(See what I am saying?)

the failure of wide angle lenses

"you know what i love about whisky?" woody asked as he walked out from behind the bottom half of the dutch door into the kitchen. His bare feet were smacking on the hardwood floor. His dry lips were smacking his even drier teeth. With his hair gel stronger than the couch cushion he passed out on, keeping his hair perfectly unperfect, he continued, "Is that in the morning i feel like i could run for miles."

The amount of enthusaim and conviction in his voice both surprised and convinced us all of his sincerity, and as he picked off a piece of bacon from the skillet where my mother was cooking breakfast, bonwag put tape 1 of last nights recording session into the radio that is tied to the wall with a broken rubber band.

the three 60 minute tapes sitting beside the bottle of syrup on the countertop were the evidence of last nights experience. i was shooting a story for a magazine about our family cabin. liz was there to write about it. what i ended up in was a sour-mashed sing along, ending with bonwag eating corn on the cob at 2:00 am, and 612 Mb of photos of slow shutter speeds and smiles.

sam is always reminding me of what i have, when i often can only see what i don't. and right then i didn't have a lot of light, any clean socks, or much of a future to be certain about. but i did have good friends. i did have a good family. and the camera had a flash.

so when sam came in shivering from his swim in the lake last night, i moved over so he could sit in front of the fire. i put down the camera and joined in the acca-pella refrain of the kenny rogers/beta band medely bonwag masterfully took us through. and as sam sat smiling beside me, i looked through my own eyes instead of the camera. i felt the honey colored light that seemed thick enough to stop the earth from spinning on it's axis. i listened to the music and the sound of the waterfall sliding in through the screen door under throw rugs, laughter, and singing. i saw the dogs lying in the corner of the room like gargoyles guarding our palace of mortar and wood. and i realized that there will never be lens wide enough to let me see everything at once.

so at the breakfast table we discussed the nights happenings and listened to the tapes, and I tried to take note on what i had learned; 1) that i sing out of key, 2) that whisky is spelled without and e, and 3) even with the widest of lenses, you can never see yourself.

the motorcycle ride

Kickball is not the most demanding of games, mentally speaking. i was watching the swallows begin their nightly ritual above the outfield. i suppose it is the moths and mosquitos, intoxicated by the stadium lights, who paid the price for me to stand in left field and watch the forked tails and sharp wings dart across the stale summer sky, seemingly more uncertian of where to go next than i am.

from left field a baseball diamond is a baseball square. and a fly ball against the evening sky is just a fly circle. and like everything else, my life is as it is, depending on how i look at it.

riding home on the back of sam's motorcycle,

i was looking at it from the inside looking out. and i realized that it will never be this way again. it was one of those moments where everything in my life was taken for granted. internal combustible engines, my health, and the birds darting silently overhead all seemed to just be there, and i was left to think about everything i didn't have.

i was riding on the back of the motorcycle, trying to predict when sam was going to shift so i could hold on. i was riding on the back of the motorcycle, trying to predict when anything in my life was going to shift, so i could let go. it was during 3rd gear, i found myself understanding that the things i wish for are somewhere else. and that everything i try for, and everything i stay up late at night for, and everything i just drink water instead of for, is not here, nor was it going to be waiting for me when i got off the motorcycle.

by 4th gear, i wished upon every star in the stale sky that sam would open it up and ride out of my world and take to me to success with freedom, accomplishment with dignity, and to love without doubt.

depending on how you look at it, a stop sign always looks like, - a stop sign. and there were too many on state street to ever go fast enough for my wish to come true. and for a minute, i hoped a comet would fall through the stars that betrayed me, and hit me square on the head and make me forget everything i try for, and everything i stay up late at night for, and everything i just drink water instead of for, -everything i want to do, and find, and everything i keep believing in, so that i could find some contentment. so i could find some peace, some sleep, and something besides water to drink.

Sam dropped me off on the corner up the hill from my house, and then he drove away into the stale summer evening. i walked the rest of the way home past the forked-tounged girls, with their cell phones and perfume, heading to the bars. i walked past the sagging telephone lines, hanging limp like forgotten christmas lights left out in the rain. i walked under the stale sky with it's apathetic stars. There were no comets falling. There was nothing in the house, except my roomate sitting alone on the black patent leather chair, listening to AC/DC, and drinking shots of beer.

i went to the kitchen sink and filled a glass of water, and smiled. i smiled because i will stay up late again tonight, and because i still believe i can find sucess, accomplishment, and maybe even my love, and because it will never be this way again. so i drank the water, and tried my best to be happy about internal combustible engines, my health, and the birds darting silently overhead.

perfect tune

it was 9:00 and i was standing in a buttery antifreeze stain on the concrete floor just inside the bay door of the barn. it was evidence of the water pump on the tractor that went bad, so i am told. All around me was the evidence of 3 generations of the thought "someday this will come in handy." we were cleaning out the barn, and inside it's whitewashed walls will be the archealogical find of the 22 century. my morning was spent reading the epitath of industrial design and pop culture from the past 60 years. Wooden duck decoy kits, 8 track players, aquarium pumps, birdhouse catalouges, 64k sticks of RAM, carbide saw blades, electric ranges, and a volkswagen beetle were sorted through and pushed across the buttery antifreeze stain on the concrete floor just inside the bay door of the barn.

at 12:00 i was looking at a wallpaper sample book from 1962 when the phone rang.

"Molly and I are just stopping by on our way back to Ann Arbor for an hour or so." Perez said.

by 5:00 we were sitting at the bar with stephey and cara.

at 7:00 my dad and perez were tuning guitars in the living room and the phone rang.

"dude." bonwag said, "i am getting married in 3 weeks. i need a break from this. i am getting out of cincinnatti for the night. how do i get to your parent's house?"

by 8:00 stephey had built a campfire and at 9:00 bonwag's subaru came fishtailing up the gravel lane.

at 10:00 john sanders stepped out of his black pickup truck with his mandolin case. my mom pulled in soon after from cleveland.

by 11:00 the woodsmoke and the saccharine sound of the mandolin was drifting down to the pond and falling asleep with the dogs under the willow trees, and the ghost of woody guthrie sighed as the dignity of 200 years of folk music persished around the campfire by six strings and wash tub full of miller high life. guitars and stories were traded, and spontaneous songs and memories were fleshed out in 4/4 time. bonwag sang a song about making out with my mom, and i thing my dad was strumming with him. perez seranaded, and stephey howled at the moon. from ryan adams to the kingston trio, nothing was sacred, and during the 20 minute instramental session, stephey was pounding on the upside down blue "WE RECYCLE" trash can so hard i swore i saw ripples in the pond. Had woody not been lost in the open bar at an aniversary party in dayton, i am sure the percussion section made of 10 gallon buckets, trash cans, and tamborines would have sent the waves breaking over the dock.

and for a split second, between perez's G and Em chord, i saw the music and the light and my life among it. i saw my mom smiling. i saw my dad singing. i saw the firelight flicker on the undersides of the silver maple leaves and turn the sky overhead into a school of fish glittering and fading away into a sea of darkness. i saw my friends, who have come from all the corners of my life, sitting in a perfect circle among my family around the fire. the circle was complete, and shoulder to shoulder they sat; i realized that friends of mine are now friends outright, and my family is as much their friends as they are mine.

and as the miles and years of our lives consolidated into the circle around the campfire, the feeling came like the dream you get in the deepest of sleep where you fall off the highest cliff of your imagination, and it lasted only as long. but right then and there with the silver maple tree shimmering above, and the sweet madolin sound, and dogs sleeping on the ground, my mother and my father, and my friend's father, and my friends i met at high school parties, and my friends i met in the back of buses going to college soccer tournaments , and my friends i met in the booth at the bar in denver, turned into a circle around a campfire singing songs. and for that split second freefall feeling between perez's G and Em, my life, if not the music in it, was in perfect tune.

words don't always do justice

I was lying down, spread out across the oriental rug that covered the oak floorboards. colleen was sitting beside me indian style. she was browsing through the shelves of cds along the wall, and playing songs on the stereo. Sam was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, and their two cats wandered silently around the house like a movie crew, always staking out the best angle to watch us at a safe distance.

i was lying on my back, the lampshade cast blurry shadows on the ceiling like ripples from a stone thrown in a pond. The music floated through the house, and it reminded me of high school, cold volkswagen seats, and the smell of the floor wax that embalmed the hallways under my locker filled with broken ball point pens, unopened algebra books, and fake hall passes.

Sentiment and recollection leapfrogged through my memory, taking me places words don't follow. I admired the crown molding that surrounded the room. i was admiring the people that surrounded my life. The white molding circumvented the room and was smooth and curved like the shoulderblades and hips of horses carved in roman statues. Sam was talking about when he and colleen used to go dancing every night. The joints in the molding were cut diagonal, and the bow in the wood made the straight angle appear as a gentle curve, twisting dimension and perception. Colleen was reading the back cover to a Jesus and Mary Chain Cd.

Sam sat up on the couch.

"before you go. i want to show you something." he said.

"What is it?" i asked.

"You don't want me to say. It came to me in the mail. You'll just want to see it." he said as he went up the stair case.

he came trotting back down the stairs smiling, unfolded it, and handed it to me.

"sometimes you just need to see things to appreciate them." he said.

depending on your frame of mind

So often art and ideas (if there is a difference) are quantified and qualified by their presentation. We judge books by their covers, people by what they wear, what we eat and drink by its container- and often, define art according to how big it is, and if and how it is framed, and depend on its presentation to verify it's worth.

i was walking down the street carrying a frame. the frame was big, and i was holding it by the top edge, and letting it hang off my hand. I had to hold it above my waist so the bottom would drag across the ground. Although, dragging the frame across the street through town might have been just the perfect thing to do to it. The print was mounted, matted, and backed, and it was facing my leg, so the back was showing outward as i headed down the street.

i walked past the bus stop,

and an old man in a red flannel shirt was sitting on the bench.

"What kind of art do you have there?" he said curiously.

i stopped in my tracks.

he had no idea what was showing on the other side. it could have been anything in the 2 dimensional world displayed inside the mat behind the glass. it could have been Picasso, Rothko, Mondrian. it could have been the cover of a cereal box, a reciept from the ATM, a bad love poem written on a spaghetti sauce stained napkin and put through the washing machine. it could have been anything beautiful, ugly, worthless, mundane, or vulgar that has ever existed on a flat plane of space.

But it was in a frame. and it was art.

as it was; it was somewhere between the beautiful and the vulgar, but probabally closest to the worthless. There framed behind the glass inside the white mat was a photograph of a big hairy dirty toilet.

Had it been a 4x6" one hour disposable camera drugstore print, dog eared and taped to the inside of a notebook, what would he have called it? if it was lying on the curb along with the cigarette butts under the bus stop bench , would he pick it up? would he have even looked at it?

I turned the frame around. he sat up and stared at it. Then he laughed.

"i like it." he said after some thought.

"would you hang it on your wall?" i asked, as the definition of art began to twist around and flop like a beached whale in my head.

"No." he replied.

"I would take it to the health department."

finding the discounts

I was pushing my cart past a bin in the store that had a pile of discount cassette tapes for $4. i dug through it and found a good one. so i put in the cart with my milk and my peanut butter. Different days and differents seasons and different light lend themselves to different music, but there is music that is always there. music that i feel most comfortable with underneath everything, regardless of time and place and feelings i am in.

and more often than not, it is taken for granted, discounted and placed in a pile in the bargin bin. and it can easily be found , if i decide to look for it.

so i bought the $4 cassette tape of Johnny Cash's 16 biggest hits.

6:oo am the next morning woody called to tell me he was dead.

The news made me think about the trees on the farm at home i can remember being very much in the landscape of my life. My neighbor jerimiah and i would climb in the double trunked cherry tree in the summertime, and i would always have to dive off my skateboard so i wouldn't hit the white pine that grew at the end of the sidewalk past the barn . They were parts of my memory - seemingly so permanent - and no matter what day, or what season, or what light was in my life, they were there, and somewhere along the way i began to take them for granted. I discounted them, and placed in a pile in the corner of my memory.

The cherry tree eventually split at the trunk, and water ran down it's smooth paper bark and rotted the base from the ground up. the pine tree died one summer when i was in high school, and we cut it off flush at the ground and the the mower blades have shaved the rest of the stump down into the grass at the end of the sidewalk past the barn. and the only thing worse than the trees dying, is that as familiar as they were in my life when they were living, i am now as used to them being gone. Things that were once so solid and permanent my life have rotted away, and been cut off flush at the ground. and now it is almost as hard to remember my landscape with them, as it was to think of them then as being gone.

So this weekend, as we walked out of the whitewashed general store with the handwritten signs hanging on the old warped plate glass windows, i asked stephey if he wanted to drive clementine, beacuse i wanted to look at what is in my life. i wanted to not to discount my landscape and the people that are in it. so i sat shotgun, and Stephey put the $4 tape into the audiovox tapedeck that is mounted vertical in the black ammo box bolted between the seats, turned the volume up and turned clementine around behind the gas pumps and sped out of the blue cloud of smoke and down the road. Annie, liz and cara sat on turquisose boat cushions on her weary back seat bench and ate a sack of red liquorice they bought from the store. The calico light seeped through the hemlock trees that streched out over the gravel road. the wind blew around the broken windshield and faded rollbar and carried the liquorice and laughter out into the sunny side ditches as we bounced along under the kaliadascope of light and shadow, of past and present, of life and memory.

i leaned back in the faded leather seat and and listened to johnny cash crackle out of the speakers, laughed at stephey as he wrestled with clementine's floppy and leaking steering column on the winding gravel roads, and i watched the landscape of my life bounce by under the hemlock trees.

There are things here in my life that seem so permanent, so constant, so much part of the landscape of my life. and it is hard - almost impossible- to ever think of them as being gone. but moving down the road i realized that time is moving just as much as i am. and the music reminded me that people aren't permanent, and that trees are not forever, and neither am I.

and more often than not, they all become part of the background. I take them all for granted, discount them, and place in a pile the corner of my memory. But for now, they can easily be found, when i decide to look for them.

roaming charges

I realized the decision was obvious when i was sitting in the meeting with the mustard stain on my trousers, with phone numbers scratched in sharpie marker scrolling off my hand and onto my forearm, talking to the very nice and patient woman whose life was more than mildly inconvenienced by my lack of accessiblity.

And then to remove any remaining doubt to my decison, i walked out of the meeting, much later than i anticipated, and went to the pay phone to call her, because she had been waiting for an hour, and learned that a phone call now costs fifty cents.

So it was decided. i trade my life of scrapbook connections and short hand information - and join the wireless world of ringing pockets and one sided sidewalk conversations.

i stood at the counter and leaned over the formica and learned what defined the night and the weekend, was taught the technical meaning of the word 'anytime', and discussed at length, the issue of roaming.

"So let me get this straight." i finnaly said to the lady behind the counter. "I can roam where ever and when ever i want, and it won't cost me anything extra".

"Right," she replied, "As long as you stay on this map."

and she open a brochure and slid it across the formica to me, showing me an illustration of the contintental 48 states, guam, and puerto rico.

"Great." i said. "I'll take one."

Pennsylvania train of thought

We were splitting a ham and cheese sandwich. The phosphorous lights made the ham and the tomatoes and her lips look blue. she took the escalator down under the tile and chrome crust of Penn Station in the soot and steel mantle and onto the concrete platforms with peeling yellow paint. the slabs of concrete were worn smooth as ivory and sat like keys on a grand piano side by side between steel rails which forked out from there to every corner of the continent. There on the faded yellow line on the train platform she said goodbye. she didn't look back.

i know because i did.

The rails spliced off one another as the train careened through the dark corridors under Manhattan. By an understated feat of human ingenuity and modern engineering, the trained rolled out from under the hudson river and into the sunlight and swamp marshes of new jersey.

I searched for Jimmy hoffa's body in the brackish landscape that soaked through the rotting railroad ties and dilapidated trusswork. i sat alone on the burgandy and orange seats and was delighted by the exfoliating layers of typography and shaggy signage that blanketed the billboards and brick buildings and wooden water towers in Trenton.

The train station in Philidelphia is a marble monolith that was built too well and lasted too long for its own good. I walked up the stairs onto the polished floors under the chandeliers and walked out between the colossal columns into the sunlight. I stood there under big architecture and even bigger sun and found myself in that exhilirating but precarious position of realizing that everyone i know or have ever known that could ever possibly be thinking about me right then would not know where i was.

and for one of the first times in my life; they would also not know where i was going.

Harrisburg.time and space scrolled by the train window at seemingly equal pace and proportion. I began to work my way towards a conclusion, or at least an opinion as to what being alone in this way means. i thought about being alone, and being free, and if those two words mean - and can only mean - the same thing.

Altoona.I began to wonder if being alone and being free are mutually inclusive, or if they could exist in any other combination.

Johnstown. I started to understand the luxury, and question the sacrifice of my freedom to move, to see, and above all the think; and if being alone is the only way to have to this liberty.

Latrobe. As my freedom took me through the green appalachian summer, i thought about the screenplays in my head, what a circle could look like if it could be unfolded, and how the guy across the ailse ever decided to wear orange alligator skin cowboy boots.

and like so many other times, i was the lone witness to all of it. but for the first time in my life, no one; not even me, knew exactly where i was going.

for the first time in my life, i found myself questioning whether being alone was a benifit of being free, or a consequence of it.

and for the first time in my life, i found myself looking back.

seeing is believing

It was about midnight when i left the conversations about digital photography, bun length hot dogs, and getting a book published, got up off the lawn chair, and walked to the far corner of the rooftop. I guess i did it because i need to remember these things for myself. I need to remember to see them. I need to try to believe them.

Below me were the black tied waiters waiting under their maroon and incandecent lit awnings. Below me were the prostitutes waiting in their black dresses. Below me was the wrought iron fences, the brownstone steps, the taxicabs, the fruit stands, light, motion, art, and archicture. Below me were things i understood, and things i didn't. Below me was everything i believed in; and everything i didn't.

I turned around. I needed to be at the very edge to see it all. There in front of me under the 60 watt lightbulb on the tarpaper roof were the actors, the fashion designers, the photographer from France, the interior designer, the playwright, the directors, and the producers.

As the music played, the wine poured, and the lights from Time Square shone bright, the 20-something crowd of New york City danced, talked, and laughed on the rooftop. I stood there on the edge, looking back at them, and realized that they are what they are because, if for nothing else, they see themselves as such; and that they believe, and they don't believe, and that they have no idea.

and i realized that they are just like me.

I stood there alone at the edge and watched the party. i looked the actors, the fashion designers, the photographer from France, the interior designer, the playwright, the directors, and the producers

- and then finally, i saw myself.

and decided, for at least just one night of my life, to join the party, and believe in what i see.

my world without scrap paper

I had convinced myself that the thick early morning fog would make me invisible to the radar guns in the Highway Patrol cars. Had i remembered to check the volume on the alarm clock, i wouldn't need to be driving 90 mph through the winding ashpault on rt. 50 in the dense fog at dawn.

The train left at 10:00. I was told it takes at least three hours to make it to Pittsburgh. So with my windows down, Mike Doughty on the stereo, and my brights punching into the fog, i drove. Outside, autumn was beginning to steal the summer away, but i didn't have time to try to stop it.

So with my duffel bag in the back seat, and the plot of my adventure scribbled as phone numbers on a card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife the night before, i shot like a bottle rocket out of Marietta up to Cambridge, and wished my only wish to be that the world and everything in it would stop except for me and my car.

By the time i streaked through Wheeling, the sun had burned away the fog, and i had by then convinced myself that with or with out fog i was invisible.

i looked out at the farm houses with white siding and propane tanks in the side yards, and saw a man riding on a tractor mowing the hillside in front of his house. I caught myself waving at him, as if he could see me blurring down the freeway. i wondered if the world could stop, and i had time to tell him my story, if he would be envious of it. i wondered if he would be willing to trade his white sided farm house and his hillside for a duffel bag that was packed in 5 minutes, a train ticket to New York City, and a pocketful of phone numbers as my guide.

I missed the train. I forgot the card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife on her coffee table at the payphone in the greyhound station.

So as i sat in the back of the greyhound bus watching New Kingsington pass very slowly out the window, while the boy in front of me spilled popcorn through the seat and onto my leg, i began to think about how nice it would be to be mowing the grass on a hillside in front of a white sided farmhouse.

She would be waiting at Penn Station at 8:00. I would be climbing off a bus at the Port Authoirty Bus terminal at 9:00. The Musuem was leaving messages for me back beside my alarm clock with the volume turned down. and i was sitting on a bus with a duffel bag i packed in 5 minutes stuffed on the shelf above me, a one way ticket stub, and anything in the world- except a card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife - in front of me. and for a minute, I was afraid that my wish had come true, that time really had stopped. I think riding on a greyhound bus can easliy trick you into thinking that.

But as the brakes hissed and the bus lurched on out of the Harrisburgh bus terminal, i was glad that time can't stop, and i was glad the kid ran out of popcorn, and i was glad that while i am well aware of what it feels like to be mowing grass - i had everything in the world in front of me.

It would, however, had been much easier with the card i cut out of scrap posterboard with my sister's pocket knife there too.

the bachelor party

The tray tables had to go up. Bonwag counted the bets on the napkin, and picked up the cards from the tray and folded it into the back of the seat. i was up 85 hash marks.

"You are starting to get the hang of this. you will be fine." he said confidently as the cabin began to change pressure, and the airplane began to sink into the clouds.

A little luck would have helped, too.

The blackjack practice was over, and i looked out the window into the desert.
Somewhere between 33,000" and the runway the clouds dilluted into the darkness and I saw the grid outside of the window. It was electric geometry. There on the black desert floor was a reminder that this world is bigger than i understand it to be. Below us was the illuminated, shimmering city, tiled out into the darkness. It burned with more kilowatts of power than odds against me at the tables. It felt like we were falling into 1,000 christmas mornings for the greedy, decadent, and the envious.

The limo unloaded us in front of the MGM grand. We walked into the milky white lobby with a marble floor smooth enough and big enough to host the Stanley Cup. The bachelor party took up 3 rooms on the 6th floor. there were 4 to a room with maybe an extra who had to sleep (if they so chose to sleep) on the floor. we walked in, set our bags down. Shinny had planned the party for bonwag, and had all the hotel keys. he delt them out like 5 card stud and then headed for the casino without looking back, and we all followed. There are a lot of everything in vegas. especially mirrors. and as we past them in the hallways and the elevators, i looked at us and we looked like a modern day western movie where the outlaws go walking into town shoulder to shoulder to raise some hell. only holstered on our hips weren't 6 shooters, but saline eye drops and cell phones. and instead of bullets, our ammunition was red black and green casino chips.

trying to talk about the next 50 hours of my life is like trying to talk about a big tornado. It is beautiful, horrifying, and when it is all over, someone always looses a lot.

As we walked out of the elveator into the casino, everything seemed to explode into a combustable cloud of neon, and green felt. People scattered, bells rattled, silicon bounced, and money moved, but time stood still.

15 hours later it was still dark. i had no proof, but thought the sun had forgotten to rise and fall for the first time in history. my veins were pulsing with oxygen and gin and second hand nicotene. I was on bus headed downtown, and out the window the city's electric ventricles pumped neon through its metal and concrete organs. Bonwag was down 200. McMahn was up 900. and some time later it was vica versa, and then back again.

meals no longer were defined as breakfast lunch and dinner, but simply as "the next time i eat". by monday our circadian rythmes were shattered, and time, space and logic fell onto the sidewalk along side the business cards for the call girls, dancers, and hookers.

i felt like i was wathcing those nature films in jr. high were they do a time lapse on lightning storms, flowers blooming, and the sun rising and falling. it all twitches and writhes and explodes in a matter of seconds right before your eyes.

i watched the sun set across the vegas strip and cast it's long shadows on the menegrie of architecture, lights, water, and persuasion. and like the impression i was left with in 7th grade, I understood that i will die. and until that happens this world is twitching, and writhing, and exploding. and it all will happen in a matter of seconds, right before my eyes, and i am here to see it.

So there under the palm trees in the mohave heat, beside the shotgun wedding dresses and rhinestoned jumpsuits and lost hotel keys and prime buffets with crab legs and macoroni and cheese, we split our aces, we let it ride, and we doubled down. we held on 17 and found infinitley more ways to hit everything but 21. and there among the faux finished people and buildings, the manicured lawns and hands, i realized i don't need any of it. i didn't any of it to be happy. i didn't need any of it to live. i didn't need any of it to die. but what i do need is to understand that it is happening whether i look at it or not, and that until i die, i am alive.

and so we laughed and we sang. we talked and we drank. and i understood what good friends are. new and old. and understood what it means to be here; to watch this world twitch and writhe and explode with them.

-and now, as the summer ends, i look back and hope that bonwag was right; That i am starting to get the hang of all of this. and maybe, with a little luck, i will be fine.