deadmachine retread: Thus Spake the Congregation

I knew something was wrong when Twila gave me the stink eye outside the student union. Divorces are difficult enough. Being young – too young, I remember my grandmother saying – made it that much more difficult. Having a three-month-old daughter made it even more so. Getting divorced while being married with a three-month-old daughter on a small college campus in Eastern Kentucky pretty much guaranteed that only Sisyphus had a more difficult load to bear.

Perverting common wisdom, a divorce has more than two sides to the story. There’s the usual… what one partner says and what the other partner says. Then there’s what really happened, which tends to be somewhere in the middle. And then there’s what everyone else says. And depending on who it is, where their loyalties lie, what their predilections are, and what their own (inevitably skewed) views on marriage are, there are any number of stories, all of which sound true enough to pass the gossip test regardless of how close to the truth it happens to be.

The usual unofficial morning kaffeeklatch of what was then called the Non-traditional Student Union was congregated in it usual corner spot in the upstairs student cafeteria. Woody, Shyla, Tammy, Jack, Ernie, Barb, Babs, and Shane were all in their usual spots drinking their usual coffee and having the usual conversations – all of which can be boiled down to how most college students have it easy. Marie and I gained entry to this group not so much because of our age, as our ages fell within what is (still) considered the traditional age, but because of our marital and parental status. Young marriages were increasingly less common in the 90’s, even in Eastern Kentucky with its sometimes self-proclaimed penchant for the traditional and the morally unambiguous. Both Barb and Babs, both of whom were products of failed marriages forced by cultural shotgun, applauded our decision not to resort to sin by partaking of marital fruits outside the sanctity of the marriage bed. Tammy, Shyla, and Twila didn’t say that in so many words, but Twila – who was a grandmother with granddaughters who hadn’t headed the words of Jesus since being baptized Old Regular Baptist style in a coal sludge dirty creek at the age of seven – demonstrated her clear approval by speaking often about how she wished her Becky and Sue had inherited some stiffer moral fiber like me and Marie.

Ernie, Shane, and Jack had no opinions on the topic. Or at any rate they didn’t express any openly. Woody asked me once when none of the others were within earshot – with no small amount of incredulity, I might add – how I could saddle myself so young when there was a campus full of beautiful young girls to occupy my time. Jack kept his own counsel about anything that didn’t involve the NCAA and Ernie, who was trying to be a writer, mostly talked politics.

Shane never said anything at all. But since I knew he was the guy Marie was currently fucking, I felt like I knew what his opinion was on the subject of marriage.

The group fell silent when I approached. When I sat down everyone but Ernie and Jack moved their chairs back a little… not like they were making more room but like they were afraid that whatever was wrong with me might rub off.

Ernie eyeballed the women carefully before uttering a neutral welcome.

What’s going on, he asked.

Not a thing. Just waiting between class.

Barb made a harrumphing sound and Babs just shook her head. Jack nodded at me, the way men sometimes do to show solidarity right before the bombs fall and its every man for himself.

I tried making conversation, though I didn’t much feel like it. I wasn’t sleeping and even the copious amount of drinking I was doing wasn’t helping.  Going to class was more an exercise of habit than purpose at that point and my professors treated me with increasing levels of shock, annoyance, or unsympathetic pity. I wasn’t doing anything. But I still made it to class. I was still working, if for no other reason so I could give money to Marie for Rhea. After we split up she moved out of the trailer we shared and in with a friend to help defray expenses. I was staying with friends who would ensure that, if nothing else, there would be beer and tater tots to eat and who could give me a ride to campus.

Barb made another harrumphing sound. You don’t need to be here drinking coffee like you have friends here, she said. You need to go and take care of your daughter.

Babs, Tammy, and Shyla all nodded and vocalized their agreement with Barb. Ernie and Woody shrank back into their chairs. Jack shook his head and kept his eyes on his coffee. Shane sat there rubbernecking and waiting for the actual carnage. It didn’t take long.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Barb went on, thoroughly encouraged by the congregation present. Your wife and daughter are living up in some shack with no electricity because you threw them away. And here you sit like you deserve to be around civilized people.

That wasn’t what happened. I knew that. Marie knew that. I’m pretty sure Shane, as amused as he was with the show, knew, too. The only thing that was true was that I left. The arguments and accusations, the yelling and recriminations by both Marie and me weren’t anyone’s business. The misery we’d inflicted on another wasn’t anyone’s business. And it wasn’t anyone else’s business whether Marie or I were screwing anyone else. I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that the marriage was over, that my daughter would grow up never knowing her parents as being a married couple. It didn’t matter that nothing in my experience had prepared me for that level of failure – not that anything does, really. But I didn’t even know any kids with divorced parents when I was a kid. My parents were happy. My friends’ parents seemed happy. That was what I expected when I got married, for all of the right reasons. And in spite of what Twila thought, it wasn’t to stave of immoral carnal lust. I was in love… or I thought I was, anyway.

But none of that mattered. Just like it didn’t matter that I had just seen Marie and given her money and asked if she needed anything. No, she said, like I insulted her dignity. We don’t need anything from you.

If there was any real justice in this evil world, Barb intoned, someone would take you out to a deserted holler and show you how we treat men that abandon their babies.

The congregation was silent. So was the entire cafeteria. Ernie and Woody refused to look at me. Jack met my eyes briefly and I knew he knew what was what. But he also knew, like I did, that no amount of words would change anything. Sometimes you take your beatings whether you think you deserve it or not.

Porkopolis, Intermezzo 2:

"Sometimes solutions aren't so simple / Sometimes goodbye's the only way." - Linkin Park

(From the pub's website and virtual tour)

There wasn't as much of a crowd as I had hoped.

Sometimes it's easier to read when the room is full, especially when it's an unfamiliar one. I'd been getting used to reading in front of people at the open mic I helped start back in Mount Carroll; after six months of sometimes entertaining but most likely offending a fair number of religious folks and farmers I think I managed to get my stage legs, such as they are, back. (Not often the farmer's wives, though. I have found that, generally, farmers'wives are an unshakable lot; it's generally the husbands that get a nervous about colorful language around their womenfolk. But the wives have been dealing with blood and animal husbandry for years.)

I didn't know what to expect, other than to expect a bar -- which is a different crowd than a coffee house full of church goers. The Motr Pub in Over-The-Rhine... well, in the more gentrified section of Over-The-Rhine, along Main Street ... is a nice space that is destined to be replaced by some other bar with a slightly different decor. I couldn't remember what was there when I lived in Cincinnati; but according to friend and fellow writer Mark Flanigan, there was a bar named Coopers in that space in 2005. And before that, another bar. It's just one of the spaces, he told me, where bars move in, fail, move out, and another one moves in.

Because I've organized and hosted a number of open mics in a variety of spaces, I expected it to be a music heavy event. Other than that, I had no other expectations. It's better to walk into those kinds of situations expecting very little.

But before I was at the Motr Pub, trying to decide what I should read for whatever audience might show up, I was standing in front of a classroom for the first time in three years. Standing in front of a classroom is a different experience altogether than standing on a stage. It's true that there's some element of performance in being a teacher... at least if you aspire to be a good teacher... but teaching implies a certain power structure that's absent in most any other similar situation.

My friend Allen, who I met when we shared an office at the now non-existent University College -- which eventually became the now extinct Center for Access and Transition -- at the University of Cincinnati.(Which, in an attempt to put that final nail in writing... their PhD in Creative Writing wasn't enough... recently announced a new School of Journalism, which will matriculate thousands of "content providers" for the corporate owned news services.) Allen helped get me an adjunct teaching gig at Chatfield College -- a job I eventually quit over a well-founded and articulate disagreement over their choice of ENG 101 text. (It's my assertion that all textbooks... the writing ones, at any rate ... are a waste of time, a waste of paper, and cost too god damn much... and lately, written so that any schmuck who can read at the 5th grade level is somehow qualified to teach college composition.)

Allen asked if I could visit his class and talk about poetry... so they could meet "a real, live, working poet." I said yes, primarily because Allen asked me and he's my friend. I also said yes because poetry gets a bad wrap. All the time. And it doesn't get a bad wrap anywhere worse than in Freshman Writing classrooms. In fact, other than Hallmark greeting cards, the other thing that has tried to strangle poetry in this country is higher education.

What?


Yes.

But I thought colleges and universities produced poets and protected the memory of poetry for posterity.


Sure. In the same way that the Nuremberg Trials protected the memory of Adolf Hitler.

?


Don't get me started.

The class was fun. I was nervous because I hadn't been in that Teacher Space in what felt like forever. Three years ISN'T that long of a time. But it is, in some ways. Especially when it comes to something like teaching.

But the class was gracious and after I talked a little about poetry and got a sense of what they knew... and what they didn't know... and after I forgot, because I was so twitterpaited. the difference between alliteration and assonance... the class and I read through the poems I had brought along. It was interesting, listening to them read my work. Of course, they were far more interested in what inspired the poems... which is something I generally don't talk about. The poems should speak for themselves, and if I had wanted to write a story, I would have. But I also think it's important to be a bit more gracious with students than with other people.

Later, at the reading, the thing I noticed was that not only was there not a lot of people, but that no one else was a reader. A handful of musicians... some pretty talented ones, I have to admit... had come to play and showcase their original pieces. There was, of course, only one problem.

Every song they sang was, for the most part, fucking depressing.

"Don't people write happy songs?" I asked Mark, who had come out to hear me read.

"When's the last time you listened to a happy song?"

I had to think about it. It had been a while. That didn't make me wrong, though. I knew for a fact there were happy songs. Somewhere. Big Rock Candy Mountain? "But still..."

"Shit," Mark said. "What was the last time you wrote a happy poem?"

He had me there.

When I stood up to read, the only person who clapped was Mark... because he's a good sport and because he's always been supportive of my writing and because, according to him, it had been 7 years since he heard me read. I had trouble believing it had been that long. But it had.

Reading in a bar... even one that isn't all that crowded... means belting it out over the noise. Because there's always noise. And when I was finished, Mark and a few other people clapped. Mark because he's supportive. The others... maybe because I was finished.

Later Mark stood up to read... if you've never seen Flanigan perform, you're missing out and you should be ashamed of yourself... and he was well received. I was told after, however, by the host, a musician named Lucas who sometimes sounded like John Mayer and sometimes a watered down Chris Daugherty, informed me that my friend Mark wanted me to get up and read again,

And so I did. I belted it out with a glass of beer in my hand. And while I'm still sure no one was listening, it was good to know that I could still do it. It was also good to feel like I could read somewhere other than the open mic I helped start. And it was good to know that sometimes, you have to read it like a junk yard dog to be heard.

  

[In my ongoing attempt to convince Greyhound Bus Lines that they should bus me around the country, it has been suggested to me that instead of asking people to call the corporate headquarters and talk to CEO David Leach, I should direct inquires to the Marketing Department. This, based on the Executive Bios, seems to fall under the purview of Ted. F. Burk, Senior VP of Corporate Development. If you like what you read here, please do one or all of these:

1. Share the link with as many people as possible.
2. Click on the DONATE button to keep me going.
3. Call Greyhound (214-849-8000) and ask for Ted F.Burk. Tell him they need to bus me around. Tell them it's good PR. Tell the they need the help. Thanks!   

I'm leaving Cincinnati tomorrow morning and heading for Lexington. Look for my final Porkopolis chapter SOON]

Harrison Street Station Run Through

"I love it when a plan comes together." - John "Hannibal" Smith 

The original title of this entry was going to be "2AM Harrison Street Station Blues." It's nice when a snazzy title happens to pop into the brain... I usually labor over, over criticize, change, despise, change and finally give up on titles. I've always struggled with titles in the same way I struggled with long division when I was a kid. I know it ought to be a simple thing, but dammit, my head just can't seem to wrap itself around it.

I was planning on writing it because even though I managed to get a ride into Chicago from Jim "No Toll Is Going To Slow Me Down" Beaudry, I had it stuck in my head that my bus was going to leave on Saturday, January 21st, and 12:15.

So there I was, sitting at one of the places available to plug in my netbook so that I could both charge the battery and check Facebook, listening to music through my ear buds, when I heard an announcement about an express bus to Cincinnati getting ready to board. "Hmmm," I thought. "If I had known there was a schedule for today, I would've probably taken that one instead."

I was about to go back to my music, my Facebooking, and my emailing, when I decided to go ahead and look at my ticket... the one I had bought a few weeks before and had sent to me in the mail. I looked at the date.

It read January 20th.

I looked at the date and time on the task bar. SHIT. That was my ride they were calling out.

I rushed packing up my computer, grabbed my other bag, and headed for the Express loading area. I looked at the date again, double checked it with my phone... because I didn't want to be the stupid schmuck  who tried to board the bus 24 hours early. My cell phone display confirmed that today is, for REALZ, January 20th.

I got in the short line, and when I got to the driver checking tickets, he didn't shoo me away; instead, he pointed to the bus and said "The same bus will take you all the way to Cincinnati."

So here I am, aboard the bus headed out of Chicago heading south and east. The world outside looks like a Cohen Bothers movie. All gray and white, to the point that it all looks almost dead body blue. (You remember that color from the Crayola box, right? ) The bus is on the empty side. I don't know if it will stay empty all the way to Cincinnati -- we have one short pick up stop in Indianapolis -- but so far, so good.

There's only three problems.

1) When I arrived at the Harrison Street station, they were cleaning the men's restroom. And by the time I noticed they were done, I had to get on the bus. That means at some point, I'll have to use the rolling outhouse in the back of the bus. If you here a large plop, that wasn't a mystic shit. It was me falling down the rabbit hole.

2) I didn't buy a bottle of water because I figured I had time.

3) I'm not quite sure who's picking me up in Cincinnati yet. Or, indeed, if I can prevail upon anyone in this weather to drive downtown and pick me up.

The Third Thing

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." -Lewis Carroll

Today's my last full day in Mount Carroll for a while. I packed what few clothes I'm bringing with me, a long with a couple of books. It would be nice to have a slightly larger bag, but my other option is a large Army duffle that I don't want to have to haul around or deal with. At some point, maybe a slightly larger bag. For now, it helps me decide, quite easily, what I'm taking and what I'm leaving here. I want to be able to keep things simple, keep it as light as possible, for when I'm walking; I'd also like to avoid having to ever check the bag when I'm riding a bus or train.

Other than the possibility of eating a bowl of the Soup Du Jour at Brick Street Coffee, I'm also pondering the number three.

In various mythologies, spiritual practices, and religious beliefs, the number three is sometimes imbued with mystical qualities. For that matter, mathematician Pythagoras considered it the perfect number, representing balance, harmony, and wisdom (because it encompasses the first two numbers perfectly.) The Holy Trinity in Christianity; clusters of three in Celtic religious art; the Triple Goddess; the Three Jewels of Buddhism; the Hindu Trimurti.

I'm leaving a bunch out. One particular treatment of the number three -- the one that weighs on my mind -- was mentioned briefly in a book called The Happiest Man in the World by Alec Wilkinson. It's a brief mostly biographical sketch of the life and times of Poppa Neutrino, who among other things, tried to build boats from garbage and sail them.

One of Poppa Neutrino's boats

Poppa Neutrino

He was a well read, mostly self-educated man. At one point, he tried to start his own religion, The First Church of Fulfillment, and even had a store front church. One of the tenets of this religion comes back to ... you guessed it ... the number three. Essentially, Poppa Neutrino claimed that every person needs three things to be happy, but that it's a different three things for each person. He asserted that most people only really know two of the things they want, being stuck in a never ending dichotomy and lacking balance.

I'm no disciple, but it does seem to me that there's something to the simplicity of the idea. We're a culture that pads itself from unpleasantness with possessions. We love our stuff. And even when we say we don't care about our stuff, we don't do much about changing the fact that we still AMASS ridiculous quantities of stuff.

Anyone who knows me well knows I don't care much about stuff. I like my books, some clothes, a place to write. I have certain... we'll call them eccentricities ... when it comes to writing. But I don't feel like I'm tied down to my stuff, either.

And while I haven't quite figured out my three things... I think I have a handle on two of them... I am using the number three to dictate what I'm bringing with me to start.  Three pouches of extra pipe tobacco; three t-shirts (plus the one on my back); three warm sweaters (plus the one on my back); three pairs of socks and underwear (plus what I'll be wearing); an extra pair of jeans, an extra long sleeve shirt, and toiletries. Also at least three hats... two warm and one to keep the sun out of my eyes. I'm also taking my netbook and audio recorder, my copy of Ernesto Cardenal's Cosmic Canticles, Ed MacClanahan's I Just Hitched in From the Cost,  my copy of George Eklund's new chapbook, Wanting to Be An Element. I also have a pocket version of Whitman's "Song of Myself." And of course, some pens, my journal, and a fresh one to fall back on.

Not bad for a small bag, eh?

Well, a slightly bigger one would be nice. But I don't want one that's too nice, either. And I don't want to spend my limited travel funds on something as trivial as luggage.

But more than helping decide what to being with me, thinking about the number three helps to remind me that all journeys -- the ones worth beginning, at any rate -- are as much about the spiritual journey as they are the geographic one, or even the poetic one.

And that really, they're all more or less the same. And that to ignore any of them -- the spiritual, the poetic, or the geographic -- means a loss of balance, an absence of harmony, and an absence of wisdom.


(If you like it, please pass it on. If you really like it, consider donating a few bucks to keep me going. In any case, thank you.)

Wind Down Wind Up: Travel Plan Update

This one's for Dave Cuckler and Jim Beaudry.


So my plans -- in as much as I've made them, such as they are -- are set. I'm leaving Mount Carroll Friday Morning and riding back into Chicago with Melissa's Timber Lake Playhouse co-conspirator, Jim "The Glam Man" Beaudry.  Once I get into the city, it's another hop skip and a jump and I'm on a 12:15 pm bus on Saturday from the Harrison Street station that will put me in the Nasty Nati around 7:05 pm that night. Pretty sweet, these express routes.

I can't take credit for discovering them, though. Melissa found out about them first. And since it would cost me more than $15 to drive to Cincinnati, I consider it a pretty good deal. Also, it'll be on one of the newer buses... they smell less like dirty ass, month old sweat,  and bus rape.

The first leg of the trip with be a nice refresher through past places, visiting family and friends I haven't seen in entirely too many years. A few days in Cincinnati, hoping to hoist a few beers and take in the city that I have, off and on over the years, called home. I have one actual task to accomplish while I'm there -- emptying out the storage unit we've been paying $50 a month to rent since we moved to Phoenix. That will be an odd and (probably) blog worthy experience.

This leaving will be one of the most difficult, in recent memory. I've said that before, but I've trying to figure out why. I'm not much of a sentimentalist. I've made friends here, friends I will miss; but I also know I'll see them again. Whenever I move I always just assume I'll see my friends again. Somewhere. Sometime.

I've always believed that. And while some might consider that an aberrant version of sentimentality, it's not. Anyone who knows me knows I'm lousy at keeping in touch. It's not that I don't try. But I think it's important to try and live life where you are, in the now. That doesn't mean I don't often think about friends I haven't seen; I do. Everyone I love, friends and family, are in my thoughts constantly.

And that's really sort of the point, isn't it? When you've been fortunate enough to find people who you consider friends and who honor you by thinking of you as a friend, they have a permanent impact on your life. I've moved around enough and had enough leavings that I'm used to taking my friends with me, calling when I can, trying to see them in the future if at all possible. (Which is why the first part of my trip will be to revisit old places and old friends... because I never say good-bye. I only say "See you later." or "Later" when I'm into the whole brevity thing...)

Leaving Phoenix was difficult, but not really. I had friends there. I still consider them my friends. I assume I will see them again, and maybe I will on my extended jaunt.

But the leaving Mount Carroll is a different experience. First of all, this is the first place I've lived in several years where I actually invested something. I decided to care about the place.

I was sitting around, hating it here... not re-adapting all that well to small town life. I hadn't really invested much of myself while we were living in Phoenix. I was teaching, and I was invested in my students. I was even invested -- early on, anyway -- in my professional life. But when you live in a city like Phoenix/Tempe, you don't need to invest in the same way that need to when you live in small town; especially one on the verge of change like Mount Carroll is. I decided to care.

And I don't regret it. Not one bit. I like to think I've had some kind of positive influence on the place.  I've met some amazing people who reminded me that talent exists in places you wouldn't expect. Living here has helped me to remember that I shouldn't take anyplace or anyone for granted, and that people can still be good (and snarky, and back biting, and hypocrites, and power mongers. But they're everywhere, and most of them have political aspirations.)

I was drinking Monday night with my friend, Dave Cuckler -- one of those talented people I previously eluded to. We were drinking at the bowling alley -- the place that has, over the last year or so, become my regular haunt -- and watching the Monday night men's league, which I used to be a part of, finish up. I was telling him about the mixed sensation of leaving. Dave pointed out that not only have I invested myself in my life here, but that the town -- or at least certain segments of it -- accepted me.

Which is, of course, why this leaving has been so strange. I haven't felt this level of acceptance since graduate school, maybe. Before that, never. After that, maybe some in Cincinnati. But not the same. And even though I have railed against local and county leaders in the press, even though I despise the winters here, and even though I had to let people down by quitting the bowling league... which, considering my average, is no loss to anyone... I will take the warmth of that acceptance with me when I go.

Update: Of Leavings And What Remains

My bus ticket to Cincinnati arrived in the mail this past Saturday. I'm leaving from Chicago on Saturday January 21st and taking an express route, which will put me in the Nasty Nati on the same day I pull out of the Harrison Avenue Station.

The ticket cost $15. It would have cost me $10, but I waited a couple of days before I purchased it.

Leavings are strange things. Who to say goodbye to. Who to tell what. Loose ends to tie up. I told my editor at the paper last week about my plans, and suggested that he find someone else to cover my regular beat. Tom's a good guy and he's always treated me fairly, so I sort felt... well... behooved... to give him decent notice. I'm getting prepared... in my head... for what comes next.

"You really need to go." Melissa on my travels. She's horribly worried that I'm going to write about her, with good reason, I suppose. She's never been comfortable being inspiration/fodder for my writing; I'm sure that there are more writers' spouses who feel like her than not. That she ends up looking better in the end seems to make little difference. I can't fault her for her feelings. She's an honest and extraordinary person who needs and deserves stability. And I'm the kind of person who feels most alive when I'm writing and on the move.

Leavings are strange things. And I always feel like I'm in the process of a leaving. These lines from James Merrill's poem "The Will" keep echoing in my mind:

In growing puzzlement I've felt things losing
Their grip on me.

That's sort of what it feels like. I'm not letting go of things. But they are letting go of me. I say I never feel really alive unless I'm on the move, and I guess that's true. But memory is a funny thing. And by funny I mean absurd and ironic. Memory is absurd and ironic because even though things are letting go of me, I am eyeball deep in the process of etching it all in my mind... these things I will take will me as I begin. I am always ready to go. But I never want to forget where I've been. I want to keep the people I love close to my heart.

But it seems I can only do that when I go away.

Scratching the Itchy Foot

The first part of the trip will be to go visit my daughter, Stella. It's been a couple of years since I've seen her and I want to make sure she's not taller than me. Stella is 17, focused on getting out of high school alive as well as intellectually and psychologically intact. She's also starting to look at colleges and is looking for a job.


That used to be an easier thing: finding a job. When I was a kid, all you had to do was go fill out a McDonald's application and you could have a job. There was poverty, there was unemployment -- but a kid who wanted to earn money and begin that lifelong love and hate relationship with the IRS had a reasonable shot at finding some sort of demeaning, dignity impugning, soul killing job that paid very little and left none of  the feelings of satisfaction often talked about in pre-employment literature.


Right now in America, there's 4 people for every available job. And that doesn't include the 15% unemployment rate for veterans returning from the wars they fought to keep Halliburton in business. Unemployment benefits are stretched, and there are those -- we call those sons of bitches REPUBLICANS -- who would cut off unemployment insurance and let people starve. We also have some folks -- we call those assholes DEMOCRATS -- that are going along because their mommies keep their balls in a silk bag in the back of an armoire. Right now we're living in a country where we have The Haves and The Have-Nots. Right now we're living in a country run by politicians who are signing away our freedoms. Right now, the banks and corporations have taken over.


Right now, it's only getting started.


And right now, there are stories to be told. Someday, we'll have historians explaining to our grandchildren what all this recession bullshit was really about and what the long term impact of shrinking civil rights and banks on the national tit was. Or maybe we won't. Maybe we'll have talking heads and history memes on social networks, lost in the shuffle between the Two Girls, One Cup video and the latest free social networking game that eats up computer speed and distracts people from seeing the world for what it is.


Re:visionary is my way of trying to tell the real story in real time. There are stories to be told, songs to be sung, poetry to be written. Re:visionary means,  for one, revision. Life, like a poem draft, often  requires revision.


For another, it means Re(garding) Vision. How I envision my self, the country, other people, the world. 


And I'm hoping you like what you read.