I Am Happy — I Am at Peace

Title: I am happy. I am at peace.

Object: My pool

12 association

1. Swim
2. Evening
3. Evensong
4. People
5. Prayer
6. Candles
7. Death
8. Our father
9. Begging
10. Warm
11. Blue
12. David Hockney

Every evening, before 8pm when the sun begins to go down, I swim 30 lengths. The water isn’t cold then. It has been heating up all day. The resident bees, wasps and hornets have gone to bed. My pool is serene. It has a silver tone to it. It reminds me of David Hockney’s swimming pool. It is like my bath. My evensong. It is healing the muscle loss after my frozen shoulder. It is expansive. Freeing. A prayer. I have gratitude for all I have. My Hanging Garden of Babylon. A work in progress. I am growing trailing succulents in a bed I made from a bed on my upstairs terrace. Allowing them to grow through the lattice wall down onto the pool terrace which is surrounded by mango trees and avocado trees that my landlord stacks on the bottom step. Delicious presents I find in the morning. Like the Little Elves have been. If the toilet is blocked, they arrive within 10 minutes. The old man who shouts at me in Spanish. He doesn’t mean it. He reminds me of Patsy — Absolutely Fabulous — opening the door in France hung over to death and an old French man trying to speak to her irrelevant of what she understands or not. My pool is immaculate. My downstairs terrace is immaculate. He calls before I am up most days. I am spoiled. The sky is huge. I have a sea view. I have lavender, honeysuckle, geraniums, jasmine, wisteria. All to fend off mosquitos. It seems to work. I haven’t seen one in days. My scabs are clearing up. There is nothing on this terrace before I come here. Now it could feature in a magazine. Inside my house is stylish too. Things I have collected over the decades. On flea markets. In second hand shops. On journeys. They all have a journey to tell. They all sit together because they are mine and I love them in the way other people love pets. I have an Out of Africa bedroom. Real linen sheets and curtains. I say real cos there is linen and there is linen. This is linen that drapes. And lush colours. Botanical green. Rhubarb. Berry. I have a shutter that is down during the day, so my colours don’t fade. I’ve begun to sleep through the night. Thanks to Hoʻoponopono. Hawaiian. A forgiveness practice. The final piece in my box of self-help tools that have brought me to this wonderful shore.

1. 1976, Prem Rawat. Known to me as Maharaji back then. I don’t know where I would be without the teachings of Prem Rawat. Without my hour’s meditation each morning. Without the clarity listening to him speak gives me. I tear up when I think how much he means to me. Not him. His teachings. This grounds me. It puts a full stop on yesterday. It prevents harmful wash back. Even though I can recall things from the past, they can’t haunt me. They are only in my past. It is like charging my battery. When I finish my hour, I feel renewed. On the rare occasion I have to go out before I have done my hour, when I get back, I am drained. Like Valda — The Mandy hero — my hour is like reaching the fountain of youth and stopping myself from turning into the 67-year-old lady that I am.

2. 1990, You Can Heal Your Life. Louise Hay.  I had begun writing. This book gave me permission to chase it. To change me. It is the first of hundreds of self-help books. It is a lightbulb when I am on my own pre the internet looking for a way to become me. To undo all the shit that has happened before I begin to do my hour’s meditation in 1989. She gives me permission to want to be healed.

3. 2000, Mind-mapping. Tony Buzan. Hey, mind-mapping. I fucking love mind-mapping. I do it about everything. I do it without thinking now. I do it instead of writing now. I think one way but the minute I start my 8-station mind-map I know. I think loads more things. I think infinite things. If I had a piece of paper the size of the world, I would fill it, there are always rooms in the rabbit hole, there are always things I thought, and things I didn’t know I saw, and things that relate to the spiral and fractals and geometry and spacetime and Einstein and I can’t think about mind-mapping without thinking about reading Zelik’s Astronomy and mind-mapping every page and understanding that wow creation is beautiful and infinite and barmy and how the fuck can we not spend more time marvelling at that than being bothered about the madness we are bothered about. Have you seen the Milky Way? Have you felt the Milky Way? It takes you back to the time we only ate pigs that were caught in bushes in a thunderstorm and baked that way, cos we don’t know how to make fire. Imagine the treat of that. And then someone working out that if you rub this and this. How the fuck would an animal work that out? We bay at the moon, a wolf. Why do we bay at the moon? And why does my daughter’s little dog Rio make decisions when to stop when he is let off his lead and treated to walking along the sea walkway on his own. We laugh about what triggers him to make his decision. Can he count? Once upon a time that animal trained this animal to be friends. This is the power of mind-maps. So baked in me now, I do it anyway.

4. 2000, The Artist Way. Julia Cameron. Around the same time, I find The Artist Way. Tiny steps. Not big, ugly steps about how to write. That the hero must wipe his bottom at 10.30 a 3rd of the way along his journey — what the absolute fuck — it has me confused for a whole fucking decade. But Julia takes my hand through 12 steps. 12 steps that begin with baby steps. Go and find a pebble. And make a contract with myself. I indulge in a secret journey with myself and Julia Cameron. Where we mine back and back and back and back to Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be his name. It’s not about God with a grey beard and a throne. It is about the creator. Possibly there is not even a single creator. There are new theories that make sense cos they operate in the way our minds operate that there are many moments of creation. Many possibilities. Infinite possibilities to the way things can evolve. Imagine, our gut is a tube worm from the sea. But that’s us just making up stories. Like me remembering my past in a certain way that suits me. Lighting candles on the altar of me and calling ghosts. Who bring prayers from the past to enlighten me. To fill my mind-maps and my pages and delight everyone who is reading my writing. My gorgeous writing. And when I come away — did I mean it? Julia Cameron and the Artist’s Way allows you to be this. Like the stranger in Camus. That’s all I remember. It allows the people I write about — including me — to be flawed, warm and blue, like my pool. To be hands in the currents of the ocean that can feel the distance from the shore through the tension in the water. Travelling from island to island. To visit relatives. To people the islands some more.

5. 2014, The Secret. Rhonda Byrne. She also believes in prayer. I have a problem with prayer. But I still manage to read it. It’s awkward to read, it has glossy pages that bounce the light off. But I still manage to read it. Cos it is telling me that wealth is my birthright. I can be anything I want. 2014, I still haven’t made it the way I want. I’m over the moon. I’m in 7th heaven. So much so that I am buying everyone copies. And when Marlon comes out of prison, he comes to mine to thank me for sending him The Secret. We drink cinnamon and lavender tea with lemon as he promises to honour the gift of spoken word he finds in there. The Secret tells me I can excavate a nightclub. I believe. My greatest gift is I believe. There are fucking tectonic plates for God sake and we are made, literally, from the stars. We are the evensong of the stars after it has a go with huge animals and huge armoured roundie things that’s shells are the spiral like everything else that is a spiral. Perfect mathematical spirals. 1+0 = 1. 1+1 = 2. 2+1 = 3. 3+2 = 5. 5+3 = 8. 8+5 = 13. 13+8 = 21. 21+13 = 34. All spirals without exception follow this pattern. 6ft nautilus. The centre of a sunflower. A tortoise shell. Why can’t we need to meditate? Something turns us from an ape to a human being who learns to fry food. Why can’t we ask, believe, receive? Why can’t we? Why can’t it be true? It has been true for me. I want a ball gown. I believe I can have a ball gown. That ball gown changes everything about me. Creates THE DRESS.

6. 2023, Rich as Fuck. Amanda Frances. I’ve been on all these journeys. Set sail. Raised my sail. Seen the stars at night out at sea. Set my sexton. I don’t even know what one is. Mapped everything for others to follow me. But it’s taken time. And 30 years ago, in 1996 when I decide to be a writer, I promise myself I will be rich when I retire. Retirement is coming soon. I worry, but not too much. I worry. An awful lot sometimes. But I know that God is looking out for me. The universe is looking out for me. I can manifest this. I can manifest this. I can manifest this. It’s the title that draws me. She speaks like me. Well, not quite as bad. Her teachings and her beautiful community online all striving for the same thing: to feel at peace; to ditch our fear of money; to ask where our fear comes from; to uncover its limiting belief; and then ask is it true. I’ve not made my fortune yet. But I know it is closer. First, I have to learn how to spend it. Earn it. Keep it. Without these in place I’ll be as happy as Scrooge.

7. 2026, Zero Limits. Hoʻoponopono. Dr Joe Vitale and Dr Hew Lew. For months I have had pins and needles. I have been back and forward to the doctors. Of course, afraid. The claim that makes me pick up the book is Dr Lew heals a psychiatry ward of criminally insane people without doing a diagnosis. All he does is take responsibility and heal himself. ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.’ In bed I’m thinking this is no way to live. My fucking legs are on fire. It’s in my neck. In my hands. I can’t sleep. Lack of sleep is making it worst. I know this. So, I sit up and I repeat with both hands on my heart. ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.’ Over and over again. Different events to be sorry for flood my mind. I keep repeating. ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.’ I wake up the next morning, and it is gone. That was six days ago. On Wednesday my mum would have been 100. I say into the mirror ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.’ A pure white moth lands on the mirror. ‘I have a great life now mum, you would be so proud of me.’

8. Yesterday I write in my Rich as Fuck group, in response to Amanda’s Summer Challenge: ‘Take one clear, tangible, actionable step toward what you want today, in the energy of the woman you want to be. Not the action that necessarily finishes it, solves the entire thing, or guarantees something—but the action that moves you forward. Put on the confidence. Put on the boldness. Put on the energy of the person who knows, who is sure, and who already has the thing. Be her now. Take action from her.'

I reply, ‘I put down roots today. In my stylish house with my stylish garden and my stylish me. I have always loved style and design. I do not have to drool over it in magazines, though I can if I want to. I am putting down roots.

I begin by feeling at home and baking a banana pie for me. I bake frequently. But that is from necessity. Today I am baking for me who feels healed by realising all my artistic treasures are here in my home.

I don't have to dig up anyone else's garden anymore. I don’t have to beg. I simply have to put down roots. And make good on the promise I made myself 30 years ago, 'I will be rich when I 'retire.' I will reap what I have sown.'

I have sown well. I planted diligently. My artistic harvest is beautiful. My harvest is the ingredients of my wealth. It will yield many harvests.’

THE DRESS

Amanda said a fantastic line, ‘That it feels good to put on confidence like a piece of clothing and fucking wear it' My big dream is that statement turned around. To put on the piece of clothing, a dream dress, THE DRESS, that makes you confident.

I want to be a TV fairy Godmother who helps you ditch the you that has been cleaning grates.

I have created the most beautiful pro pitch deck using photos from my last 2 immersive installations.

I have sent it out — pitched it. I am holding on lightly. But also, I know that is another word for fear. I am scared of receiving no.

I must change my energy to let the universe know I am ready to receive yes.'

Lacey replies: 'There isn't a reality where "no" exists. Like not a possibility. It can't NOT happen receive your "yes" NOW! Congratulations on your inevitable success ’

Me: “Awwwwwww. How wonderful is this. You've made me so happy Lacey. I receive my yes NOW. Thank you. ’’

Lacey: ‘Also.... Put me on the show because I would LOVE a TV fairy godmother to put me in the dress! And can I just say that I cannot think of anyone better for this role than you! You literally embody this through your comments, advice, and support of the folks here. Everyone here on this app sees it, so you're already living the life virtually. We just need the right eyes and ears on the idea to get it produced. I'm rooting for you, Linda!’

My immediate thoughts are of all the practice I have had. In the Black Crows prison workshops. In the Reno Memoirs, Excavation; The Reno at The Whitworth. At my table in the Ruins of the Big House. MY MUM IS WHITE on our sofas and all the surrounding conversations with visitors. In all my workshops. In all my friendships. But it all begins with trying to save my mum. To make my mum the woman she could have been. But obviously, she couldn’t have been. What she did do though was provide the womb to make me. She directly helps anyone I help. She did, she does impact the world. As I knew she could. 

My 8-station mind-map, above, is every bit as beautiful as David Hockney’s swimming pool.