the full significance of a character

It's the second of two acts: World War II era, South Pacific. "Peggy the pin-up" takes the USO stage in a sequined red dress. The sparkle of scarlet in contrast with her platinum wig and the soft spotlight and the quintessential period microphone set the scene. We are the "soldiers," the audience. This song is dedicated by the Marilyn Monroe look-alike to us, to them. She wraps her delicate fingers around the microphone's base and as the piano cues, her sultry lips part to shape the words that I can almost entirely sing along to.

I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places...

She slowly swings her hips into the lounge-like performance, maintaining her persona of deliberate sensuality. Peggy croons through the second verse, the third, and in the fourth she unexpectedly falls out of character. Her bright lips fight against the stage smile that she so diligently attempts to hold against the weight of reality. Stepping back from her microphone, she turns away from the audience. It takes longer than a moment for her to regain composure, long enough that the accompanist glances up from her music, concerned and confused, long enough for those of us in the audience to realize that this is not scripted. Her grief ripples through the dark theatre--contagious. I see the silhouettes of other women subtly wiping tears from their cheeks, just as I stretch the sleeve of my cardigan over the inside of my wrist. Pressing it to my face, trying to stifle my own sadness, I blot at tears more slowly than they fall dripping down the front of my dress. The actress uncoils a couple of times, fans her face in efforts to reestablish the order of necessary existence, and eventually turns again to face us smiling. She finishes the song breathy and with a wink. She finishes not as the Army wife we catch a glimpse of, but as "Peggy Jones", starlet, pin-up, community theatre actress-in-role.

I don't have the patience or the focus to write. It certainly isn't that I don't have material. Turn on the news--I have LOTS of commentary. I have traveled to both ends of America this summer. And now that my personal life is slowly settling down, while the world is keeping it's usual, tumultuous pace, I just can't find the desire to express myself in words. The Middle East has temporarily made me a reader instead of a"writer."

a dream is a wish your heart makes

She stands to my right and I imagine her name to be something more usual than mine. If we had anything else in common it would be too much for me to remain composed. I am at the airport at an inopportune time waiting for my friend whose soldier also isn't coming home tonight. Everyone else, it seems, is eager to greet a pending commercial flight carrying long missed troops of an unknown kind. What matters is that not one of them is mine. I watch selectively for the familiar face I will soon be greeting, for the same glassy tired facade I know too well, and I try to look past the positively giddy expressions of the others, and the girl who I now know is waiting for a man named Cory.

She is approximately my age with brunette curls tossed carelessly into a ponytail, plain glasses, and an oversized t-shirt creased down the middle by dog tags that have likely kept vigil in his absence. She chatters to another woman, who is also waiting, about restaurant reservations and other modes of anticipatory busy work. It is all I can to do cross my legs tighter and more awkwardly and to chew at already brittle nails and to hope that the New Orleans flight empties before the onslaught occurs of unbearable reunions. Quietly, I wish the Dallas plane would turn around and fly back to whatever Middle Eastern country it originated from, just for the amount of time remaining before my soldier returns. Or I wish that I were in her place, feeling the same surge of mad tingling throughout every atom of the body in those too-long moments before the countdown ends. Relief is a thing I have long put out of heart and mind, and Denial is the vein in which I mostly reside--maintaining a cycle of remembering and forgetting him so I'm not always acutely aware of how painful it is to love and miss a man so intensely.

If I were a bigger, less selfish person I would find it in me to be happy for her and proud even, that she and I are a part of the same parallel universe. Instead, she makes me angry, and with envy and malice I want her suffering to continue, for The Staff Sergeant to be the one instructed to sprint from the Dallas plane door to my arms, even though I know that she has earned this homecoming through the endurance of millions of seconds passing like pinpricks, stinging reminders that life fragmented must somehow move forward as though it were whole.

By the time I've begun nervously gnawing the inside of my cheek, I happen to spot the top of my friend's head, bobbing beneath florescent lights in the flow of travelers. Before she sees me, she calls my phone (always held close) and I urge her to hurry because of what's coming. Without missing a beat, we join paces, step onto the escalator in synch, and crinkle our faces almost together in the funny looking but effective way that dams up the woe of this war thing. She hasn't been here since January, since the two of our soldiers left for the desert. More than anything, I think, she wants her fiance to take my place, to be the first hug after her flight. But nothing is normal anymore--for her, it's this welcome and pulling into the driveway of his house without him being home. For me, it's the stranger living the role I crave to land, the seething joy of enthusiasm weaving through each of her uninvited explanations of directions she has given her Cory or tasks she has carried out in preparation for the soon coming infallible instant, first of locked eyes, then a hug, a kiss, and the way her body will shudder from the shoulders down in a sigh of long-overdue relief.

will the circle be unbroken

Life at the end of a semester is something like I imagine Plath's bell jar was, or rather the motive for her crawling beneath the house, taking pills, and truly hoping not to be found. At any rate, try to understand the madness and the always-tingly-tightness of anxiety as a physical symptom - strung across the muscles of a lower back - and the lack of sleep and the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. That has been the last two or so weeks. Then there was my invitation for a Mother's Day weekend, which was mostly kind of okay except for the lingering anxiety and equally tingly-tightness of muscles prolonged by comparisons to my father or early afternoon drinking or the mention of a man friend. I wanted a couple of days to lavish in the freedom of my first year of grad school completed but it didn't work out that way. Tomorrow morning (earlier than I had planned for) my father, who just today compared me to my mother, is picking me up for a week long road trip to the coast of South Carolina. While a suburban is a fairly spacious vehicle, I often feel that the 250 miles between here and home is not enough area of space. If I had had the time to myself, the luxury of surfacing slowly enough to avoid the bends, I would likely not be so dreading the next 7-8 days.

It's difficult to understand what has happened over the last four months. Mom kindly pointed out that she was worried about me having spent so much time alone - a comment spawned out of one of my explanations of these new lifestyle changes. But something has changed in me. I used to be this independent before I left their house, before I had the physical escape of leaving the tumultuous energy of home. I would sit in my room and do god-knows-what for hours without being bored. I mostly recall painting in the floor, the oatmeal carpet stained multicolored with acrylic pigment, the therapy they never funded.

When the rooms here felt too silent I looked to those memories for reassurance. Then one day I was strong enough to just look forward. The unsettling part has been realizing that I have re-arrived here, that I am somehow enough and that I am content. As I was talking to a friend about this very phenomenon, she used a phrase that struck home, "false independence," as in feeling needless in the front of one's mind while holding tightly to the security that remains in him, even if he's not here. It's like her daughter - able to walk but refusing to take a step without the aid of an adult's finger gripped within her tiny fist. Maybe I've only sold myself on the hype, just like I'm supposed to, distanced myself through days upon days of the mantras, the whatever-it-takes methods of coping. In the process I have fallen in love with my little piece of the world. This house is my domain. This house that I thought I could only loathe and curse is my niche, and I kind of hate the thought of leaving my security if only for a week. Leaving means breaking all of those habits that I've built my independence on. In moments like these, on the eve of variation, I dread packing and driving away from the reliability of home. I miss him more. I feel like a traitor to the routine that keeps me from flying apart in all directions. I start to feel short of breath.

He sent a couple of pictures the other day of him Over There. His smile is still perfectly heartbreaking and his eyes and his form and his skin-just-out-of-reach, and what I first thought was how much I wanted to touch his hair. He in his uniform and my bags waiting to be packed make the earth shift underneath my steady footing. Yesterday all of this seemed so much easier, and coming full circle, it would seem that my sense of independence is completely false. I have wagered my ability to survive on the continuation of a domestic cycle of old things done in new ways and old passions reignited. I've gone back to my savior, Creation. As long as my hands are busy, as long as I can dovetail the pieces that I've made, I'm fine. You would never know how much it hurts to be apart from him - most of the time these days I don't.

the silence [i] keep from [my] head

I try to look happy and somewhere in my heart I must actually be happy for them, but mostly I'm the same kind of jealous as every other summer of my adult life when the engagement announcements come pouring in. I just learned that one of my oldest friends is getting married. I think I knew him when he was three years old. It's hard enough to believe that we're so much older and that I think we should all be so much more experienced, so much further aged than we are. And then the childish tears well, the whiney phrase, "not fair" finds use, and the pacing begins and I can no longer look around the elephant in every room. I think to myself, "well, wouldn't it be nice..."

This time it has very little to do with someone else being in a place that I am not - metaphorically speaking. Instead it has everything to do with the volume and obstacle of oceans and continents, this goddamn war, the lushness of spring versus alien deserts. We've talked about "taking the plunge" but...a voice is a delay is a phone call is lacking. This is neither the time or place and that is precisely the notion that throws me off balance. Life on pause is worse than life remodeled, is worse than living like the hours are mine. I can lose myself in a frenzy of recipes and organic vegetable seeds and cold brewed coffee and local eggs and manual mowers and prayers and mantras and clean plastics, but only until I remember:

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

Sundays

...are our "thing." Some couples travel or participate in extreme sports together but the thing that we most love to do is wring every drop of rest and relaxation out of Sundays. I used to sleep in with him but as deployment got nearer, I started not being able to stay in bed past 8am. And since PT calls him into work really early every other day, save Saturdays, he doesn't want to budge before mid-morning and I'm okay with that. So if I get up early I do my thing until the day draws him out from under the covers, and if we both sleep in...well, you know.

We almost always make breakfast together, which is one of the most critical elements of our Sunday experience. Before he moved to The House of a Thousand Males, he would wow me with the most incredible omelets filled with whatever was left over from our week of dinners. Omelets being one of my culinary weaknesses, I am always fascinated by the taste and presentation he can produce, and yet he always thinks I'm humoring him when I tell him that he'll forever be the omelet maker of this couple. We brew up some coffee, sit leg-to-leg on the couch and find something mindlessly entertaining to watch until we're finished. My coffee is always hardly touched because I'm one of those one-task-at-a-time eaters but it will wait for me on the corner of the coffee table until later.

Later comes when we decide it's time for lunch or errands or both. I will heat up the morning's brew to take along and without fail I will spill it in his truck. There is an ill enforced ban issued on open containers in The Monster (truck). He will grab whatever is in the back - a dirty t-shirt, sweats, the occasional paper towel - to treat my havoc and he will roll his eyes and comment in a humorously exasperating tone. Then we leave down his street for an army supply store or the book store or Walgreens or the range. Maybe we'll see a movie or rent one, and eventually we find our way back [home is a relative term]. I'll make dinner, he'll tell me it's amazing, then we do homework or watch a movie or he packs for the next thing.

There isn't a thing that makes this routine special except that it taps into a kind of normal that only shows itself on rare occasions. The Army keeps life in a perpetual spin. Sundays are anchors in a constant barrage of anything-goes.

a place for everything::everything in its place

I can't believe it's already Friday. Another week down is a good thing both in deployment terms and in grad school terms. This semester has been far less magical than last and less inspiring and less motivating. I've dragged through it because I had to, much like the days that he has been gone. The day he left I lived through the coming months in big bites, overwhelming concepts that drew my stomach up into my throat and left an empty chasm where it belonged. I felt like crawling out my skin in the most desperate and panicked way. Looking back, that seems so long ago, but then again, we're already on the other side of all my enormous measurements - seasons, semesters, length of daylight. And for most of the time that I've powered recklessly through British Romance poetry and fallen asleep without his arms around me, I've been surprisingly okay.

I have found little things to occupy my mind and stories that I've gathered to color all the hours. Though one of my biggest fears was learning to live on my own, misery-free, I've come to love most of it. There are times, like yesterday when I really do wish that he was here, but not in the cry-myself-to-sleep way, more in the he-knows-how-to-shoot-big-guns way. Not that I don't...

(me topping the badass scales - Winter '07)

...but he's better.

I pulled out of my driveway en route to the post office and to the vet. I backed out, righted my direction only to see three police cars pulled haphazardly onto the curb of my street, three doors down. Lights were flashing, a few cops were coming around the corner, an obvious exit from the premise, and a stand up gentleman stood cuffed behind the trunk of the closest vehicle. This falls into the "ignorance is bliss" section of life. I felt much more settled not knowing that a criminal lived on my block. I'm making double sure that the doors are locked and that every outdoor sound is over-analzyed and that I sleep with one eye open.

In other news, the garden project continues to prosper. The back-up patio tomato (the one not grown from seeds) and the homegrown zucchini squash, along with my window box of sprouting spinach and romaine lettuce all found homes outside yesterday. They're growing up so fast! My herbs are nestled in a sunny corner of my porch and the poppies continue to explode into thread-thin stems with miniature leaves. Inside my summer squash and sweetie tomato have just this morning shown through the soil, and I'm still giving the sweet pepper and straight eight cucumber a chance to do the same.

It's safe to say that this endeavor has become far more involved than I ever expected. I awoke in the night to a mild thunderstorm and thought briefly of running out in the rain to bring their pots inside. I kept seeing visions of disrupted root systems and disturbed onion seeds, over-watered failure, etc. Luckily, for the sake of preserving some dignity, I stayed curled up in bed and let Mother Nature induct them into Her realm without me. Using a calming mantra I talked myself down from pathetic actions - they are Hers, not mine.

greetings from a dreary Monday

There isn't much to tell and maybe I'm also extending my break from blogging because I can. But again, not much to tell. With things spicing up in the world and a completely screwed up switchboard system, my levels of anxiety are on a steady climb. I've gotten a series of about five calls in close to two weeks that have amounted to a lot of brief words before an automated operator hangs up prematurely. In under 10 minutes, with warnings that your talking time is quickly expiring, there isn't much that you can feasibly say, except to make sure you squeeze in an untimely "I love you," because that's what matters most. Even though we have spoken, we haven't really gotten to talk, no e-mails either. The sparse communication is just now starting to wear on me, and the shift from sunny 70 degree days to sleet and rain and resurfacing Winter coats, and my stuffy nose and general feelings of gross. But before Winter stopped in for one last hoorah, everything was pretty swell.

The weather has been beautiful. I spent a good part of this last weekend with the doors open, completely relaxed, tending new sprouts and day dreaming long evenings that will be spent on the porch with my soldier, sipping wine for me, beer for him. Though those days are still a long way from right now, it's pleasant to think of them, to be able to think of them as that much closer.

I almost went through the transplanting process while the sun was out and the days were ripe for potting plants, but this Blackberry Winter was looming on the horizon so I waited for possibilities of frost to subside before chancing my seedlings' exposure to the elements. Just when I had given up on my tomatoes, a tiny sprig of green showed itself, and I awoke this morning to find that my zucchini was busy pushing up through soil all night long. This from-seed business doesn't sit well with my total lack of patience; however, if all goes well, I'll be a veritable produce stand by June or July. I'm still mulling over chickens, although I picked the breed and have glanced over coop designs. I keep coming back to the anchor they would be. Who the hell am I going to hire on to tend chickens if I travel? Am I really ready to be that tied to home? Questions that still need to be reasoned with before I seal the deal.

30 of 31: back home

My alarm, or rather my army wife friend's alarm spun up a Keith Urban CD at 5am. I woke up somewhat rested, which only furthers my belief that my mattress is dunzo, took a shower, got dressed, packed almost everything (except the black wedges I left behind) and headed for the airport. By 9:45am I was back in my driveway, ready to watch Baby Girl before class.

New Orleans was a great little get away. Friday night I was welcomed with an invitation to her sister's house for a crawfish boil. Very interesting, very tasty, very local. Saturday we got coffee and bagels, pedicures, did a little shopping, lunched in the French Quarter at Pat O'Brien's, went for a walk by Lake Pontchartrain, had dinner at Jacque-Imo's and passed out in her living room while talking. Sunday was a little less busy. We got coffee again and went walking in a park near Tulane, hung out at Borders for a while, killed ourselves with a cardio kickboxing dvd, lounged at a neighborhood bar on the patio with sunshine and strawberry Abita beers, ate leftovers, read a bit, stopped by TCBY and watched Twilight at her sister's house. The movie was terrible, but the weekend was quite relaxing.

When I walked in my house, it had assumed the temperature of the flighty Spring weather, a delicious 34 degrees. I quickly turned up the heat and checked on my seeds. Many are still little containers of dirt, but my spinach is sprouting into delicate green tendrils. It was an incredibly exciting discovery, which says a lot about my increasing level of dullness. I can't wait for The Staff Sergeant to come home. I'm probably not actually super interesting, but he makes me feel so much more substantial. At any rate, I've got spinach in the works. I'm still holding out hope for the other veggies and herbs.

I also took a walk today, found a recipe for a homemade facial toner, picked up organic potting soil from a small local hardware store and went by the grocery for a few things I needed to complete my dinner attempt at Dahl with brown rice. I still need to get some poetry homework finished before spending tomorrow with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and I have my fingers crossed that I'll get a call from a certain soldier before the day is done. Right now I'm going to finish my wine and chocolate covered soy nuts before mixing up my rosemary and apple cider vinegar toner. Hopefully today's high spirits and productivity are telling for the pace of the week.

21 of 30: giving (some ideas and reflections)

• I went back by Borders to re-browse the Gaiam section while DVDs and cds are still 50% off - this is one of the ways that the digression of corporations makes me happy (even though I really love Borders in particular). I picked up cardio burn sculpt, cardio burn dance for weight loss, and cardio burn kickbox. After last night's cardio burn yoga success, I opted to give dance a try. I really like Patricia Moreno, who happens to lead both videos. I had a blast reliving my many years in tap, and when I finished I dabbled in the strength plan listed in this month's Health magazine. My arms feel that kind of tired sensation that means they will ache all day tomorrow and then more so the next, but it's wonderful to think that I might be able to obtain Madonna-arms one day. [a girl can dream]

• I made it another day within my caloric goals and that even included the Ben & Jerry's chocolate-brownie-fro-yo-heaven-in-a-carton this time, and a beer. I've been a little tired of pre-packaged food so I searched for something yummy I could make and landed on Cooking Light's blackened chicken and grilled avocado tacos. Quite tasty!

• Band of Brothers totally captivated me today. The History Channel was airing a marathon, so I sat in the living room floor researching Middle Eastern food after stumbling across a recipe for Za'atar flatbread in my artisan bread book last night. I was hours into this before I realized how funny it was considering the army-ness my life is so steeped in these days. I wrote The Staff Sergeant [another] e-mail to tell him how blatantly on my mind he was.

• Tomorrow I've got tentative plans to hunt down some herb seeds so I can get some sprouts growing for the plant stand on my side porch. I'm thinking Basil, Cilantro, Mint, Lavender, and I've been toying with thoughts of upside down tomato plants, although I'm not sure where I can hang them. I may have to settle for the normal growing method, right-side-up with cages.

• My interest has been piqued by the idea of homemade cleaners and skin care. I'm not completely sold on the commitment of that kind of self-sustenance but I like it in theory. I added several books to my Amazon wish list this afternoon just to keep the titles handy while I mull it over.

• I'm thinking about sending dinner to my soldier - making and canning a yummy tomato sauce and a batch of homemade pasta. I can't send prime rib or anything, but that would just be a matter of boiling noodles and heating up the sauce and it's still all home cooked. (Now he'll start reading my blog and the surprise will be lost...)

19 of 31: giving (a little for me and a little for you)

My day can be summed up by my trip to Borders and my evening in the kitchen --

morning yoga

cardio yoga

for calorie counting

Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies (for my soldier)

13 of 31: giving (confession)

I've heard that it takes about twelve weeks before this starts to feel normal.  I'm not quite there so I can't vouch for the resolution that is said to bloom after three months of struggling to find a balance.  What I do know is that it hasn't come soon, in fact I have done a fair share of backsliding, which leads me to believe that I am progressing, though I can't determine if I've moved from denial to anger or depression in the grief process.  There are no moments that I can recall bargaining for anything so I'm led to think that this is anger.  I feel like I don't know him in pictures, that we might as well be filler models used to show how perfectly other couples' smiles might fit within the frames.

I really wouldn't write any of this if I wasn't supposed to write something daily.  As it turns out, March is full of cynicism and will accurately be remembered as such.  One of my friends recently explained to me that she would like to run away from her life.  I asked her to share her destination because I would happily pack my bags to join her.  I need a manual (written by a human being) on how to do this.  I feel like I'm failing us by not being strong enough, yet I don't know how to be anything other than this.  

Tune in for April, maybe I'll edge toward acceptance next month.  

12 of 31: (too early to be) giving

Somewhere the sun is brewing it's coffee and for reasons unknown to me I am already awake, wide awake despite the screaming headache that sent me to bed early or the melatonin supplement I took before I buried my face into a pile of pillows meant to simulate the shape of him next to me.  It's freezing in my house as Winter simply will not give up its reign - 38 degree highs, possible snow.  Give me a break.

Perhaps it was the chill that stirred me from restless sleep, except that on one side of me was my dog and huddled against my other leg was my tabby cat, not to mention the oversized hoodie I'm still wearing, stolen from The Staff Sergeant's closet.  

Before pushing back the covers I laid still, trying to recall the last time I had gotten up before sunrise.  It was prior to his leaving, all those mornings of PT, incessant snoozing of his cell phone alarm in the darkness, a reason to pull in closer to him, just a few more minutes.  It was the first memory in at least a week that I didn't snarl at or hold at arm's length.  I let myself feel it, the up and down of his chest, how warm his body would be beneath the covers, the way he would eventually ease away from my arms, trying not to wake me up as he headed for his closet or a shower, his first-thing kiss meant to be so weightless that I wouldn't really notice, not until the one before he left for the day.   

I know better than to fight these circumstances; losing is inevitable.  The army will always win.  Similarly, my emotions will always trump an attempt to hold them down for the sake of looking the part.  I miss him like crazy, some days so much that I don't know what to do with myself.  And I assure you that there are things he is perfectly capable of and willing to do to help make this easier for me.  It's just a matter of having enough time on the phone to work it out, and maybe not being disconnected next time.

10 of 31: giving (because I'm obligated)

I don't want to blog anything, furthermore I have nothing positive to say.  I didn't get out of bed until noon today, didn't take a shower until 3pm and never got out of lazy day clothes nor did I bother with make-up.  I didn't leave the house.  I didn't really ever leave the sofa except to whip up my favorite comfort food - a weird mac n' cheese mixture my mom used to make on Sunday afternoons.  It wasn't a great Tuesday.

2 of 31: giving (in)

What I really meant to say had nothing to do with weather, storms of any genre, except maybe this one back home that has yet to pass [figuratively]. But because I have some dignity, although unapparent to the naked eye, I asked about it there to keep from crying. The bare essence of pride, that that's left, kept me from demanding a verbal shrine, a garrulous flow of all the reasons and ways that you love me, something completely selfish and over-indulgent, concentrated like last season's apple butter or the jar of marshmallow cream for s'mores that arrived a few days ago.

It's more desperate than the boxes can conceive or deliver, right now but not always.

Despite claims of pride, or fraying threads of pride and strength and normalcy, I really meant to free the contents of myself this morning, not that unraveling on the phone would make any one of the circumstances change shape or even appear to. I would still like the luxury of not caring, the freedom of a child to wail full-force, head thrown back, the rest of me limp in surrender just because it is sometimes too much to house this sadness within my body.

on the menu: a small serving of self-pity.

Maybe it's the rain, the perpetual, unending Winter, or maybe it's just the truth - the absence of anything fair at all in love and war.  I can't look at his pictures because suddenly it isn't ok to remember him in any dimension.  His face smiling, laughing, caught off guard unseals the vault that keeps him distant.  Remembering feels too sweet, too rich to continue tasting.  

The photos remind me that he's real, that this is all really happening, that I can't touch him or talk to him when I need it, on my time.  They remind me that there were and will be times much better than this, but that this isn't one of them.  This time is for making debts.  

I'm not sure why for five weeks this was easy and that now it isn't, not this week anyway.  I don't want to be strong today.  I want him to be here, to justify the photos that hold our place, for him to be strong enough for the both of us so that I can take a 10 minute break.  I would like for him to walk up behind me, wrap one arm around my waist, pull the hair away from my neck with the other hand and kiss my skin, or at least to be able to imagine it without the bottomless ache.  

Poem for the Telephone

Because I can’t imagine much more than
a continent’s worth of copper,

strand to strand, pole to pole,
supporting crows in the moment

before their brains spasm with
not thought but imperative

to flight, because I don’t know
why I see when I walk

knotted shoes hung
like dead things from

those suspensions of imagined
copper, because everything

beyond the toaster oven
glows with a magic

in my cloddish head,
I imagine our four a.m.

talk pulsing dark
to dark and back again,

and I am in love
with you, yes,

but also the world in which
love is translated

and carried and kept,
even meted out

in minutes, in cents per each
sweep of the clock

hand, I am
in love with this

world and this word
and the ones after it,

the ones said
in the night

when we are so close
no one could

say who spoke first
and who answered

if we slept,
if we spoke at all.

- Paul Guest