Fatshadow

But I am feeling better. I'm resting a lot. I slept so much yesterday I thought I'd have trouble sleeping last night. I didn't.

Democracy Now is playing a collage about the 2003. I like things like that. I forgot about all the things that happened during the year.

I don't make resolutions. I do a lot of musing about what has been and what I want to be.

I have this plant. It has survived so much. It's the only plant that survived my school years. Every year it drops leaves and grows a bit taller. But it usually has new leaves before it drops the old. In the last week it started dropping leaves. Last night I heard the last one fall. It's just this tall stem in a pot. It looks like a stick. There are two very tiny green nubs at the top, which I hope are leaves.

I'm torn. Part of me want to keep watering it and whispering to it. Maybe get it a new pot and some more soil. And hope that those tiny little green nubs grow. And part of me wants to pitch it in the trash and grouse about how stripped I am and how stripped my plant became and how stripped it all is.

For now I just walk past it and look at those two little green nubs. Checking to see if they're still there.

I'm slowly getting my rhythm back. My blog reading/ writing morning rhythm. I learned about Jeanette Winterson's page from Mary. Good good good reading.

I've been cleaning. Putting things back into order. Resting. Reading my new books. And watching two little green nubs. For signs of growth and renewal.

January 3 2004 When I was 19 I was in the hospital for a month. A friend showed up one day with some yarn and a book of crochet patterns. I don't remember what happened to that first afghan. I finished one for my mom and one for my aunt. For years I've carried around a bunch of granny squares that were trying to be an afghan. They are purple, green and black. I don't even know how many years have gone by with me dragging this basket full of yarn and granny squares around.

Recently, I heard an interview with the woman who wrote Stitch and Bitch talking about all the Internet stuff for knitting. I sometimes read Willa's knitting blog. And then Renee came home with a hat she had crocheted.

Renee pulled out the squares and we lay them out to see how big an afghan it is now. It's not big. It'll never be very big because I'm almost out of yarn. But it will cover me if I'm taking a nap. Sort of.

So yesterday I started working on it again. I watched Snow Falling on Cedars and crocheted. It was cool.

I had to remember how. The first square looks kinda tight and asymmetrical. But I loosened up. My fingers are a little sore today. But I think it will be good to finish this thing.

The friend who brought the yarn and the book was one of those people who always had bread baking, an art project going, more than one actually. Her plants were always healthy. I have this sudden need to take care of things in my apartment.

Renee took me to Rainbow. I have had Planet Organics on vacation hold while Mom and Ken were here and when Renee looked in my refrigerator the other day she laughed. It was pretty empty. My freezer had a bunch of stuff that I'm sort of worried about because of the power outage. I never opened the refrigerator but it was out for twenty four hours. I think that it's all OK. We'll see.

My favorites are the ones in bold. I found it at Ms Lauren's. Look what Tonio got. I am laughing and laughing.

I worked on the afghan while I listened to Wait Wait and This American Life. Usually I blog while I listen and neither listen well nor read well. Then I put on old Tim Hardin and cleaned the kitchen a bit. And then I sat down to catch up on blogs.

I haven't been able to read much for the last few weeks. I tried to check in with folks but, honestly, my brain was not working. So I've been reading around. Butuki and Tonio posted about friendship in the blog world. It's something I think about a lot. Because I have met such amazing and generous people on line. People who I find in my thoughts, in my dreams. I fret over blog friends as much as I fret over the friends I have who don't blog. And for the last two weeks I would do one thing that was mine every day. I wrote a little post.

And when I came home I looked at the comments, some from people I didn't even know were reading me. And I took great comfort in them. My blog became the touch stone through a really difficult time.

I could just keep doing this. But I need to make dinner. And work on the afghan. And listen to music. And all the while, I have you in my heart.

January 4 2004 I had two center cut pork chops in the freezer. So I made apple cranberry sauce. I don't usually add sweetener to my apple sauce but with the cranberries I had to add some honey. The honey had an orange blossom flavor to it. Extra flavor. And I made some mashed Yukon Golds, sauteed some brown mushrooms and leeks. Poured some wine. Put on some music.

I'm kickin it on the afghan. I noticed a date on one of the things (I'm sure there is a name for these.) of yarn. 1992.

Renee and Kathleen came over for the burger/book combo. I wanted to get a copy of Poets and Writers because Kristina said there was an article about agents. It's a good article. It articulates a lot of my fears about agents. Find true love. Find an agent. They seem equal to me. Although. I will admit to being a bit melodramatic about it all. But really. Love me. Love my book. Find me a publishing house that will pay me enough money so that I can pay off my student loans and credit card debt but not make me feel like I've sold out to Capitalism.

I've been dreading this day. Before the holidays and M & K visiting and the graduation I will admit that I was feeling like I was giving up. I just wasn't getting stuff done. Maybe it was because I knew all this stuff was coming up. But I just wasn't doing it.

And today is the day when all the distraction is done. I need a job. I need an agent. There are things to do. Steps to take. I need to GET IT DONE.

So. I slept till 9:30. Talked on the phone till 1:30. I haven't even made my (cough) morning (cough) post. I dunno.

I need to stay calm and still push. But I feel like I'm chasing my own tail. Dan pointed me to this post about this article on knitting. When I'm working on the afghan I notice how tight I am. How goal oriented. And I take a breath and relax. It is like a meditation. I know Ms Lauren will understand this. And I may switch from crochet to knitting if I get this thing done.

January 6 2004 I made dinner with all the same ingredients except potatoes. I chopped up the second pork chop, the leeks and the mushrooms and put them on top of whole wheat mushroom pasta. I ate a bit of the apple cranberry sauce on the side. Sometimes I wish I had a digital camera. It was a very nice looking bowl of food.

I watched Dinner Rush on IFC and worked on the afghan. It was a surprising movie. I kept thinking I wasn't going to like it but I did.

Kristina said something about creating a study schedule. In other words, when you don't have a job and you want to write, making a schedule for reading and writing. I've had this morning writing ritual for a while but since school ended I haven't been doing any writing, other than the blog. I think I could formalize things more.

And when you are looking for a job, looking for a job is your job. So I think it might be cool to assign time to it all. Because days like yesterday feel kinda out of control. It was a great day. I talked to friends. Ate good food. Read. Saw a good movie. Crocheted. If I had a gazzillion dollars in the bank it would have been a fine day.

January 8 2004 I really really really want to write a post about how great something is. But I just don't have that post today.

On Monday morning my aunt called to tell me that my dad is dying. It wasn't unexpected. He's 77. He has a list of physical problems. I knew it was coming.

My parents were divorced when I was three months old and I didn't really know him very well. I keep telling myself that I can't lose what I never had. But the loss I've always felt about my dad is kicked up right now. I find myself feeling things I thought I had put to rest long ago. All of which seems normal.

I might not post for a while. Or I might post in an hour. Writing has been the way I process but this is just hard. I'm OK. I'm just very sad.

There's a line in a Ricki Lee Jones song: "There are wounds that stir up the force of gravity."

It would be a while before I realized that "me" is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me, where will I be from. -Joan Didion.

January 13 2004 Years ago I saw a movie about Sister Teresa and a movie about Georgia O' Keefe. I remember thinking about their hands for weeks afterward. One of them had hands that touched so many people. The other hands that touched mostly brushes and canvas. One lived in service to other people and the other lived in service to her individual artistic vision. At the time I wondered if one was a more righteous life.

Dad died on Friday morning. I got the call at 3:30 AM. I couldn't go back to sleep. Fly On My Sweet Angel was running through my head.

I'm running some funky inner tape loops. Psychological stuff that I thought was handled long ago. I don't seem to be able to concentrate. All I can do is work on the afghan, which I have found enormously comforting and it's pretty much done. I'm doing the border. I think there's something kind of interesting about how this thing sat around for ten years and then got finished during this week of loss and mourning.

The hardest part is that I am struggling with my feelings. I keep trying to find a way to understand them. Why have I always had so much feeling for someone who didn't really extend himself to me? And yet, I always have. The predominant feeling has always being longing. Followed by attempts to compartmentalize and have perspective and see things for what they are and have perspective and have perspective and have perspective.

So I'm sad. And I'm having a hard time with motivation. I keep thinking my energy is back and then I crash. I can't sleep at night and can't wake up in the day. I feel like I have nothing to say and then someone calls and I talk for twenty minutes with barely a breath.

I don't really think that there is one kind of righteous life. And yet, I have tried to lead one. I think there were good things about having the father that I had. I think life is complex and full of subtlety. I think a lot of things. But I feel more.

January 14 2004 When I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen I lost four family members, one a year. I remember a feeling of the ground moving under my feet. Falling away. And the hardest part for me, at that time, was being aware that some people were having the best day of their life on the day I was crying the hardest. At that age it just seemed like the world should stop to notice the loss.

Persephony was dragged into hell the first time but she went back. And you don't hear much about that. Maybe it was a good thing to be able to move from the light to the dark with impunity. Or maybe she had to much light when she was in the dark and too much dark when she was in the light.

Yesterday I needed to write a few notes. Notes to cousins and friends. E-mail and snail mail. It all seemed to take forever. My mind was so fragmented. Is so fragmented. But I have to do these things. And the dishes. And make the bed. And take a shower. And have some dinner. And it all seems to take so long.

I do laugh. I feel peace. I'm not suffering every minute. I just find that tears are always there, ready to fall. And I find that part of me is not available. Even to myself.

I type a sentence. I stare at it. I drink some tea. All the while wondering. Is it enough? What does it mean?

January 16 2004 Renee took me the Bowl. I haven't shopped there since the strike failed but I wanted Renee to see the massive produce department. She's become quite the foody since going to college.

Last night Karen called. After we talked I realized that it was the first time I'd talked about things without crying. It may have been because I was just so happy to be talking to Karen. Or because I'd had such a nice day with Renee. There's no doubt that I am rich with people to help me get through this.

Or it may just be that time is doing what it does. This section of the story falls into a narrative line on a page a few chapters ago. It isn't that I'm not still sad. But it is less shrill.

Right before I got sick I'd begun a self care push. I fooled around with eating more protein. Carbs sometimes give me stomach aches. So I was playing around with eating protein in the morning and no carbs till later in the day. I'd also begun doing some exercise. In fact, when I first got sick, I thought I'd pulled some muscles. And then I was sick. And then Mom & Ken came. And then...

So today I'm feeling calm enough to refocus myself. I had eggs and sausage for breakfast. There's a yoga class starting in SF that I want to sign up for.

January 18 2004 The thing is I did wake up yesterday. But I just didn't jump out of bed. And I did eat breakfast and listen to the radio and eventually I went back into the bedroom and made the bed.

And then I unmade the bed and got back into it with a pile of old magazines. I did, eventually, get up and take a shower and I did have clothes laid out on the bed. But when I looked at them I didn't want to wear them. So I put my pajamas back on and kept reading.

So, at one o'clock in the morning, when my neighbor came home and shut his door loud enough to wake me up, I couldn't go back to sleep. And I read some more. I read about a lot of things. I read about a new book on Primo Levy and a new book on Diane Arbus and I was thinking about Spaulding Gray and wondering if he's OK. And the room began to fill up with ghosts.

I don't know if everyone has a distinct internal parental voice. But I do. And yesterday it was loudly silent. Watching while I drifted and mused.

January 19 2004 I keep thinking about how I felt when I first began to write on line. I wasn't at all sure what I was going to do. I just wrote something. It became my ritual. I woke up thinking about what I was going to write. And I didn't have comments, or perma links, or a blog roll. But I hit a groove. I just wrote something. Pretty much every day. If I had no inspiration I looked for it on other blogs.

I'm having a hard time. And it's not just about not having a blog. Or an on-line journal. It's about being someone who wakes up thinking about writing. There is a part of me that just thinks this is understandable. I keep telling myself not to trip. Lot's of stuff piled on. Brain is slow. Understandable.

I was going to write this morning. And then I was in this slow place. Slow to wake. Slow to eat. Slow to get in the shower. Slow to have a clear thought. Slow to have any thought. Just mooky and slow.

Then the buzzer rang and it was Cynthia. It doesn't happen very often. Someone just stopping by. I like it. We talked and I made some blueberry muffins and coffee.

Planet Organics delivered my weekly supply. As much as I love them it is some times weird. I end up with too much of something. Even if I modify my order. So I had things I needed to use, or lose. Like two delicata squash, some mushrooms, three heads of garlic. I got red and golden beets with todays order. I just threw it all in the oven. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it.

I love roasted garlic. I love the smell. I love the nutty flavor it adds. But I don't totally love sitting at my table squeezing it out of the skin. It's so sticky. I have my little technique of pulling of as much skin and as many larger outer cloves as I can. Then I cut the bottom off the inside bunch and squeeze. And then I squeeze the bigger ones. I don't love doing it but I love having a little stash of it around. And now I do.

It was a good day for it. Grey and cold. The apartment filled with roasting smells.

I sauteed some shallot and the mushrooms and tossed in the squash. Added some chicken stock and roasted garlic. Blended the whole mess. I thought it was going to be ugly. But it wasn't really. It was chestnut brown. And very good.

I don't really use recipes, except when I bake. I pulled out this favorite muffin book the other day. And now I'm a muffin baking girl.

And I still get too many apples and pears. So I make apple pear sauce every Monday. Which is just cutting up which ever ones are left from last week, putting them in a pan with a little bit of water. Cook em. Blend em. Or just mash em. It's always a little bit different.

I listened to some NPR for news from Iowa. Ate my soup. Read some blogs. It took me all day. But I am sitting here. I am hitting the keys. I am writing something.

I'm listening to some new music. I didn't want to like Nora Jones. But I was Cheryl's for dinner once and she was playing the disc and I liked it. I really do like it. Yep.

I have a book on crochet stitches that I borrowed from Renee. I'm going to try to learn something new.

One forgets that when he wrote the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu was speaking to a king. Isn't that strange? - Sparrow

January 21 2004 While stumbling around the blog world, I found two posts about Spaulding Gray.

I keep thinking about how abstract the news of Spaulding would be for me if I weren't still thinking about my dad. I was cleaning the back room and found some photos my mom sent to me. Pictures from their wedding day. Pictures of an event that should be treasured. They both look so young. Three years later, I was born. Three months later, they were separated. Their story ended as mine began. Mom married Ken. Dad was married five more times. (That I know of.)

In my better moments I think my father gave me a kind of freedom. In my not so better moments I think he gave me an absence so enormous that it swallows me.

Oh, you know. We pay our money and we take our chance. It is what is. It only means what we want it to mean.

Kurt wrote some thoughts about suicide the other day. And then, because he such a thoughtful man, he wrote some more. Tonio, another thoughtful man, responded in the comments and wrote more on his own blog. Amazing men. I'm lucky to be able to read them.

They go. They are gone. And we who are still here work to fill the space. People ask me how I am. I say, I'm fine. Because. I am. Or it seems like I should be. And I know I will be. I fill my day up with job searching, muffin baking, crochet practice, cleaning. And now I blog in the evening.

I'm floundering. My confidence is down. I feel the edges of my skin. The limits of my abilities. The absence.

I've been in a number of conversations about the relationships in my father's family. The threads that bind us together seem so frail to me sometimes. An argument. A slight. A feeling of irreconcilable difference and we move apart. But we turn and there it is. That thread. That worn thread. Connecting our story lines.

Last night I was trying to catch up on blog reading and I saw another post by Tonio in which he said such lovely things about me. I'm lucky enough to have read lovely things said about me on blogs. It always makes my heart swell. I remember every time. But reading his acknowledgement of me, just then, felt like healing. Like being seen at a moment when I needed to be seen.

January 21 2004 I thought I had a crochet breakthrough. I was talking to Ari about not being able to read patterns and I found one for a baby hat that I thought I could follow. It took six starts to get going but it seemed like it was taking shape. After an hour I had a hat that would give a Barbie doll a migraine. I kept working with it. It looks like one finger for a glove. I guess I'll try again. After my fingers stop cramping.

Kara sent me a job listing. I spent three hours writing a cover letter. This for a job I'm not even sure I want.

January 22 2004 Today is kind of packed with import. It's Chinese New Year. The Year of the Monkey. Every once in a while I hear firecrackers going off. Sonia said it was good luck to eat noodles. So I did.

Oh. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Just give me a minute to figure that risk and novelty part out.

It's the thirty year anniversary of Row V Wade. I turned on CSPAN this morning and there was the March for Life. I thought I'd watch for a minute or two. I always think it's a good idea to watch things that challenge me. A philosophy that did not extend to the State of the Union. I couldn't bear to listen to that. And as it turned out, I couldn't listen to much of the March for Life. Right when I tuned in they were rewarding young women who had written essays. I was struck by that. I couldn't stop watching them. Wondering about their essays. But then there was a lot of hate filled rhetoric which included bashing Gay marriage. This evening CSPAN is showing the NARAL dinner. Easier to watch.

I woke feeling tired but ready. Lighter. Can't explain it. Then I had a weird conversation with someone and got fussy. It seemed like it should be easy to shake off. But. No. I drifted into a zone. On a day of import the action I came up with was to eat noodles.

There a few commercials that I really do not understand. Like there's one in which we watch a car driving around. And people wave at it. And some fairly nice music is playing. The words in the song are about having a beautiful face. At the end of the commercial we see that there is a young boy in the back seat of the car. Waving.

Is that about trying to get us to believe that the company thinks our children are more beautiful than their cars? And so we should buy their cars because they're so nice?

It's not the worst thing in the world. But I swear, there is so little direct communication. Like, we make really good cars, please buy them.

Renee thinks it's good that commercials confuse me. I guess. Maybe it's my frisky imagination.

Contrary to what many of you might imagine, a career in letters is not without it's drawbacks -- chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write. - Fran Lebowitz

January 26 2004 Oh. Jeez. The last few days have been a drag. I crashed. Manic. Frustrated. Unable to focus.

Sonia reminded me that the deadline for a grant is coming up. I need to write two essays for it. I tried to calm myself down and write. I also did some laundry, baked some banana muffins, changed the sheets on the bed, pretty much anything but write. I managed two and a half pages.

Finally I got in bed with some old issue of The Sun. The November issue was all about writing. There was an interview with Natalie Goldberg (which you can download) and a story about a woman who won a literary award. And then a short story about a guy who goes to be with his mother while she is dying (also a download) which I found disturbing. In part because it's more about the person who is not dying.

It seems like it's been a long time of things being not ... uh ... good. Good isn't the right word. I'm sick of writing about it. I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm sick of feeling it. But. What are ya gonna do?

I really hate it when I don't write. Can't write. Find it hard to read. It's been awhile since I was this shut down. It's been awhile since I've found myself just stuck in off.

So I pushed myself to work on an essay and I could feel the blood flowing back into my brain. A little bit.

Every morning I think about what to write here and for a few days I have just drawn a blank. I thought I might write about hearing Michael talking about his support for Wesley Clark. Ralph Nader last time and now Wesley Clark? Hmmm. We are desperate, aren't we? It's not like I'm immune. I heard some poll that said Kerry could beat Bush and my first thought was - fine, then I'll vote for him. There's no doubt that the need to get Bush out of office is big. But watching the process is disturbing. The first thing a candidate has to be is electable. Not honest, intelligent, informed, engaged ... electable. And electability is a guessing game based on projection and fear.

I keep making lists of the reasons why it's OK that I'm so down. And lists of what I have to accept. And lists of what I need to confront. And lists of the things I can do. And lists of the reasons why it all hurts and feels too hard. And lists of things I can do to feel better.

January 27 2004 Language woke me up. The body too, of course, with it's early morning needs. But I got back in bed thinking that I'd sleep some more and my mind filled up. The language pressing on me. Get to the page. Get to the page.

It may be because I spent most of yesterday writing the essays for the grant. It was a struggle and at one point I felt like I had a word jumble on the page. One that I couldn't sort. But Renee came over. We went out for dinner one last time before she goes back to school. When I came back to the apartment I worked on the writing and I think it's OK. I have a few more things to write and then I can put it in the mail.

I never read the Natalie Goldberg book but I think I've read parts of it, or heard people talk about it. The Sun interview is interesting and downloadable, which I think is so cool and generous. The Sun is always struggling to survive and I think it's amazing that they're making so much of their content available. For free. I'm not sure if it was Natalie who put out this idea of writing morning pages but she talks about it in the interview. She wakes up and writes for a while. By hand. She says it's important to do some writing by hand. I've been trying to ritualize some writing by hand for a while now without success.

Marya used to talk about writing off the dross. I watched her pound away at computer keys and the click on delete. It scared me. The writing comes so hard to me. That's not always true. But it's true often enough. I want to save it all. But I think they're talking about developing some muscle tone with the process of being a writer. And it is my experience that when I am writing every day it comes to me. Wakes me up. Drives me to the task.

It's a relief. Really. And after I get this stuff in the mail I need to find the next thing.

Strangely enough my desk is also clean. Sometimes when I write things get really out of hand. When Mom and Ken were here the apartment got trashy. And I've been working on it in little bits. Slowly. And it's coming together.

I have on this pair of sock. They don't match. their original partners are long gone to sock heaven. My toe is sticking out of one of them. They both have holes. I'm not sure why I keep putting them back in the laundry. It seems like it might be time to let them go.

Remember the plant? It now has three shiny little green leaves. And the mouse. I haven't seen the mouse in long awhile. Either it's gone or it's gotten really good at hiding.

January 28 2004 I did most of the writing for the grant and thought all I had left was going to go fast. But it took me another whole day. I may not be as focused as one oughta be.

When I get too tense I space out with game after game of spider solitaire. I will play the same game over and over until I win. It's terrible for my wrist. But I love the feeling when I figure it out. I was playing a game yesterday that I really didn't think I could win. It was just too tangled. And then I figured it out. I swear. It seemed like a good sign.

The award won't be announced till June so I need to let it go and keep moving. And I don't have a lot of confidence about it. But there was some kind of turn around in the doing. It feels like my head has cleared.

I just got an e-mail about a job. They've already filled the position. I'm not even feeling bad about it.

It's just such a mystery. I'm never sure if my approach to emotional process is good. I just go for the ride. I feel what I feel until I don't feel it. And with difficult emotions - anger, grief, shame - it's hard to relax. The desire for them to go away is big. And one day - they do. Some things are cyclical. They come in wave. I just know that when it does move and I do feel better ... I really feel better.

I've been a terrible blogger lately. Not reading everyone often enough. Not commenting when I do. And my own writing seems tired. Imagine my surprise when I took the what kind of blogger are you quiz (via Rana) and found out I am the verbal virtuose.

January 28 2004 There are so many books out there. It's just overwhelming. Overwhelming because I want to read so many of them. And overwhelming because I have one that I want to toss into the fray.

My awareness of how many books there are has been peaked by reading the pile of magazines. I subscribe to a few and they pile up. I reluctantly stopped subscribing to The New Yorker because that pile was too too much. I still buy an issue now and again. All of these magazines have ads for new books. Or articles by people who have written books. I got a copy of Book because I was interested in an article about Toni Morrison. And I have the last copy of Readerville because Kristina gave it to me. I was looking at them last night and ooooohhhhh shit! There are SO MANY BOOKS!

I just posted about the mouse. I thought the little guy had gone away because I hadn't seen it for a long time. Yesterday I smelled something bad in my kitchen. I couldn't track it down. Today I realized it was coming from the little green house mouse trap. The humane mouse trap. The little green house that they go in and then you take them outside and release them. THE MOUSE WAS IN THERE!!! DEAD!!! I'm a complete failure at humane mouse catching!

January 29 2004 There's something I keep thinking about. I haven't seen the movie Monster. I have heard the uproar over Charleze ~~Tilton~~ Theron. And I don't want to comment about acting I haven't seen. But I can't help but wonder if part of the reason she is getting so much praise is because she was able to pass for average and return to her glory as one of the beautiful.

I want to see the film. And I want to see the documentary about Aileen Wuornos. Aileen's story is complicated. Laden with abuse and cruelty. I don't think that justifies the person she became but I think it's important to understand her life in context.

Charleze Tilton ~~Theron~~ gained thirty pounds for the role. They gave her makeup so that she would look weathered. She wore something in her mouth to make her look more like Aileen and the resemblance is remarkable.

Think about it. Thirty pounds some skin care and braces. What difference might that have made? Not mention parenting, education and a life in which she understood her sexuality as her own and not a means of exchange. Something in me resents the fact that some weight loss, washing off the makeup and taking out the mouth piece brings a woman back to the prize circle.

Cleis is wondering about Kerry and beauty and electablity. I am wondering if we are ever gonna wake up from this airbrushed dream of what we look like. I am wondering if beauty is more valuable than gold. I am wondering if awards are given to people who can betray beauty and then return unscathed.