me. Ripped from the crooner 50s to the free love 60s. Penniless. From cultures who once crossed the sky in boats when they die.
They’re our silver screen. We hear rumours. We stand out of their way if they are crossing our street. If there were posters, we would have them on our walls. We would follow them on Instagram.
I must not be found wanting. Wanting a boyfriend. I must be cooler than that now I have been chosen. I must not believe anything normal. I am being judged. I must not fail.
I offer the taxi driver the tiger’s eye. My tiger’s eye. The one I used to pawn for Ivan to go to the bookies. I don’t need things as paltry as money.
‘I put it to you; did you tell Pauline to fuck off when she knocked on the door?’
‘Who is on trial here?’
‘I’ll ask you again. Did you tell Miss Harrison to fuck off when she knocked on the door?’
‘Who the fuck is on trial here?’
‘Order or I’ll have you removed.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Remove him.’
‘Did you have a 6-month abortion.’
I don’t answer.
‘Did you abort Ivan Walker’s child when you were 24 weeks?’
I don’t know if there is a jury.
I walk to the hole in the wall shop. I buy Panadol and cider. I take them. I drink the cider. I lie down. The room is going black, I panic. I sit up. I make it to the mop bucket. I shit everywhere. I vomit everywhere. I bounce off the walls to get to the street. Delbert is just locking his car. He is visiting Angie’s illegal stepchildren. He throws me in the car. Drives me to MRI. The jug is stainless steel. They pour into a plastic funnel. There is sick pouring up through my nose. Ivan is still alive then.

Day 2. Wednesday 01.04.26

Listening to my intuition. You should aways listen to your intuition. Especially now you are beginning to trust yourself cos of all your hard work. This morning my intuition tells me to go through my moleskin and log the evolution of Portrait of a Soul. It will paint itself as you read its evolution.

Monday. 09.03.26. Excerpt from Not Another Fucking Jug.

With gratitude to the Arts 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 Arts 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…

Wednesday. 11.03.26. Excerpt from Money Mentality Makeover (MMM) (coaching). Forgiveness homework.

The Arts Council think they have kept me in place. But their money has helped me think outside the box.

I forgive you. I am sorry you were an artist, but now you are institutionalised. You never gave yourself time to ferment, let go, see what you think. You were always that person. Even as a writer you will have towed the line. Never let go. Never coloured outside the edges. You were never going to make it.

Artists who never learnt to crayon without, outside the edge, who never think they can, tell artists what to do. Afraid. The Hierarchy. They make opportunities to have other artists kneel before them. You cheeky cunt.

I forgive you. I am sorry for you. You will never experience what if feels like to be a fully-fledged artist. Thank you for your administrative role so I can spend my wages. I love you. And will never trust you. I need to fly. I do not need to put a docket on the table and agree to everything that is being said. She left because of this. I owe this to my mother.

Monday. 16.03.26. Excerpt from Chapter 11. How Angie Kills her Dad

And the Arts Council on Mount Olympus. No, stop right there. Stop there. What the ... I remember ages ago, and I don't know where it began, when people began to look at mixed-race. And the latest put down is — 'They don't know their culture.' 'They need to know their culture.' A myth. Let me tell you this — my dad is not a pan of rice and peas, or reggae, or ginger beer, or braiding your fucking hair. He is up and down and round and about and in and out and happy and sad. And the Gods hold him by the legs, stationary on their chess board, immobile, immovable, and say, 'Tell us what he is like as long as he is like this and we will give you a leg up in the arts.'

Portrait of a Soul mind-Map 01.04.26

Tuesday. 18.03.26. Notes from me coaching K who responds to the title Portrait of a Soul with a satisfied sigh. I explain.

Me, ‘Arts Council England are my patron. They tell me what my art is to be about. Even in the way they ask their questions. Churches are Caravaggio, Da Vinci. Angelo’s patrons. I want to tour Italy. In a Fiat 500. 8-station mind-map their paintings; then the artist, then their audience. 3 x A3 sketches. A triptych. Then transform the 3 x sketches into an 8ft x 8ft 8-station mind-map. I sell to the local prestigious hotel.’

K’s a creative strategist. ‘Connect with local artists. Local videographers. Draw 8ft x 8ft kneeling in the church. Make it an event. Archive. Piggyback their social media. To attract a bigger crowd at the next location.’

Me, ‘You’re a fucking genius. Cos of the church’s fucking interference — we will never know what kind of artist they were. Cos of the Arts Council's interference — we will never know what kind of an artist I was.’

K. ‘They are playing God.’

Me, ‘Ex-fucking-actly.’

Monday. 23.03.26. Excerpt from my Morning Pages. (Julia Cameron. The Artist’s Way.)

The church is sponsoring itself. Sponsoring its own message. It is propaganda. It is propaganda. Arts Council propaganda. We have worth. Greek priestesses. The people. We probably did the work. The people who did the work are probably artists. There is probably a priest with a few extra feathers that he fancies wearing. We dig and he decides he is the god. Robin Williams in Happy Feet. And look what he gets caught in. The bottle holders of the ruination of the world. Global warming is a side effect of the priest. Ice Age art. The Renaissance. Monasteries and the UK Arts Council. I begin this with 3 ladies in Rachel’s playgroup. 3 white lady missionaries. See No Evil. Hear No Evil. Say No Evil. They each shag a black man. But these are not lost white women like my mum. These are educated white women. Who know how to validate their worth. One is actually the daughter of a priest. Of a parson. And the best way to validate her man is to elevate his status. Give him a culture. Elevate him from an everyday drug dealer who loves shagging white women to a god equivalent to Bob Marley. And her children must know their dad’s culture. They talk with her accent. Her teacher’s accent. They are mannered. Like the French who sent their half-caste sons from the colonies to be educated and centuries later I sit next to one who can’t shut up with all he knows. And the little white girl is not seeing him as a half-black boy. He is passing the litmus test. Without a shadow of a doubt that boy’s mum is educated. Possibly even his dad. Like one of the kids in the playgroup. Even though her dad is a heartless bastard, he is a doctor. A black doctor. A Nigerian Doctor. His daughter doesn’t know him. But she knows his culture. Her educated white mum has made sure she knows his culture. And even though my dad lives with me and I go to his house, his and my mum’s house, my home, until the day he dies, the educated white women have somehow got me to believe, gaslit me into believing, I have not experienced his culture. They are experts. Like the white men and women, missionaries, who sail to Jamaica 1834 when Jamaica is transitioning from slavery. I still don’t personally know a Jamaican doctor. Cos, they taught them to be manual labourers. To build a house with the skills that they used to rob but now pay a pittance for. I still can’t make the transition. I still can’t gracefully cross into what I am trying to say.The Arts Council. The missionaries. The educated white women who shag black men. The priests who commission the great artists. The priests who commission the cave art. Caravaggio’s scumbag mates immortalised at the wonderment of Christ. An old prostitute’s image mourning Jesus. He can paint radical light as long as it is hitting propaganda from the Bible. He can’t paint a flower no more than I can. Gaslit. Gaslit into believing the church is entitled to tell us what to paint. And the propaganda we paint makes us believe we don’t have the power to challenge this.

Tuesday. 24.03.26. MMM Excerpt. Practising the feeling of my dream life already occurring for me.

Why is someone an artist? Why do we need art? Realise my potential. I want to be an artist without a patron. Without a master. No more propaganda. Relieved. Able to produce my art, paid.

Wednesday. 25.03.26. MMM excerpt.

a. What belief would support this inevitability.
b. Fuck the Arts Council off.

Monday. 30.03.26. MMM excerpt. Acknowledge financial patterns that don’t feel good to me.

I dislike getting money from the Arts Council. I love getting money from the Arts Council. But it is one amount. I start to get frightened as I begin to spend it because I have to spend it. I want to be paid as an individual artist. I want to be paid as an artist. I don’t want people to think I only do community work. This is why they are rude to me cos they think I should act like Mother Theresa and save the lepers. I don’t want to save the lepers. That was never my gig. I want beautiful things. Saving lepers is for J and A. The great white hopes. Who walk with the gait of the elephant they ride. Above the lion they are about to kill. Natives carry their guns. I am writing to sit on an elephant too. I want them to unpack my bag. The difference being I will pay them well and talk to them as equals. I will not let the colonisation leak. Out through my pores. You are beneath me. And if I don’t keep you beneath me, I will lose control. My fear is my kind will say who does she think she is? Who the fuck do you think you are? They have already said it. That I too should spend every working hour scrapping away at the Shawshank wall, crawling through the sewer. Why should I? I care about what I want. Why shouldn’t I? I want my things unpacking on Safari. I do not want to do the unpacking, or the bolstering of those that do. I do not want to be a leader of serfs. I want silk. Not sack cloth. Me having something does not stop them having something. I want them to understand they can have it too.

Day 3. Thursday 02.04.26

I mind-map the 8 new discoveries from day 1.

They still need wells in Africa. I was bringing my envelopes 60 years ago. I watch a South American girl, I actually didn’t, I couldn’t, but the world did, as she drowns. In front of the world. A south American girl. Drowns in rising water. On the front of the Guardian are 3 Iraqi kids. Their distraught father is weeping over them. They are dead. There is no fucking way on earth there would be a picture of 3 blonde kids, 3 blonde kids dead on a pavement. Too distasteful. And even if their dad was a football hooligan he would never be considered fair game. Like the boy being hidden by his dad, at his dad’s back, and the solider shoots him point blank. Wouldn’t the world send troops if he was blonde, even being shot by a blonde solider?
Broadfield Rd full of great cultures like the Farghalys. Egyptians. Their story stole from them. Colonised. On display in museums. In a time when they won’t have been asked what their actual story is. What is your oral history? Cos some fucking Rudyard Kipling type fucker has made up a story that fits with eugenics and his elephant gait handed down to the Arts Council. The colour of their skin irrelevant. Nurtured to intone, ‘Yes, Memsaab. We have cornered the tiger. Dinner is ready for you.’ Their culture obliterated when the trunk is lifted into first class by the steerage class. Now fucking the Arts Council. Those fucking Mummies are some fucker's great great great great great however many grandparents.
The silver screen unearths a Rolodex of images to uphold their theme. Like the black actor who holds back the tide in the mine for Roger Moore to make it to air to make it to life so he can mine more gold. And the black guy, I don’t know his name. I could look up his name. The black guy, his arms mash-up by the water crushing the gate, is dying a good life, one blessed by Jesus, one that will take him to the pearly gates.
I must cross all of this with my bra burnt. Literally. Tits akimbo. Loose. Uncaptured. Like Breezy. She has long hair. And a hat. Then there’s Jane. She’s screaming about Vietnam. Viet-fucking-Nam into her megaphone. Then takes a knife to her face.
And Tom is also on a tightrope. As he stands there with his pan of spaghetti bolognaise. Fucking fuming. It goes in the bin. I’m late. I’ve been smoking weed. Drinking beer. Feeling, living, into my bra being gone. 'I’ll do what I want. I’ll turn up when I want.' 'Good fucking disciples do what I want.'
I pick up my tightrope stick. I have a lot to learn. Like when he takes me to back of the courts to get my money for not being able to go to work because of my appearance in court. And all the other things to fuck with the system.
Who else is gonna listen to my story? Is gonna understand my story? I must accept his well-rehearsed act with all its cracks. Yes, I want his protection.
There will be no other women, Unlike Ivan. There will be no man stepping over me to take his chair when I am covered in piss and vomit. Unlike my dad. There will be no one keeping the deeds to our home. There will be no tigers eye to go to the bookies. No going missing for days while he empties her purse. No coming back to me to empty my purse. There will be no guy not talking to me for years to make me feel I have wronged him somehow, until I go mad. I understand and he understands this is a marriage of convenience and if we get our costumes to match we can cross the ravine. Hand-in-hand isn’t really our style.

Day 4. Friday 03.04.26

The ravine walls are birth and death. Between them comes the herd. Wildebeest. Who kill Mufasa, as Simba watches. And the 8 pillars we repeat, we have to stop repeating them. Building them into our DNA. The white man does not have all the say. Maharaji is an Indian. There are many Indian saints. There are many great stories from all over the world. They do not get to have it all. Linda, The Secret says you cannot keep being against something. The more you are against something the more you keep bringing it on. The closer you come to the second wall you begin to realise it. Just don’t stand on the ravine floor. There is no stampede if you don’t stand on the ravine floor.
Maybe propaganda is the greatest weapon in our arsenal. If we wash the development off our tongue. And maybe we should stop repeating theirs because it is deep-seated in our reptilian brain, or whatever brain listens to the negative shit. Like you can have a hundred likes. And one negative remark. And this is the one you believe all day. And maybe we have no choice when we are young but to travel the ravine floor as we make our hunt for better food, better land, and better women. Like Joey Grey and Chris Scarry leave Moss Side when I am young, 12/13, and take a train to Mobberley where girls apparently wait at the bus stop for them. Or were they in youth clubs? But all I remember is we are devoid of their attention. And dream of the bedroom these white girls have as they watch for their scallies with the gift of the gab. Flexing a few muscles in their patch pocket pants. Their Leo Sayer, Marc Bolan look. Enthralling. Enrapturing to girls destined to marry for pensions one day. They can’t really marry this riffraff. But you don’t know that then. And I can’t resist it, I can’t resist it, when I think, when I know, I should stop talking about it, there is Winny. None of the white girls will entertain Winny. He is the nicest guy. The sincerest guy. The one who will love you till you die. Including me.
Winny is only good for plugging the water coming through the mine with his dark arms and making sure his ward Joey Grey is all right. Winny, their Goliath, is to pull up the rear in case there is a fight.
I have no idea why Vietnam happens. I suppose I could look it up. But it gives us Apocalypse Now. Easy Rider. Mash. Deer Hunter. Christopher Walkden with a gun to his head. It interrupts flow. It gives us Taxi Driver. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy. Straw Dogs. Flak jackets. The uniform of the Reno. Black Panthers. We have the right to bear arms. Sexiness. Sexiness. Sexiness. The flow of rain. A flood of incense. Water rushing. Laughter in meadows. Meadow flowers. A great time to be young. Each era is a great time to be young. You forget that as you get old when you want to think it is only your time. And you feel resentful if you didn’t run with the wildebeest. Or maybe you are eaten by a crocodile waiting just offshore. Or maybe you make it like me to the next grazing. I make it to the new grazing. There is no need for the tightrope. You can’t cut out the living. The running. The sweating. Shoulder-to-shoulder. You cannot hover above the crowd. Life is cycles. You dance for men to fancy you when you have eggs to fertilise. You. I have stopped by the river promised me in Siddhartha. I have taken the ferry. I have requested to be the ferry master.
I climb off Tom’s tightrope in 1989. When I drive past the Birch and there is a battalion on the steps. Oil Jackets. Standing on the steps. A flock of geese. Ready to take flight. To head for their nest in the winter grounds of the Lord Lion. With their new pecking order. Peck. Peck. Peck. Peck. Peck. He no longer looks different. I drive Rachel to my mum and dad’s. I am going to our old council house to clean it. I am gonna turn the clock back. Leave the semi with the black and white apex and the mint green carpet and the serpentine stair handrail and a Xmas tree in the front garden and morning glory in the back garden that I touch with weed killer every day. An unending task like the Fourth Bridge, and that bastard stopping drinking, I follow my heart. Reopened by seeing Maharaji last week in the Hilton in London. Checking we are practising the techniques correctly. I have been trying in our bedroom. Our undecorated bedroom. Though the rest of the house is pristine. 5 minutes on each technique is all I can manage. I drive away. You can’t cross the ravine with a stick. The wind is always high. I am back in my council house, 8 years later, I am going to start again.
For 40 days and 40 nights the devil tempts Christ with riches. For 40 minutes he tempts me in 1981, and I give in.

It must be around the same time as climbing the stairs. This time devoid of what I am going to use to manipulate the initiator to say yes. I just enter the room and say, when she asks me why I want Knowledge, I just say, ‘Because I keep coming back.’ And then I come back when she says, ‘Yes.’ I think it is a Monday. There are about 30 of us sitting cross-legged because our concept of people who meditate is they sit cross-legged. And the initiator reveals 4 techniques of meditation to us. Not all at once. One at a time. And you practise each for 15 minutes before you move forward. And you remember, you feel a part of you, you have forgotten. It is deeper than you remember just being a child. And you are reunited to that thing. You become whole. That is why Rachel sits on my knee. Because she can wholeheartedly trust me now.

I can manage 5 minutes at a time. I have no fancy clothes. I play Oh Daddy. The sun is shining. I see when I open my eyes.

Oh Daddy
You know you make me cry
How can you love me
I don't understand why

Oh Daddy
If I can make you see
If there's been a fool around
It's got to be me
Yes, it's got to be me

Oh Daddy
You soothe me with your smile
You're letting me know
You're the best thing in my life

Oh Daddy
If I could make you see
If there's been a fool around
It's got to be me
Yes, it's got to me

Why are you right when I'm so wrong
I'm so weak but you're so strong
Everything you do is just alright
And I can't walk away from you
Baby, if I tried

Oh Daddy
You soothe me with your smile
You're letting me know
You're the best thing in my life

Oh Daddy
If I could make you see
If there's been a fool around
It's got to be me

I am grazing in a field on the other side of the ravine floor. The ghosts, my ghosts, are left behind.
Ivan is gone. She is gone. He is gone. My dead baby is gone. I pull the sword from the stone and cut the tightrope down.

Day 5. Sunday 05.04.26

Isolate the couplet:
2. Crosshatch Circle (The Theme/Backdrop)
6. The World (Equator, Capricorn, Cancer, Ozone = Emotional Climate)

Interpreting the symbols like tarot cards. 8-station mind-map the couplet 2 & 6. Exhaust the discoveries. Listen for a title. What tangible object do you see?

Maybe propaganda is the greatest weapon in our arsenal. Etc. Etc. Etc.

For 40 days and 40 nights the devil tempts Christ with riches. For 40 minutes he tempts me in 1981, and I give in. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Couplet Mind-map

I hear the title: The Herd
Object: Ravine
12 associations

Trampled
Changing direction
Turning on you
The Walking Dead
Rosemary’s Baby
1984
Billboards
Rewards
Straightened hair
Fish and chips
Mirror
The Well

There is nothing more frightening than the herd changing direction and turning on you. I think when I first get Knowledge, I feel cornered. I have to tell you another story. The Sky is Falling Down. I can’t tell you the bottom line of the story it will upset too many people. It is probably the baseline story for the Reno excavation. A baseline drawn all these years ago in 1981. It begins with gossip. And a princess in our midst. I feel fucking funny. This story is making its own way further back.

1971, when the Princess first arrives in Moss Side. She is beautiful. With legs like a racehorse. And olive skin cos she has been living in Spain with her own pony. You can’t help but love her because she is beautiful. But she hates herself. I am glad she hates herself — fucking hell — because she has everything else. Except she has a cruel mother — thank God for that. Who has married for money. The Princess’s mother has been caught in the act of having some love on the side. And now the Princess, the beautiful Princess, is living in the off licence at the end of our street. Cowesby St. The niece of the posh woman living with the other posh woman — this is how my 9-year-old self-interprets their arrangement, fuelled by the gossip in the street. The posher woman, the Mick Jagger looking woman, drives up to our street one day in a white MG with a hammer in her belt to mend the roof, and her girlfriend, we don’t call people partners back then, her girlfriend is a great cook. Her sister has been caught having an affair. The Princess docks. Her steerage trunk is carried down the gangplank and deposited. I am about the same age, the same size, I am given her cast offs. Don’t get me wrong, I love them. I am grateful. Like when I am invited to dine. Cos one is a great Sunday dinner cook. I also hate them. And their jaunts to the park with the natives. And their generous big KitKats. While our mums and dads herd down with shopping bags of empties to buy the draft that will get them through another night, that buys the posh women and the sister and the Princess more Hermes scarves.

1981, now, that same Princess is in the Reno. She has been caught. She too has been caught playing away from home. It is told to me by the oldest female Prouse. Who will be furious inside — the Princess can wear anything she wants— she has no hips — she has wide shoulders. She has the entitlement of stylish clothes all her life. And now she makes them from second-hand buys with buttons and beads and a pair of navy tights and navy-navy dress belted at the waist. And I don’t know how either, how to look like this so effortlessly. And she has been caught — thank fucking Christ for that. And we’re all waiting for her sky to fall down. Not our sky. Her fucking sky. Oh my God we are so fucking sick of waiting. Tom must have been sick to retching. Tom tells D — who tells F — who tells BD. And when the shit hits the fan, it gets splattered all over me. In a semi-circle. I am the most dispensable. And the eldest Prouse, who knows she is the person who has told me, keeps her mouth shut. The closest to the Princess close ranks because I have already banged her head on the fence Tom is sitting on. That isn’t a metaphor. It’s literal. The oldest Prouse is coming towards me. She is just short of 6 ft. Loads of feet wide. Unusual when we are kids to be this big. She is carrying her brandies, their brandies, the 3 top tables’ brandies across the dance floor. I cross the dance floor. Bruce Lee is beside me. Pacing me. Telling me what to do. Coaching me.

‘… the enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy.’

I grab her top. I know she will not want the crowd to see her big bra. I grab her top with all my might. And pull. It has to come off. If she gets a hold of me … I pull. I pull. I pull. I pull. It snaps. Rips. Comes away. Is in my hand. She drops the glasses. I step back. One kick to her temple brings her down. Goliath’s pebble. Tom walks up. ‘Have you had enough?’ She keeps her head down.

The herd changes direction. It is willing to trample me. It takes decades for the penny to drop. Refined by the 8 pillars of Caste.

The 8 Pillars of Caste:

Divine Will and the Laws of Nature: The belief that the hierarchy is preordained by God or is a natural, immutable order.
Heritability: Caste is inherited and determined at birth, allowing no mobility to change one's status.
Endogamy and Control of Marriage/Mating: Strict rules against marriage or reproduction outside one's caste to maintain the purity and rigidity of the structure.
Purity v Pollution: The idea that the dominant group is pure and must be protected from pollution by lower-caste individuals.
Occupational Hierarchy: The assignment of work based on caste, typically reserving desirable jobs for the top and manual/menial work for the bottom.
Dehumanisation and Stigma: Stripping lower-caste members of their humanity through stereotypes and abuse to justify their subordination.
Terror as Enforcement. Cruelty as a Means of Control: Using violence and fear, such as lynchings or public punishment, to enforce caste boundaries.
Superiority v Inferiority: The deeply ingrained belief that the top group is inherently better, and the bottom group is inherently lesser.

The Princess is worth more than me. Worth more than us. A room dripping in half-caste It is engrained in us. Over centuries. They must protect her. She doesn’t have to lift a finger.

1984, when the devil finds me, I am in the wilderness with no tribe. His billboards show me in finery. Bigger billboards than Bladerunner. Billboards so big they can stop a Walking Dead hoard. His narrative gives the Reno roles in Rosemary’s Baby. But, as he assures me, I have enlightened myself over these years. He helps me dig into myself to see the truth of this. Fuck their well. I have my own well. With fish and chips and mushy peas bigger than the Prouse’s. I eat out every night. My hair is relaxed every 3 months. Blown straight every week. My mirror buffed and polished for my return.

‘And if you take a step back, further still, before you begin to sell the weed,’ the devil assures me. ‘Since the day you receive Knowledge in 1981, you have never needed to do your meditation, you are intrinsically, intuitively enlightened. ‘Your mirror.’ He shows me my image. ‘Projects your staunchness; your judgement; the adoration of the crowd as you walk on your tightrope from one ravine wall to the other. Above the ravine floor. Outside of the herd trampling each other.’

2017, My reward is the adoration of the Reno herded in the marquee. No amount of fake humility can hide the smugness on my face, caught repeatedly on camera. I leave the marquee, alone, and climb down into the excavated arena. Yesterday, we realise, these few beige tiles are the beginning of the dance floor. A few feet of it exposed. The rest is trapped beneath the widened Moss Lane East Rd. Alone I stand on it. The dust of the herd advancing behind me. The eldest Prouse coming towards me. I realise as I allow the fear to engulf me again, she hit both me and the Princess with the same stone. Scar hit 2 for the price of one. 2 girls who can wear jeans.

Bigger Pebbles Still

We are going to form even bigger pebbles. By repeatedly slamming these big pebbles together. Using the gravity of 8-stations. Evolving the elements of 12-words.

Tuesday. Day 1. Sacred hour. Sacred space.
• Note 8 vital discoveries you make in this week's day 5 12-word narrative.
• 8-station mind-map them.
• Note 8 discoveries. It is easier to do while the mind-map is happening or is fresh. Your subconscious becomes opaque again when you let it cool.

Wednesday. Day 2. Sacred hour. Sacred Space.
• 8-station mind-map these 8 discoveries.
• Note 8 discoveries.

Thursday. Day 3. Sacred Hour. Sacred Space.
• 8-station mind-map these 8 discoveries.
• Note 8 discoveries.

Friday. Day 4. Sacred hour. Sacred Space.
• Isolate day 3 couplet:

The Mask (Something is Hidden)

The Ghost (The Presence of the Past)

Interpreting the symbols like tarot cards. 8-station mind-map the couplet 3 & 7. Exhaust the discoveries. Listen for a title. What tangible object do you see?

Write Its 12-word Narrative

Title
Object
12 associations
12-words. 20 mins. You must use your object, 12 associations, under your title.

Saturday. Enjoy not thinking about it.

Sunday. Day 5. Type and Log.

This is what made me late this week. I had not left enough time. I think this is day's work in itself. Don't underestimate how long this takes.
Type it up — don't change anything.
Pair each day’s mind-map, 3 with new discoveries, the 4th with its 12-word narrative.
Create a file — chronologically log all there.

Monday Day 6. Sacred Hour. Sacred Space.

Receive and digest your new instructions.

Thank you for listening to me.