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"Twenty years ago, the Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante sat in my sky blue Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, about ten inches away from me, and told me:
'Las canciones populares han reemplazado la poesía en este siglo.' Popular songs have taken the place of poetry in this century. He was dead serious.
I agree. And this is why I play my stereo as loudly as possible."
[an excerpt from Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire.]
I had looked forward to this concert for two months or maybe my whole life. Would I have liked them when I was younger? It's almost necessary I should be alive and listening to music now and this band be around and playing now.
In The Great's class on Wednesday he brought to our attention the album cover of Who's Next (The Who).
Yes. It is how it looks, they just peed on that monument. A large cement block in a slag heap. A monument to a destructive materialistic world and they peed on it.
In their song Won't get fooled again there's that long sequence of repetitive synthesizerness that pushes out a little too long but then is broken by a human cry.
Outside in line we had waited in a construction zone surrounded by unknown chums in long tunics, leggings, and thrift-store jackets. Girls who style their hair to look as though they've chopped it all off in chunky desperation and boys who style their hair to look as though it's never been chopped. The first opening band came up. A boy with his synthesizer and a girl with her jazzercise. I danced. And despite the fact that I couldn't quit beaming excitement I notice her face is lined. Is she youthful? Stage make-up? No one understood a word jazzercise girl was singing. I remembered a time when I went to a local venue with a couple of boys and as we leaned against the brick inside wall we mainly watched the crowd that watched the band. A band of boys in glitter and wings, a dress and jeans, four-eyed glasses. The only thing we could make out that glitter king said was "Something bad is going to happen tonight."
What's the story behind her? Graceful dance moves. Lines on her face that don't laugh. Look at it, it's a perfect film in a box. Expressionism. Flat foundation and prettied eyes. Hair sprayed into school girl curled ponytail. A Ralph Lauren Polo sweater. Exaggerated grace.
So I've got a built in Brechtian filter from all of these classes I've been taking.
Architecture In Helsinki was almost enough to turn me into bobby-socks with a Beatles poster except that I like to dance in my own little world. I did however try to profess my love to them between sets, but as my voice is a bit whispery none of this carried the five feet over speakers and amps to the band. AIH doesn't even specifically sound superb live. The harmonious levels are much more mastered on an album. It's the spirit not the law. And I love the spirit. I love the boy in red jeans standing on tiptoe playing the trumpet.
Onion-cutting dishwasher patted me on the back today.
A friend once told me I walk like a happy pregnant mother. I am neither pregnant nor mother. Perhaps happy.
Fall is intoxicating.
I can't stop crunching through the leaves.
I was sitting in a café of a Barnes and Noble yesterday. I love a good small bookstore full of identity but how many places will leave you alone with books, food, chairs, and tables? Play place olé.
There was a boyfriend visiting a green-aproned café clerk and a table of friends off to my right. I had lost a couple at a Thai food restaurant and another girl was somewhere shelved and reading. Probably in the political section.
I was "browsing" through a book of E.B. White essays (although I knew, even then, it was a joke to even suggest that book was making it back to the shelves. ka-ching)
and listening to a mix of Cat Power, Bob Dylan, and the Lovin' Spoonful. All I needed was my Fly Wild sweatshirt (complete with mallard ducks in V formation) and I would have been so golden cozy. I looked up from my book at one point to see the sign above one of the bookshelves "Diseases." Underneath was a book with title "It's your Hormones."
Diseases?
Oh well. I saw a book about Geisha's in the African American section.
Warning: I am in one whole and happy piece eating my breakfast of apple and hot cocoa in my apartment.
Thursday afternoon I was curled up on a hospital bed in an ER crying. J'ai la tolérance des dieux for pain. Or I thought. Maybe I'm not quite there yet. I was in my pleated polyester dress with my Audrey Tautou bangs staining the hospital pillow with my not waterproof mascara.
On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, what would you rate your pain?
I'm sure she was wearing scrubs. The light green pants with the children's printed tent top.
Nine.
I won't rule out that it could be worse.
There are some amazing things you realize when you force yourself to think through the pain.
I didn't start crying until I asked for help.
A Short Haiku
Ok.
I'll add in hello terms
strobe light
My boss imparted some wisdom to me today. I woke up at 8:21 a.m.
My shift starts at eight.
I'm never going to be able to keep a real job. I just can't seem to wake up, I said over to my left as I chopped up celery for my tri-weekly ritual of soup making.
He stops and thinks about it for a while. You need to be excited to wake up. You need to have something exciting to wake up for.
Having onion-cutting-dishwasher-boy tell me he likes my haircut isn't exciting? I suppose it might be only heartwarming.
So heartwarming doesn't send a jolt of alertness through my half-dazzled sleep ensnarled self.
I used to be an admirable pro at the discipline of rising by myself early. Oh those yester years I can hardly recall. This was even long after I stopped begging my mom to let me wake up before 7 a.m. This was long after I learned the pure blissful joy and need of sleep.
What was it?
What happened?
It was the minutes turning into seconds and the hours changing from days to minutes.
I have a fascination with tattoos. And I've recently had the idea of hanging out in a tattoo parlor. Maybe it's the whole idea that I'd get one but I know it's too permanent for me. Too pretentious for me, I change and improve and disprove, sin and repent too much. And so now I need to know everything about tattoos and the people who get them.
How is it I spent seven and a half hours trying to edit and burn a two and a half minute music video? Yes, sadly, for the first time I missed the Great's class.
And it has come to my attention, ma cousine must think I am the most uncomfortably awkward person on earth.
What did you and mon ami talk about when he drove you home lastnight?
son ami--her friend and not in an I-hope-you-weren't-talking-about-me sense.
Maybe in some ways I am. My interaction with my roommates seems to be limited to the times when I indulge in watching MTV reality TV shows. But can we really be too harsh seeing as how I'm generally only home to do homework and sleep. That's right, not even eat. Eating is done during stolen moments when a project is taking insanely long to render or compress. Sad for this foodie. The bagels on campus aren't even that great. Oh well. I think the last time I burned my tongue on the hot chocolate at my grill, well, I think I did permanent damage.
And I should stop awkwardly ducking my head as I smirk to myself. Why not share my smirk with the paisley wearing football player? Why not smirk him in the eye? Why duck my head because coworker 1 and ma soeur are both trying to be my yentas? This is my year to step out and smirk you all in the eye.
Encore!
World, to you I say fastly and proudly: This is my year to step out and smirk you all in the eye!
¡Viva la revolución!
Anarchy all the wavers
utilities are the same anywhere
march march march march march
a beat
a beat
tap tap rappa tap tap
rappa tap tap
"child star, child star, child star, child star, child star, child star, child star*"
oui, mes deviors, je sais, vous m'appellez
"This is not your best work^"
*Upon this Tidal Wave of Young Blood by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
^ My quotation of a TA, because I feel it fits this blog.
Mon professeur tells me it's very French for the lab to tell me how to say things. Apparently they are taught how to argue and my "twisted logic" doesn't fit into their learnings. Downfall. I shall say it all anyway. "Sans uniforme est égale aux mensonges." Voila.
It is done.
I spend sweet fall days in the basement of a building in an editing lab now. Oh edit edit like a frog waiting for flies when all of the flies are outside. I guess frogs have to sleep sometimes. Sometimes there needs to be underground time, eh? Edit edit.
Ho! Oh please, watch On Approval so you can enjoy Ho! too.
I have found out, that as ma mère I laugh the loudest and most joyfully in the theatre and I take after mon père as I am never serious but everyone always thinks I am. Vraiment, a boy at the grill asked if he could go on break when he was done with his doings. A nice hardworking folk dancing boy. I said no as I always say no when they can go. I said no, oh no, but yes. I guess dead-pan doesn't work at work. Another child asked to go to el baño. Ask? It's the baño! Again I had to clarify and tell him to go. The dear children will keep out of the bathroom but will not stop the shoving the chocolate pudding in each other's faces. Wait I guess that is a bit what children do. Why haven't figurative phrases kept out of life? They're not really children.
And for you, Frenchie, my paper had full marks on compelling style. Vote for me! Vote for me! Le Président who is the king!
Ho!
Red plaid!
We had to hand in our first storyboard today. The problem is, we already made the films last weekend. And I had to take a quiz on Monday. And I never carry sheets of paper around with me. Alors, aujourd'hui (which doesn't rhyme with "today" but you could pretend it does in your pretty mind) I had to hold up my storyboard that was missing a corner to ask my professor if he wanted a new one drawn up.
I decided I need to organize things a little better.
A lot of people frown at the milieu who study and analyze analyze analyze films and theatres. As if milieu (a place and humans both?) were stabbing art repeatedly and heatedly. Debating metaphors behind snobisme brick-built closed doors. They couldn't have possibly meant all that. We're making it up. Oh, but step back, just as the milieu can go too far, so can you, the other milieu (which can be pronounced milyer, take note). Never neglect They studied the same as We. They were taught to analyze so much.
Circles.
There are always circles to everything.
For what circles around in logic may come from beginning to end to I see your point. War must be a delusion that something can be linear which becomes the biggest and saddest mess of scribbles. A black mark in lives, history.
Naturalism. Can be so fascinating but something with such potential to be a horrible heartless gutteribe of life. Momma Roma. Are all of Italy's film prostitutes (not pornography. Cabiria) hysterically laughing, rural women? Nights of Cabiria, 8 1/2, Momma Roma. Oh, Momma Roma. Not a typical Naturalist piece selection as par usual for The Great film prof. With the combination of my youth in a rural outcropping, Resurrection by Tolstoy, and dear Momma Roma and her boy Etorre I almost cried for a state so eternal yet only a desperate fleeting moment. God sometimes the world is made so Heaven is a star and life is the endless, shapeless, directionless black abyss of space. Very little else can remind me of my privilege. No political idea is enough to counter the human traits that allow some to amass wealth and others to further degrade. We have created money and it is the current form that buys us in and out of degradation.
I feel that prostitutes teach the best lessons.
I never want to teach any lessons.
I'm slightly becoming british. I can't stop typing "humour" or "behaviour" I try to correct myself. Though, why? Why correct it? That's just another border. I'm going to climb into Swiss mountains and be Russian or Tahitian.
I am a limited child in french. My ambiguous speak n'existe pas in the language of love. yet. Alors they make us cram into a French writing lab for our three page papers of adult third gradedness. The Frenchies run the lab pretty tight. I always end up arguing with the Frenchie. She can cross out my sentences, je m'en fiche. But what about my voice. My, you make me sound so dry and not of dry sense of humour (British?). And so I argue my points and refuse to change phrases every once in a while. At least I'll have character even if it is grammatically incorrect and makes no sense to the proper madame who peruses words and not spaces. Have you no sense of humanity, woman?! I become the outraged américainne shaking my fists on front pages of futility.
Does it just take time? Do I have to lose myself in the meantime? Why won't France accept me?
There's a winter dying to fill up the outside. October 16th? Don't surrender outside! It's not time yet. I want galoshes and wool socks first!
Today I brought a long mixing spoon to the dishwashers. There wasn't anyone there. So I rinsed it off, dear woman who job coaches for the boys, she keeps getting burnt pots. So I rinsed my barbeque spoon off. I turned around and what should I see in the corner but the film quoter. He was sitting cross legged, arms folded, head down. Was he praying? Was he sleeping? How long had he been there? Most importantly how had he blended in?
It's 12:16 am. I should be going to bed because I work at eight in the morning.
poo-pooh.
The first time I noticed October the 14th I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I had just laced my shoes, it was afternoon; I was looking out my window. I could see the front yard across the street layered with yellow leaves over old summer grasses. The little house with the old woman who was so short and had such large glasses. The kind that take over your whole face. Did she always wear blue, or did I make that up?
The house next to that was light gray with a door rojo. I think my third grade friend's mom's old boss lived there. Manicured. Formal. Did anyone really live there?
I could see lots of tops of trees and tops of houses, homes.
I was about to jog about town with a cross country team of mine.
I noticed October 14th because I realized it was the last time I would ever notice an October 14th from that vantage point. From that room, that seat, that window. That state.
One takes last in stride just as if it was first. Physically, logically, reasonably, right? C'est le même, n'est-ce pas?
I sent my resumé to the uni broadcasting company like a good child. I sent it in with my fingers crossed and a love for the grill and a squint at my principles.
Sometimes you do have to squint at principles. Just to learn what's outside them. Because maybe something has a point.
But my point is the joy of digression. I don't want editorial. No interstitials. No exploitation of emotion. Lets have no drama, no sound bites. I want me, one mic and the world.
I'm trying to bite my palm again.
How could I ever leave the movie-quoter, the ESPN songs, the football player with multiple aliases, or my boss who calls us all crazy. I could maybe leave the girl who sings The Little Mermaid at the top of her lungs and pesters baseball players every Monday night. But I figure that even just needs more time.
I will graduate from this uni with a degree in grill.
I don't want Hollywood, so what's the problem?
...a few camera skills shy of a crew, that's what.
oh, bonne nuit. C'était une belle jour. Ma vie, ça va. et encore, ça va. va. va. va. va. va.
what's last and what's first?
circular.
biting my palm.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream. Like I've won the prize for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Am I really a film major? It's like they let me in to play because they know I'll love it and it's just a little wish they can grant for a little while. Why not? I'm funny to have around.
The autumn smells richer. Dreams. Fogs. Mists. Passions. Fading sunlight. White balance. Theatre analysis. Limited space. Deep Space.
Color, texture, lights, patterns, camera, sound speed, ACTION.
Seven hours at the grill tonight. It was an effing major football game. I would have wanted to crawl into the smoker to end with a hickory smoke flavor, except for a good friend. Instead I sang tonight (no Little Mermaid of course) I smiled. Well I almost yelled at my boss.
Ok, I'll get sides for the burgers
I'm one step ahead of you, the cinnamon apples are cooked
YES I'll keep moving
well that customer wanted---
Sure I'll take a minute and take the bread from the oven to the proofer
ask him what sides he wants for this steak
I look wildly around and see a few hims. Was it you who had the steak?
ask him what sides he wants for this steak!
ask him what sides he wants for this steak.
THAT'S WHAT I'M DOING.
Can we lock the doors?
Why?
Because we close at nine.
How will people get in if they want to watch the football game?
They won't.
But I am here at a restaurant and my purpose is to serve. That's not a bad thing.
Frustrating.
I am continually confused though by customers.
Why have you been waiting in line to order a fatty burger for half an hour?
This is where I really have to bite my tongue:
I was just coming to check on my order.
I look in front of me at the row of springy hooks. Ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, David.
How long ago did you order?
About 10 minutes.
.....
How long did you wait in line? Oh, 40 minutes? What do you think all of those people in line ahead of you were doing? Ordering food? Really? Well, it's a 45 minute weight.
Even more phenomenal are the people who are told right away, before they order, it will be an hour long wait and THEY STILL ORDER.
WHY?! Restaurant food isn't that great. You must be the worst cook EVER.
I could go on and on and on and on.
And so my friend and I met together after work to burn a few printer paper signs we put up tonight in the grill. Three. Three signs. I picked up a box of matches chez moi, went to chez friend, and sat in a parking lot burning papers and wet newspapers.
We wrote some new verses to our song.
Our August was spent in the grill with the sole purpose of feeding football players. Hoo. Rah. We watched ESPN tout le temps. Except for Little League, this fealt like dying. So we set new lyrics to an old I-mourn-my-cowboy song.
ESPN
Why don't you run out of sponsers
your co-hosts are monsters
they drive me insane
The new bits are just as clever but wouldn't pass a Scrabble game.
Tant pis.
And I still have a french paper to write!
In the spring I went shopping with a friend. We don't normally shop together and I would normally never go into American Eagle. I have mon père's voice in my head asking me why I would pay to wear a companies name. However, I wandered around in the store as she scoured the sale racks. She found a great deal on jeans, I found a men's shirt that said, "Do you want me to buy you a drink or should I just give you the money?" No, I don't take drinks or money. Yes, I was offended at all females being generally instated into life as prostitutes. It makes me suspicious and sad it could sometimes be true.
I was looking at the fruit salad in the great white bin at the grill. I had cut it and I knew its entire genetic make-up. However I found myself looking at the hotel room in Pretty Woman. The colors piled in large masses of flowery shapeless dresses. Is this fruit my tower of captivity?
I love the grill.
In seventh grade my appetite lost itself. For a girl who had always though she was fat, it is a chilling thing. The only thing to rival it is the first time I made myself throw up. I was empowered yet powerless. I didn't choose not to eat, I couldn't make myself. But it spurred on the calorie counting, the weight-loss, the binging, the purging, the terror, the self-destruction.
Thank God for redemption and love.
Mon petit, mon petit
I didn't mean to pour the wassle down your back
I had no accord
no thought
no c-major
the christmas party was blustering around me
in an all too familiar fashion
I will wash your feet
News for the world: I have a passion: documentary.
There.
The list is now two items long, people of the kitchen table conversation.
My Passions: skinny jeans and documentaries.
I watched an audience watch a student film today. I also wrapped myself up in post production sound editing: which I would somewhat love to never worry about again. I dimmed the lights and donned a fantastic usher vest.
Last night I spent in a dark room. A developing room. We all traipsed over to an old apartment to group into enclosed bathrooms. We milled about in variating patterns. A stand across the room, corner of the couch, guitar hero, professor's glasses, agitate the spaghetti ball of film in the sink.
What do you know about university children who's hands smell of developing chemicals?I know they must be thinking their own thoughts often similar to mine. There is a terrible awkward girl. But this is a great small film classes. And great small film classes have no room for outcasts. Because she has a story. And we're all liberalites and hater-haters. Ho!
what ho, green carpet
of multiplying floors and nightmares
clashing with blue carpet couches
and testifying of uncares
uncares for the picture to hang on the wall
uncares for the student who communes with tv
lay back into cooties of generations of tenants
no one cares
no one cares
for we upholster in carpets of:
worn down
bathroom threaded
plastic fiber
"Child, there were many days of fall left to be won. I tucked my scarf tenderly into my bag every morning and tried on a different cardigan on every different day. None of it was taken to because the weather stayed a gentle summer staying."
He was confused and tried to be himself. For confused reasons there were rules that became obstacles and barriers. Everything had some validity. Who was right and how could anyone have done anything better? But now as I watch the man on the screen with the tattoo, I think of the boy with the tattoo and processes. Realism? Idealism? What heart holds into you or pours out from you? Nothing so moves me; I love you my friend.
"Hi, I'm Icarus, I'm falling*"*This is a quote from a Regina Spektor song. I don't know which one. The other quotation has no reason to be cited. It came from some well of imagination.
During the Nazis rise to power in Germany, Berthold Brecht was changing theatre. It had been a mainstay to lead the audience to identify with particular characters. Brethold wanted his audiences to be critical. An audience cannot be critical if they are allowed to lose themselves in a performance. "So he devised a theatre of mixed and constantly changing forms to keep the audience aware they were watching not an imitation of life but a show with an urgent and dialectical purpose" (Rabiger, Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics, Third Edition).
Brechtian Distancing.
Demanding.
Nazis rising.
Timing is everything.
I have noticed I've been picking up the colloquialisms of the grill. Like my boss I keep thinking I should be saying "Whatchoo doin?" But not in an overly quoted drunken commercial way. In a grammatical error way. "Whatchoo doin" is not a native thing to say for a Scandinavian. Néanmoins, Joachim du Bellay encouraged France to do like the romans and devour all that's best of a culture and make it your own.
Watchoo doin?
This year I stood up and said I WILL BE ME. And I stand up and say it over and over in between times of crawling into the box and curling up in quiet shrouds of hermatism. Being me sadly requires putting a stop to many a waterfight and preaching safety in the workplace.
I like crèpes. I LOVE them with lemon and sugar. Apparently it's the way the English do it. And who could resist. Ce n'est pas possible. Oh sweet drug I call thy name lemon.
So that was my plan for a warm end to a rainy day meal. Guess what. You can't cook crèpes in a cheep college apartment in a cheep teflon pan without cooking spray. Ce n'est pas possible. I had to drop that pancake mush like it was 1989. Plan A: strike.
Plan B: create a film. Black and White Reversal Super 8 extravaganza complete with a mime. What was that about the camera not working? Oh.
So I sat amid the varied impressions. The impressions are difficult because I have to ignore them to find the realists. Why is my friday night spent in art history divorce papers?
Then I thought, commence oh what sleep may have you
but sleep have me not
the tea is too stale for my immunable liver
I bumped up to milk for a sweet silver sliver
Doth not I tire?
Oh no I am wired.
oh no.
how lame.
"let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah let it be"
I watched a beautiful Mongolian film, The Cave of the Yellow Dog. And I learned a great lesson. Try to bite the palm of your hand. You can't do it. You can't have everything you want, even if it's close. You cannot have your palm and bite it too.
Today I ran. A few sections only jog. And after a brief stint I wrapped up the headphones to hear the rays and warm grass. "I've been acting like sour milk fell on the floor/It's your fault you didn't shut the refrigerator*" served it's purpose in the first fifteen feet: I was out the door.
I saw a woman being picked up from work in a dirty diesel construction landscaping truck. Maybe he and she did not have the jobs they dreamed of. Maybe they never dreamed of a job. But how beautiful.
But that's romanticism. We can't stay in that season. There are more roses to smell.
I also noticed when I say Hi as I pass on a run, it sounds nasally.
There was a large gold vinyl arm chair at my grandparents. I once chopped my hair off down to my scalp. Then three years old, I sat behind the gold arm chair and snipped everything I could. My sock. Just a snip. The inside of a pocket of the skirt I was wearing. Just a snip. I sat behind the gold chair and looked up creative and guilty. I started going to a salon recently. Fantastic. Does this mean I'm sitting in the gold chair now? It's vinyl, is it all that great? Where do I stand in relation to the gold chair? I think I'll just play musical chairs by myself. And occasionally lose.
There is a sticker on my textbook that says: "Used saves textbooks from your bookstore." Who is this used that saves books from my bookstore?
Pit. pat.
pit.
pat.
tick tick pat.
tick tick tick tick tick.
pat.
pit.
pit.
pit-pat.
pit pit pit pit pit pit pat
pit pit pit pit pit pit pat tack.
Cement block porch. Card table. lawn chairs. plaid blanket. "I'm just sitting back loving you**)
*Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape
**The Lovin Spoonful's Lovin' You
It would be nice not to work, sometimes flows on and through. But through it goes.
One: I spend money
Two: I love the grill.
Face it.
Just like the discordant melody I love to be pounded out over and over again. Beating into rhythm and whim. Nuance.
Next step is that. Step. Step out of the box. Out of the box and into life.
A dance. In and out, test and taste. Spit it out again, one two three.
You know I've forgotten a lot of my childhood. Haven't we all. I mean though, in a reaction to the pain in my head, it's all gone. I don't remember it. I can't feel it. Vague recollections like a third party observer. A moment at a time. Sunday evenings with a glance at a warm corner as I head into the cold bathroom. So familiar. Did the sickness create part of the box?
One thing I know is a bathroom floor. The cold, the ever soft tufted rug. The antiseptic smell of the toilet bowl. One bathroom to the next. Downstairs, upstairs, school gym. I can't cry over physical pain. I have twice in the last ten years. Both of them had to do with surgery.
It's all just moments. Moments from a small corner of my brain that wasn't being wracked and stretched and twisted and tightened and pounded and everydayed. Migrained.
So you don't remember these things but somehow it wove into something else and then into you. Some of the trailings leaved into good things. Somethings dripped into bad. It doesn't ever end. Or begin. The answer begins and ends in a question. To define? How? It isn't done.
But I enjoy the searching. Searching me, searching history, paths, life, your life, his.
At times I've experimented. With good and bad, boundaries, skies, plains, mountains, berries, accents, tomb stones. To feel what I can. What is it all? Where does it stand? Which side of the line that lies where? But mainly I am compelled by the aged child of ninety and nine sitting in a restaurant booth all by themselves.
I can't leave it alone.
Today I told the film-quoting dishwasher he was creating a traffic jam. He told me he was a door. I asked if we could lock him up.
I'll patiently sit here with my camera unfolded on the world. Sitting, holding the shot.
One proverb for you to show you that I care:
Three dishwashers can do more than two.
I saved some film children today by yelling:
C'est la guerre, c'est la pamplemousse! Je voudrais un croissant! Qu'est-ce que tu fais? Qu'est-ce que tu fais?!!
That's war! That's grapefruit! I would like a croissant! What are you doing? What are you doing?!!!
the truth can be such an absurdest piece at times.
