‘Recovering Marc Bolan’ - picking over the bones
of a previous existence.
Excess Baggage...
Stupidly dragging my bags with me, I struggle into the relaxing,
white-painted room – ‘no baggage in the treatment
room!’ She calls. We chuck them out in the hall.
Vie is the crystal healer and shaman that I love to go to
when I’m in London. Her room in Muswell Hill is peaceful,
light, the energy pure and clear. Near tranquil Highgate Woods,
which I have just wandered through. ‘Sacred lands’
she smiles. Huge crystals about half a metre high stand on
the floor, and smaller ones are arrayed in elegant curliqued
French glass cabinets. Waiting for Vie to drop her son at
school, she says I can look around. The crystals seem to be
sorted by colour and the type of energy they have. Heavy,
red ones, displayed low, seem connected to earth. Higher in
the cabinet are the clear clean crystals, connecting to spirit.
There are lots of other, really curious ones – blue
with turquoise excrescences on the surface, or wonderful globes
cut through showing exotic cloudlike striations inside.
Vie reappears, reads the Tarot cards for me. Her ‘Voyager’
deck is beautiful – large cards that overflow the hand,
with ‘Crystals, Cups, Wands, and Worlds’ as suits.
The images are vibrant, modern, a collage of images of faces,
people, the natural world.
My card is the ‘Seeker’. Sounds about right for
me at the moment. I am looking to sell my flat, or remortgage
it, or in any case, work out what the best thing is to do,
and do it! The ‘spirit guidance’ card is ‘confusion’.
Well yes, I really don’t know what to do at the moment.
It’s ok, says Vie, just stay with it.
Male and female aspects in my life – the female is
‘narrowing’. The influence that has come from
my female ancestors is a limiting, narrowing influence. I
laugh and describe the landlady at my rooms in Hampstead –
breathing down my neck and writing me lots of little notes
about closing the window etc. I get up and scuttle sideways
like a crab to show Vie how I have to move in the cluttered
corridor and kitchen – this is definitely ‘narrowing’!
Well, you will attract this energy as it is a part of your
aura, she says in her soft French vowels.
Conversely, for the male energy, I draw ‘The Sun’
– absolutely the most positive card in the pack for
the masculine. The Sun King. My face must look perplexed.
‘Don’t you think of your father like that?’
asks Vie. Well no, I say. Well, this is the energy coming
from him, she says, the Sun! I reply, ‘Well, I used
to think he was positive but then my Mum told me some pretty
awful things and so I thought he was negative. Now I’m…
confused!’
We look at money – Ace of Crystals, or Brilliance.
The best card you can get for money, says Vie. And work. I
must gather a supportive group around me. And relationship
– passion. Another great card. ‘I see your home
coming together in the same place as your creative work’
says Vie, and we talk about how that might happen.
Dare! She says, suddenly, blue eyes aflame. Sell your flat,
Jeli, take the money to Bali and set up something that you
really will love and that will really work for you. If you
follow your heart, you will be successful. It is refreshing
to hear this rather than the ‘security…property…best
long term investment…’ stuff I have been hearing
lately. This is why I have come.
A crystal healing follows. I lie down on the bed on the floor
and Vie places crystals on me at various points. She just
sits quietly and holds my head. Her hands smell of Rose and
Neroli. Very soothing. My mind drifts to thoughts of my ancestors.
Who were those ‘narrowing’ women? I vow to heal
this energy. I certainly don’t want to pass this on
to my daughter Cahya.
Recovering some lost parts of myself
I feel that I have come back to England not just to sort my
finances, but also to retrieve a few lost bits of myself.
At my brothers house, a couple of bags of my old stuff remain.
I go through them like a stranger, picking out some things
that still seem important.
I find the hefty silvery aluminium blocky bar that rested
on my desk at Chase Manhattan Bank for quite a few years.
Angela Torrington it says. Even when new, it arrived slightly
dented on one corner, and remains so. It cost $120 from my
budget, I remember, and was shipped over from NewYork. I decide
I can’t leave it in this slightly bald and boring state
and need to bring the ‘Jeli Lala’ energy in somehow.
So I stick a doingly beaded flower I once made on the top
with Blue Tac (putty) and then get quite carried away, decorating.
My niece comes in as I am sticking a purple crystal heart
into a tiny miniature flowerpot and sticking it on top. It
looks rather festive!
I have tried to chuck out my name bar several times and still
obviously have not quite managed it, so it looks like I shall
finally have to heft it over to Bali. I suppose the ‘corporate
woman’ is still an important part of my identity, or
perhaps it should be, though I have no desire to go back to
being ‘like a bloke’! I was so masculine in my
corporate identity before. Though I did do a lot of interesting
and creative work, creating early email systems to help people
in their work, all over the world.
I acquired the name ‘Jeli Lala’ on a camping
holiday. Two of my friends suddenly looked up from their guitars,
announced: ‘Angela is boring, Angie doesn’t suit
you, and Ange is disgusting. We think you should be called
Jeli Lala – you can be called Jeli, or Lala, or Jeli
Lala’. Somehow, this new name allowed me to glimpse
new possibilities for myself, for my very identity. Can I
capture this ‘Jeli Lala’ character, become her,
fully express her creativity, style, panache and daring? Not
to mention humour. It is fun having a name that makes people
laugh when you meet them…
Treasures of a lost civilisation? (…mine)
On Sunday, we go to the boot market, en famille, my brother
Richard, new wife Maxine and daughters Robyn and Rae. A huge
spread out field, the ‘boot market’ is a vast
collection of people and their junk – aisles and aisles
of outdoor unwanted stuff for sale, at knock-down prices.
I am on a quest to recover the ‘Marc Bolan’ energy.
Not sure if you remember him – he was a romantic velvetty
poet and pop star, circa 1970 – Telegram Sam (first
record I ever bought), corkscrew hair, floaty clothes, wonderful
poetic lyrics,
electric guitar – I recently remembered how much I
loved him when I was fifteen, and resolved to bring his style
back into my life. Hence I am on the look out for beaded black
lace wafty tops, anything in purple velvet, antique beading
with sequins, feathers and furs…
I find a few ‘Bolanesque’ bits but more –
find myself gazing at household items that are identical to
those we had in our family when I was a child and teenager.
The flotsam and jetsam of the seventies seems to have resurfaced
for review. It really is eerie – I even come across
a cot of the exact same design that I had as a child! I stand
looking at it, the cutie spacie bunnies and teddy transfers
of curious design. I always liked them. I remember teaching
my younger sister how to climb over the side.
Next I discover six little china egg cups in a box. Black,
white, orange, yellow, green and blue, with a gold line around
the rim. Exactly the ones we had at home when I was a child.
I remember a friend saying how she had to help wash up at
her house. I was horrified, thought it was awful that she
was expected to do that. Random memories surface…
Technical car repair books remind me of an old yellow Cortina,
and a boyfriend who, of necessity, used to spend a long time
tinkering… It feels almost as if I am an archaeologist
who has happened upon the detritis of a lost civilisation.
Only the lost civilisation is me, and I am rediscovering myself
in the mundane household items of the twentieth century, shared
with these families here, these people who are putting their
old possessions on display. It is indeed odd.
All the world’s a stage…
Back in London, I drive to my dance tribe group with a friend,
Sarah. She parks the car, then ‘Oh!’ she exclaims.
‘Did someone hit me?’ Another car is parked right
behind her, close. The door opens and I hear a familiar voice.
My heart sinks. It is the ex-boyfriend I said goodbye to when
I left London for Bali. I get out of the car – (I half
expect someone to call ‘lights, action!’ –
feels like a film set) as I step through the pathway that
has magically opened between the bumpers onto the pavement,
surrendering, ready to play the scene. We exchange pleasantries
briefly, and then I make my excuses, not wishing to stay too
long or get into ‘boundary confusion’ mode. I
feel quite disturbed and strange. Somehow it seems surreal.
‘Wow’ says Sarah, raising her quizzical eyebrows.
‘That was strange how he just appeared. It had to happen,
didn’t it?’
Recovering Marc Bolan
Collecting black velvet, purple sequins round and crescent
moon shaped, diamante, and a little photo of Marc Bolan which
I’ve laminated, I combine them into a piece of jewellery,
a piece of art really, a kind of ‘memento mori’
of my fave rock star. I’m stitching it together, and
stitching something that I lost and left behind back into
my life. Stitching feels like exactly the right energy for
this – when I left London for Bali I threw out everything
in my previous life. The baby and the bathwater. Now I’ve
come back to pick up some of these pieces, weave them back
into the patchwork of my life, and move on.
I hang the velvetty romantic pendant on a long irridescent
rainbow black faceted bead necklace, a wonderful boot market
find. It looks great. This inspires me to start getting into
Bolanesque clothes as well – discovering myself in a
romantic purple devoré velvet cloak, foppish gold and
black slippers, romantic seventies ruffled blouses (I must
have my finger on the pulse of the times – London is
crammed with this kind of fashion at the moment, in the grip
of a massive seventies backlash!) I look like a turn of the
century romantic ‘opium eater’ and feel a bit
like that, too, living in ‘rooms’ in Hampstead,
writing poetry. It’s really fun. Well, at least, distracts
me from missing Putu and Cahya.
A friend calls and tells me that it’s the twenty fifth
anniversary of Marc Bolan’s death this weekend. He died
tragically at only twenty eight, when his wife crashed their
mini into a tree. I take the bus to the Jewish cemetery at
Golder’s Green. A motley crew is gathered in the secluded
afternoon courtyard. I was expecting elfin Bolan admirers
in artistic garb but strangely, several fans are wearing lurid
bright yellow football shirts (can’t imagine Marc being
seen dead in one of those!) with bright pink feather boas
(Lavender, maybe, but surely not bright pink!) Some slightly
mawkish scenes ensue with overweight ‘Marc’ look-alikes
posing next to the floral tributes in too tight sateen trousers.
I think it all would have made him laugh…
His cousin can barely speak, she is so upset, even now. He
was such a treasure – completely unique. A master innovator,
he created ‘glam rock’ – all satin and sparkle
– and has been called the ‘father of punk’.
He wrote delicately poetic lyrics and sung in a curious vibrating
falsetto. Yet he was very cool, very cool.
Picking over the bones
This process of ‘picking over the bones’ is very
much the energy of the times by the way – astrologically,
having just been through massive changes and challenges (global
in scale, like September 11, as well as personal challenges
too) it is time to pick over the pieces, take what we really
want that may have been left behind, before we move on to
a new level.
I wonder, what did you love as a child or teenager that you
have forgotten or left behind? How could you get it back,
bring that energy back into your life?
“ She’ll be wild, she’s a rock n’
roll child, oh yeah.”
NEXT ISSUE: Discovering your angels and guides
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery
and Art’ at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her
husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual
practices for more than ten years. She writes “As a
life-long artist, I’ve been exploring my inner world
since I was a child. In this column, I will share some of
my personal experiences and spiritual methods – hopefully,
you’ll find this interesting, and maybe it will give
some ideas for your own journey”.
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
