{"id":47,"date":"2013-10-31T04:38:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T08:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thememorexe.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2021-03-23T02:40:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T06:40:24","slug":"be-yourself-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thememorexe.com\/wordpress\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"Be Yourself Tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mocha Bar: a sea of ghetto fab and in the midst of all that, an anomaly\u2014 a red headed Viking stares at me\u2014or should I say we exchange covert glances while I attempt to focus on a martini, or an old friend; a new acquaintance; clocking the Viking\u2019s movements from my locus of interaction. Glimpsed on the landing, dancing with some gyrating unknown; lost for a second, but I look up from my conversation with the dingbat who is a buyer for Virgin Records and he is sitting right next to us, listening in; then he is chatting with the off-duty bartender in cage aux folles sparkles\u2026 Finally our paths cross, I trip him by mistake. He says: You did that on purpose<\/em>. My cue to turn vixen\u2014procure him for the rest of the evening and then probably well into the small hours: who knows, there might be a marathon in there. Then the spectre of a failed love arises, I lose my nerve and pass it up.<\/p>\n

There is not much more to do. I leave.Walking home thinking about Michel: still in love, and in need of detox: a get away, for at least a month. Can I afford it? Maybe. I\u2019ll drop out of sight, go to Paris\u2014get lost there… It\u2019s a mental health priority; I\u2019ll make it happen\u2026<\/p>\n

In the past, a one-night stand was a surefire salve for heartbreak\u2014got you back on track. A friend used to say, \u201cIt takes a nail to remove another nail.\u201d Truth be told, I didn\u2019t want to deal with the disappointment of yet another liaison. A few hours of respite dragged out into weeks of torture and mind games and evasions and delusions: the occupational hazards of impromptu sex \u2026<\/p>\n

Walking past a block of warehouses, the dogs are howling\u2014in this part of Brooklyn, bands of strays maraud the streets after hours. At the crossroads, three sisters appear\u2014Macbeth\u2019s bitches: they have collectively between them four eyes, two missing hind legs and well nicked pelts and tails. They stare at me, uneasy\u2014keeping their distance in odd whimpers. What ails the mastiff bitch?<\/em>
\nThere is a low growl\u2014but I see nothing. I turn to discover I am followed by a pack. This is strange and unprecedented: canines in these parts are not so bold. They are scraggy, friendly, goofy strays. But tonight, one of them is not so scraggy: he is… different. His eyes are glinting yellow. His eyes are blinding flashlights.<\/p>\n

All night I dream about the Wolves of Ancient Paris: running wild on Ile-de-Cit\u00e9, before the goddess Isis came and claimed the city for her own. The wolves of my dreams run rampant through the forests of Paris, silver in the night, eyes are bullets and teeth slashing away at eternity to expose time. Their phantasm finally pixilates, shimmers and crashes.I wake up in the hospital. I am disoriented. How did I get here?
\nI try to move\u2014but there are so many devices hooked up to me. A nurse notices that I am awake, she alerts the others: the doctor is sent for.
\nHow did I get here?
\nThe nurse tells me I am going to be alright.
\nBut what happened?
\nThey were hoping I could tell them that.
\nApparently I had dragged my bleeding lacerated body into the emergency room by myself and then collapsed there. I had lost several pints of blood; they rushed me to intensive care. I have a vague memory, some ghost image of the emergency room, (the horror: what bloody girl is this?)<\/em> but the details blunted by the roar of alcohol pounding the brain.<\/p>\n

The doctor comes, he asks me how I am feeling, I say confused. He takes my pulse and my temperature. I am doing better. (You had us concerned there, for a moment). He asks if I have any memory of what happened. I say not really. He tells me that it seems I was attacked by wild canines, and that I had fought back: canine blood and fur were found in my saliva and under my nails\u2026
\nDid I have no memory of the incident? What about before that? Where could it have happened? I remember I was at the bar I say. Then I start crying, because I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m in the hospital and suddenly everything hurts.
\nThe doctor says I\u2019ve been unconscious for almost a week. I have a thousand stitches in my body. I am also under quarantine. I can\u2019t have visitors\u2014not until they find out what exactly is going on with me. And part of that would be solved if I could piece together what happened that night.
\nI can\u2019t remember.
\nThe doctor nods sympathetically, it is a trauma, he affirms\u2014but you\u2019re a fighter and you\u2019ll get through this\u2026
\nThey load me up on medication: sleeping pills, painkillers, pressure modulators, drip\u2026
\nIts all a bad dream, but when I close my eyes there\u2019s worse.
\nAt the end of the week, the nurses give me a bunch of notes and cards from friends and well wishers because I\u2019m not allowed to take phone calls or check my email just yet.<\/p>\n

The doctor is concerned that I am repressing the memory of the incident. I am wheeled in to see Dr. Carnelly, a psychotherapist, one afternoon. He asks me what I remember\u2014he wants me to reconstruct. I tell him I recall something\u2014but not a lot, and I don\u2019t really feel like talking about it.
\nWhat do you feel like talking about?
\nWell\u2026
\nI find myself speaking about a friend of mine who had lived in India in the hippy heyday of world travel. She got a job in a small village teaching French, and one night, walking home from a party at the English Consul\u2019s house, she was attacked by a black dog\u2026
\nI fall silent because I am talking about it.
\nDr. Carnelly gently nudges me to go on.
\nShe was attacked by a black dog\u2014but the significance of that was that in Indian mythology, black dogs are a manifestation of Shiva.
\n\u201cAnd you see this as a divine encounter?\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean me or her?\u201d
\n\u201cDo you think your friend had a divine encounter?\u201d
\nThere was no rabies vaccine immediately available\u2014so she spent a night in feverish delirium: Sanskrit characters burning themselves on to her brain. When she recovered, she found she could read Sanskrit and undertook to translate a sixteenth century poetess into English,
\n\u201cYou can look it up online\u2014the poetess\u2019s name was Mirabai\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cI don\u2019t doubt this happened to your friend\u2014but I\u2019m more interested in what\u2019s happened to you\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cDo you know that children of Israel were instructed not to eat the hip joint of any animal?\u201d
\n\u201cNo I didn\u2019t know that. Why do you bring it up?\u201d
\n\u201cJacob encountered a stranger and wrestled with him all night\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cYes?\u201d
\n\u201cAt dawn, the stranger begged Jacob to let him go\u2014but Jacob said no, not unless you bless me. And the stranger said: from henceforth you will be called Israel, which means Prince of God. Then he touched his hip joint and vanished\u2014turns out he was the \u2018Angel of the Lord.\u2019 But since then Jacob had a limp and his descendants were instructed not to eat that part of the animal.\u201d
\n\u201cFascinating. You seem to immerse yourself in a great deal of mythology\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you think it\u2019s an escape route.\u201d
\n\u201cYou strike me as an intelligent person. We\u2019re all liable to out do ourselves every now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n

I like my visits with Dr. Carnelly; it is a relief to have conversation with an accommodating party. Once I growled at a nurse about to administer a syringe, startled, she sprang back, aggravating me the more\u2014claws emerged and I swiped her. In her shock she knocked over an array of equipment\u2014even though she realized almost immediately that it was all in her head. Since then, I\u2019ve been handled at arms length\u2014 the nurses are a wary of me. The ones that do speak to me do so with an agenda in mind: a conversion to Jehovah\u2019s Witness, or the like.So creeps in this petty pace\u2026<\/p>\n

Dr. Carnelly lets me ramble on because it amuses him, I think.I narrate the Tale of Rudra to him: two acolytes studied under a teacher, a guru who taught that enlightenment could be accrued in the wisdom from spontaneous actions. The two disciples went away and practiced this teaching in the ways in which they best understood it. The first one began to find spontaneity in extreme actions, positive and negative and was liberated by freeing himself from dualities through detachment. The second one, Rudra, went away, built a brothel and rallied a gang of men who all acted spontaneously: pillaging villages, raping women and enslaving them.
\nYears passed and the acolytes crossed paths and both were shocked by the other\u2019s manifestation of the teaching. To resolve it, they went back to their teacher and asked his opinion. The guru immediately praised the first one, but Rudra he rebuked: for clearly what he was doing was evil. Rudra, incensed at the judgment, immediately slew his teacher. After that he was condemned to thousands of horrible incarnations: he became five thousand jackals, then five hundred scorpions in succession,
\n\u201cBut I was thinking maybe he was hatched as five hundred baby scorpions in the same nest\u2014sort of like a hive\u2014if you think about it, a hive is an entire consciousness and an ant or bee is a neural byte\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cWhere did you get this from?\u201d
\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ve been reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead.\u201d
\n\u201cHere in the hospital?\u201d
\n\u201cI had a friend send it to me.\u201d
\n\u201cMaybe you need lighter fare just now. That stuff\u2019s a little morbid.\u201d
\nTo pacify him, I change the subject. I tell him about Mocha Bar and the entire scene and break down the concept of ghetto fabulousness and bling bling for him. That makes him smile. I tell him about social conundrums: introduce him to new buzzwords like niggerati (I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be using that one anytime soon, he says.) I tell him all these things about my life\u2014re-imagined as a DVD with special features\u2014but I don\u2019t tell him about the Viking boy that night: the hot glances, the maneuvers\u2014the imaginary afterlife of our meeting: where I kiss him outside the bar. We go home and devour each other to shreds.<\/p>\n

One afternoon I tell him about Michel, and the melancholy he has induced in me,
\n\u201cIt\u2019s simple: I\u2019m in love with him and he\u2019s still hooked on his ex and we\u2019re all unhappy\u2014\u201c
\nDoctor Carnelly is sympathetic.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been trying to explain to him that love isn\u2019t an emotion\u2014it\u2019s a chemical property,\u201d
\n\u201cIs that what you think?\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re the doctor, how come you don\u2019t know?\u201d
\n\u201cFrom what I understand, love is an emotion. But that\u2019s just me, what\u2019s your theory?\u201d
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t have to humor me just because you\u2019re my shrink\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cI\u2019m not humoring you, I\u2019m just really curious about what you have to say. Seriously,\u201d
\nHe has soft brown eyes that crinkle when he\u2019s laughing.
\nAlright, I say, and break it down:
\nLove is one of those evolutionary things\u2014a mating device. In the search for creating the perfect offspring, the body responds to those who are the perfect genetic fit.
\nIt starts with entrainment, which is how ducks know how not to go after geese and chimps and apes don\u2019t mix. Anyway, it\u2019s like the progression from human sacrifice to animal to vegetable to symbolic\u2014human kind becomes increasingly sophisticated so we develop all sorts of brand IDs for primal behaviors. When we meet the \u201cright person\u201d the brain releases a chemical peptide, phenylethylamine\u2014and that triggers other chemicals: adrenaline and dopamine\u2014the heart races and there\u2019s bliss all around. But don\u2019t be fooled\u2014it\u2019s an overdose, one that gets you into bed ultimately. And it\u2019s addictive. So God help you if the other person isn\u2019t as susceptible to those love drugs: there are calloused souls wandering about, having built a tolerance to peptides\u2014they will desert you and leave you to withdrawal pangs worse than heroin.
\n\u201cIf it\u2019s all just a chemical reaction\u2014why don\u2019t we fall in love with every genetically fit person around?\u201d
\n\u201cBecause we usually go for some unfinished family business\u2014something we want to resolve or recreate\u2014\u201c
\nThat gives him a moment of pause. I continue,
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s more\u2014we\u2019ve become more and more sophisticated about procreation\u2014it doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be about human offspring or the opposite sex\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cHmm,\u201d
\n\u201cAfter all, vampires breed horizontally\u2014they\u2019re not creating new progeny, just working with what\u2019s there\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cVampires? Oh dear, I should have seen that coming\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cWhatever. There\u2019s phenylethylamine in roses and chocolate, so check it out if you want.\u201d
\nDoctor Carnelly shakes his head,
\n\u201cYou realize there is a pattern here: you start to make perfectly valid statements, rational ones and suddenly there is a swift detour into fantasy\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cMythology isn\u2019t fantasy. Neither is chemistry.\u201d
\n\u201cBut vampires are.\u201d
\nAre they? I can sift his own chemical bouquet from where I sit. Not necessarily cologne or a distinct body odor\u2014I bypass all that. Here is a hazardous distillation of self-satisfaction, a degree of empathy and sexual attraction\u2014
\nI wonder how you feel about transference, Dr. Carnelly\u2014no not necessarily the garden variety patient\/shrink dilemma\u2014I have something else in mind\u2026
\nI find myself tearing at his jugular, piercing prehensile fangs\u2026
\nA salty spray of blood squirt clouds what\u2019s left of reason\u2026
\nDr. Carnelly starts. He blinks rapidly for a second, and then composes himself. He realizes he is imagining things.<\/p>\n

After a few weeks I am removed from quarantine. I get to have visitors: Michel is one of the first to come. He\u2019s brought a bouquet of white lilies for me:
\n\u201cThanks, they\u2019re beautiful\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cSomehow I didn\u2019t think you\u2019d go for roses\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cThese are so much better. So virginal, don\u2019t you think\u2014\u201c
\nI get a silent but kindly reprimand.
\n\u201cDo I get chocolates too? Or somehow I don\u2019t seem the type?\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re aren\u2019t the type. You don\u2019t have a sweet tooth.\u201d
\nHe\u2019s come to say goodbye; he is on his way to Honduras for a few weeks\u2014
\n\u201cVacation?\u201d
\n\u201cNo. More like recuperation\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s all about the detox Michel, you just need to dry out\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cDon\u2019t you think there\u2019s more to this than mere chemical reaction?\u201d
\n\u201cMere chemical reaction? It\u2019s the stuff of heaven\u2014\u201c
\nHe smiles but his eyes are sad and they make me sad too. He holds my hand for a long time and then kisses me on the forehead. Gone.
\nWhat is man but a vapor?<\/em><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve found something in my blood, and they\u2019re not sure what it is. The specialist shows me a simulation on a computer while I\u2019m in his office: I watch the cells pixilate and shadow each other. A shadow realm I think\u2014
\n\u201cIt\u2019s like a slider, in game of Life, you know the cellular automata program\u2014 it\u2019s creating a phantom universe to feed off of.\u201d
\nThe doctor\u2019s exchange glances. Perhaps I have some intuitive insight to what is happening in my body. Maybe I can lend insight into this phenomena\u2014it might be crucial to genetic research about blood behaviors\u2026 cloning, stem cell research.
\nPerhaps.
\nSome sort of deal is struck: if I make myself available for research, they will waive the hospital fees. As long as they share the Nobel with me, I joke. I tell them that I am game as long I can participate as an outpatient. I actually have no intention of coming back here once I get out.<\/p>\n

Dr. Carnelly, who should really have his head checked is worried that I haven\u2019t been sleeping properly. They\u2019ve monitored my sleep cycles\u2014I ask him what they see. He asks me what I see\u2014
\n\u201cIn my dreams?\u201d
\n\u201cYes. What are they like, do you remember?\u201d
\n\u201cNo. Not really.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s not true. I have dreams of Paris freezing into silver flecked pixels, slowly breaking down to reveal the warehouses of Brooklyn underneath. In other dreams, bright-eyed canines lie in wait outside the hospital walls to ravish me. But I don\u2019t tell this to Dr. Carnelly, instead I say: \u201cWhat about you Dr. Carnelly, how are you sleeping these days?\u201d
\nI have caught him off guard; he tenses. Adrenalin flows\u2026
\nHis own dreams are populated by a lone wolf springing into a wilderness of jackals; when he shuts his eyes there are scorpions\u2014
\nI change the subject: will I be seeing him when I am released from the hospital? He says no, because he has referred me to another practitioner.
\nWhy? I want to know. Because it\u2019s better that way says Dr. Carnelly.
\nI say I think it is because Dr. Carnelly is married.
\nHe says he is prescribing a mild sedative for when I have trouble sleeping.
\nIt\u2019s all chemical, I explain.<\/p>\n

Being home feels strange and risky. Sunlight blares and I am forced to shut it out. In the bathroom, is a mirror: it scares me. Yes, I know, all the stitches are out, but you can\u2019t expect me to be so eager to see what\u2019s left.
\nI\u2019m feverish and the pounding in my head turns out to be someone at the door\u2014it\u2019s been going for hours it seems. Finally I go answer it, it\u2019s my friends Sylvie and Allegra, they storm my apartment,
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re not answering your phone.\u201d
\n\u201cI can\u2019t hear it.\u201d
\nAllegra already in the living room holds up the cordless set, wires and all\u2014
\n\u201cCould it be because it\u2019s not plugged in?\u201d
\n\u201cIt was making too much noise.\u201d
\n\u201cDo you realize that everyone is worried sick about you?\u201d
\nI want to be left alone. But they won\u2019t leave me alone, my friends. Their concern is overwhelming: now they stream in endless barrage, keeping vigil over me; making me eat; sponging me down\u2026letting sunlight and fresh air in. It\u2019s either this or the hospital. I\u2019m not going back there.
\nThey\u2019re almost as bad as the nurses and just as suspicious.<\/p>\n

I feign sleep most of the time. I don\u2019t think this fools Sylvie. I heard her on the phone with someone today, I think a doctor. She says I\u2019m not improving and I won\u2019t speak to anyone. Whoever it is asks a question, Sylvie says no, she\u2019s not violent, yes there is aggression, but not at that stage\u2026
\nI have to get out of here, or else they\u2019ll be coming to take me back. And then there will be no going back. I wait, feeling out departures: filtering out noises and scents until the density decreases.<\/p>\n

Clarity.<\/p>\n

It is early summer and day shifts into night; suddenly I am alert. One person remains, seated in the living room, keeping vigil: a male in his thirties; dark hair, garlic and rosemary perspiration trace, but very subtle: roast chicken for lunch? It must be Liam, Allegra\u2019s beau. He\u2019s listening to some old jazz standard\u2014Julie London? Alone in Paris?<\/p>\n

I have heard the werewolves howling each to each\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

A memory overhangs: the world shimmers; bright silvertone particles of reality condense. Three sisters, weird and four-eyed converge at the cross roads\u2026
\nLight compresses into night vision.
\nIn the bathroom: my body, scarred. A network of runes carved across my skin. A magical hymn, a scarry enchantment imprinted on my skin for the purposes of metamorphoses into\u2014 into what?
\nI don\u2019t know.
\nMaybe I do. I tell myself: don\u2019t be afraid, be yourself tonight\u2026
\nThere is a stifled gasp: Liam stands at the bathroom door watching me, eyes large and paralyzed with fear. As I tear at his flesh, I know for a fact he does not imagine this.
\nIn the background Julie London croons. Yes, we\u2019ll always have Paris.<\/p>\n

Racing through the feverish tide of night: emptied out streets. Darkness. Night vision. Crossroads. Three bitches whimper in retreat; hellhounds appear: creatures with luminous eyes like mine. One of them a stranger in the night.
\nI know who you are.<\/em>
\nIt takes a nail to assess another nail\u2026
\nI feel myself lengthening and sharpening. Eyes blazing, we lunge for each other.<\/p>\n

\u00a92006, 2013 onome ekeh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mocha Bar: a sea of ghetto fab and in the midst of all that, an anomaly\u2014 a red headed Viking stares at me\u2014or should I say we exchange covert glances while I attempt to focus on a martini, or an old friend; a new acquaintance; clocking the Viking\u2019s movements from my locus of interaction. Glimpsed on the landing, dancing with some gyrating unknown; lost for a second, but I look up from my conversation with the dingbat who is a buyer for Virgin Records and he is sitting right next to us, listening in; then he is chatting with the off-duty bartender in cage aux folles sparkles\u2026 Finally our paths cross, I trip him by mistake. He says: You did that on purpose. My cue to turn vixen\u2014procure him for the rest of the evening and then probably well into the small hours: who knows, there might be a marathon in there. Then the spectre of a failed love arises, I lose my nerve and pass it up. There is not much more to do. I leave.Walking home thinking about Michel: still in love, and in need of detox: a get away, for at least a month. Can I afford it? Maybe. I\u2019ll drop out of sight, go to Paris\u2014get lost there… It\u2019s a mental health priority; I\u2019ll make it happen\u2026 In the past, a one-night stand was a surefire salve for heartbreak\u2014got you back on track. A friend used to say, \u201cIt takes a nail to remove another nail.\u201d Truth be told, I didn\u2019t want to deal with the disappointment of yet another liaison. A few hours of respite dragged out into weeks of torture and mind games and evasions and delusions: the occupational hazards of impromptu sex \u2026 Walking past a block of warehouses, the dogs are howling\u2014in this part of Brooklyn, bands of strays maraud the streets after hours. At the crossroads, three sisters appear\u2014Macbeth\u2019s bitches: they have collectively between them four eyes, two missing hind legs and well nicked pelts and tails. They stare at me, uneasy\u2014keeping their distance in odd whimpers. What ails the mastiff bitch? There is a low growl\u2014but I see nothing. I turn to discover I am followed by a pack. This is strange and unprecedented: canines in these parts are not so bold. They are scraggy, friendly, goofy strays. But tonight, one of them is not so scraggy: he is… different. His eyes are glinting yellow. His eyes are blinding flashlights. All night I dream about the Wolves of Ancient Paris: running wild on Ile-de-Cit\u00e9, before the goddess Isis came and claimed the city for her own. The wolves of my dreams run rampant through the forests of Paris, silver in the night, eyes are bullets and teeth slashing away at eternity to expose time. Their phantasm finally pixilates, shimmers and crashes.I wake up in the hospital. I am disoriented. How did I get here? I try to move\u2014but there are so many devices hooked up to me. A nurse notices that I am awake, she alerts the others: the doctor is sent for. How did I get here? The nurse tells me I am going to be alright. But what happened? They were hoping I could tell them that. Apparently I had dragged my bleeding lacerated body into the emergency room by myself and then collapsed there. I had lost several pints of blood; they rushed me to intensive care. I have a vague memory, some ghost image of the emergency room, (the horror: what bloody girl is this?) but the details blunted by the roar of alcohol pounding the brain. The doctor comes, he asks me how I am feeling, I say confused. He takes my pulse and my temperature. I am doing better. (You had us concerned there, for a moment). He asks if I have any memory of what happened. I say not really. He tells me that it seems I was attacked by wild canines, and that I had fought back: canine blood and fur were found in my saliva and under my nails\u2026 Did I have no memory of the incident? What about before that? Where could it have happened? I remember I was at the bar I say. Then I start crying, because I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m in the hospital and suddenly everything hurts. The doctor says I\u2019ve been unconscious for almost a week. I have a thousand stitches in my body. I am also under quarantine. I can\u2019t have visitors\u2014not until they find out what exactly is going on with me. And part of that would be solved if I could piece together what happened that night. I can\u2019t remember. The doctor nods sympathetically, it is a trauma, he affirms\u2014but you\u2019re a fighter and you\u2019ll get through this\u2026 They load me up on medication: sleeping pills, painkillers, pressure modulators, drip\u2026 Its all a bad dream, but when I close my eyes there\u2019s worse. At the end of the week, the nurses give me a bunch of notes and cards from friends and well wishers because I\u2019m not allowed to take phone calls or check my email just yet. The doctor is concerned that I am repressing the memory of the incident. I am wheeled in to see Dr. Carnelly, a psychotherapist, one afternoon. He asks me what I remember\u2014he wants me to reconstruct. I tell him I recall something\u2014but not a lot, and I don\u2019t really feel like talking about it. What do you feel like talking about? Well\u2026 I find myself speaking about a friend of mine who had lived in India in the hippy heyday of world travel. She got a job in a small village teaching French, and one night, walking home from a party at the English Consul\u2019s house, she was attacked by a black dog\u2026 I fall silent because I am talking about it. Dr. Carnelly gently nudges me to go on. 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