Unless Eckhart Tolle actually derived this phrase from Richard Grannon’s sister’s yoga teacher, that is.

Who’s to say?

Everything’s up for grabs, here.

The Author is also thinking about re-writing the chapter about Avigail and silence (Chapter 5) because she is now wondering whether stillness is inherently more interesting (conceptually/spiritually) than silence, and more rarely addressed – as a subject – by other writers.

It’s so wearying when everything is being perpetually challenged and contested like this, though, isn’t it?

But shouldn’t fiction strive to echo life (where everything is constantly being challenged and contested)?

Or is fiction merely a soothing balm, a soft breeze, a quiet confirmation, a temporary release?

Why should it be either/or?

Can’t fiction be exquisitely paradoxical?

But then which of us goes to Dreams or IKEA to buy a new mattress and then takes the thing home and carefully peels back the strong, clean fabric that neatly covers it to reveal the springs?

We don’t. We just bounce on to the mattress, stretch out, sigh, and fall blissfully asleep.

The Author suspects that this novella (which is currently in danger of becoming a novel so needs to end quite soon) is either extremely deep or unbelievably trite.

It’s impossible to tell.

The Author (Gyasi ‘Chance’ Ebo claims) will persist in calling it ‘unbelievably trite’ because she is fundamentally disingenuous.

The Author (The Author claims) will persist in calling it ‘unbelievably trite’ because – at some profound level – it is unbelievably trite.

Nothing of much note happens, really, does it?

Aside from the oyster shell strike?

Everything else is merely filler and back story.

And a certain amount of waffling on about Richard Grannon whose work The Author greatly admires (and who has recently closed down his Instagram account and declared war on the word ‘narcissist’), and Lucy Molloy, who The Author enjoys watching on YouTube. Lucy Molloy gave birth to a baby (Hendrix) a short while ago. This development has filled her life with an immense joy and a renewed purpose, which, to be perfectly honest, is slightly irritating for The Author in terms of the narrative/moral/social commentary The Author is surreptitiously asserting. Or not actually asserting but kind of asserting.

The Author is recently returned from a trip to Normandy, in France, which she undertook with a friend – also called Nicola – who owns a farmhouse there and happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on the vulva. The Author wrote much of Chapter 7 while sitting on the grass in the other Nicola’s paddock under a giant oak tree with acorns falling down all around her. On the final day of her trip, the other Nicola mentioned, in passing, that sitting in long grass may have placed The Author in danger of being attacked by a local burrowing insect which lives in the long grass in that particular region of France. Said insect burrows stealthily into the body’s warm folds and crevices and generates an almost unspeakable level of itching. There is no known treatment for this itching. Although – on a positive note – the parasite can only unleash its itch on a single occasion. After falling prey to its wiles the first time, the victim will then become immune.