A Practical Policy

Why Commerce Is Killing the True Spirit of Hip-Hop
   Davey D

Academic Hip-Hop? Yes, Yes Y’all…
   Reyhan Harmanci

Political and Lyrical — The Politics of Hip Hop
   Walter D. Greason

Johnny Gets His Gun Again: Walter Reed Reveals Right’s Bloody Secret

by Steve Young

Author Dalton Trumbo once wrote of a horribly-wounded veteran in his 1939 book “Johnnie Got His Gun.” The story spoke of a WWI infantryman whose bomb-inflicted injury left him a deaf and blind quadruple-amputee who with his face blown off – no eyes, no ears, no mouth – had no seeming manner of communication.
 
He spent years of grueling despair, confined to a bed, where he struggled to develop a body-vibration communication with his nurse.  He was finally able to convey the message expressing a reason to live.  He wished to be taken from town to town, showing himself to the American public in effect, the true cost of war.  That  it is not enough to be willing to die for your country.  That if you choose to enter a war, you must be willing to become a living, thinking, vegetable for your country.

When the military and governmental leaders were told of Johnny’s wish, they turned it down….

John Sinno
Academy Award Nominee, Iraq In Fragments 

I would like to point out that there was no mention of the Iraq War during the Oscar telecast, though it was on the minds of many in the theatre and of millions of viewers. It is wonderful to see the Academy support the protection of the environment. Unfortunately there is more than just one inconvenient truth in this world. Having mention of the Iraq War avoided altogether was a painful reminder for many of us that our country is living in a state of denial. As filmmakers, it is the greatest professional crime we can commit not to speak out with the truth. We owe it to the public. I hope what I have said is taken to heart. It comes from my concern for the cinematic art and its crucial role in the times we’re living in.

“Behind the Curtain”

U.S. lit

Banks

Hudson

“A Trio of Post-9/11 Novels”

Addicted to War: A Review of “War Fix”
by Hueso Taveras

First-hand accounts of historical events – like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis – established comics as a viable art form capable of addressing complicated issues with genuine insight and scholarly merit. In light of this, War Fix (written by David Axe and illustrated by Steve Olexa) comes in as a disappointment.

Lawrence Hill

The Other Hollywood Oscar Ceremony

Laura Veirs

“It is a long-time tradition in the folk tradition, probably in any artistic tradition, to borrow things from people and you feel like you’re connected with your forefathers and foremothers in music and that’s a good feeling for an artist… It’s really sad when people don’t feel that they are part of a tradition. And I think that’s particularly true in America,” she says. “We want to feel innovative and independent, brilliant and original and100 per cent on your own. To a degree I think there’s something about that that’s healthy, that spirit of pioneering still in music and art, and I think that’s why we are still influential around the world. But I don’t think you can make something very good unless you’re coming from being influenced by something, from roots.”

José Saramago

Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Slaughter City, U.S.A.”

By Andy O’Connor

The human toll of the fast-food industry has been a hot topic lately, especially with the success of the book “Fast Food Nation” and its cinematic companion. The UT drama department will do its part to inform people about unsavory fast-food practices by putting on Namoi Wallace’s “Slaughter City” at the B. Iden Payne Theatre March 2-4 and 6-9.

“Slaughter City” deals with the brutality inflicted upon workers in two settings: the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911 and a modern-day meatpacking plant in “Slaughter City, U.S.A.” Laborers Roach (Gina Houston, a St. Edwards University graduate), Maggot (theater and dance senior Molly Evensky) and Brandon (theater and dance junior Philip Olsen) are caught in the middle of the brutal working environment and the hopes for better conditions promised by their union, Local 229. A worker named Cod (theater and dance junior Kim Adams) complicates matters by crossing the picket line – becoming a “scab” – and wanting to join the union.

In contrast to the grim realism of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” – which “Slaughter City” is often compared to – the play incorporates scenes of beautiful snowfalls and Sunday fishing trips, all enslaved behind the walls of the grimy factory. The factory is a bleak place with reinforced iron walls, little lighting and floors stained with blood. As the workers labor and labor, their bodies create an ominous rhythm. There are also many scene changes to emphasize the hectic nature of the plant. Sarah Davidson designed the set, and her interpretations strengthen the grit and magical realism of the play. “Slaughter City” will also intrigue the senses by having a simulated assembly line and a real fire to depict the Shirtwaist Company inferno.

“We sought to create space that could be expanded and contracted and convey a sense of the ongoing labor that sustains this country,” Davidson said.

The play was just as intense to the actors as it will be to the audience.

“From the actor’s point of view, working on Naomi Wallace can be very challenging, because her language is just as poetic as it is rugged and visceral,” Adams said….

Comments by William Drenttel

via Maud Newton

Also see The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

 

Then it was time. Mike lifted his gun, sighted, and fired. Aaron crumpled.   

And then everyone else opened up on the crumpled form of his younger brother. Nothing exploded off Aaron, no blood or gore, no bits of bone and flesh. Instead Aaron was ripped and cut like a rag doll with an infinite capacity to absorb bullets and be shot clean through. It got to be hard work, killing Private Aaron.  

 

One night, a few months after a rocket propelled grenade killed his brother Aaron in southern Iraq, Mike Thompson returned again to the Little League ball field where he and Aaron used to play.   

He scaled the outfield fence and walked through the dark to home plate where he stood in the dirt of the batter’s box, smack in the middle of where he thought they had all failed Aaron – the whole town, the whole country – though no one had forced a gun into Aaron’s hand, not directly. Instead it seemed Aaron had merely been taught, simply been encouraged to be a warrior right there in the middle of town, deep in America – in the shadow of the church and the old school, not far from the supermarket on the first base side, next to the car dealership in foul ground off right field, across the street from a bank, bordering a gas station, and a convenience store behind center field, an auto parts store on the other side, and a car wash and used car lot, across the road from the elderly housing beyond the curving creek behind left field. All these establishments located along the route their school bus had taken each school day, a block from the center of downtown – town surrounding, shaping, enabling the boys, Aaron – the student, ballplayer, young man, soldier, son – Aaron Thompson. That was what happened, as Mike saw it. All the town had raised, molded, recruited Aaron and sent him off with blessings formal and informal to legally fight an illegal, monstrous conflict.  

Did Mike really believe that?  

He saw no reason not to.  

Did he really blame his brother’s death on the town? On baseball?  

Not only. On himself as well. On everything. On everyone. On the media. And the schools. On the weapons manufacturers. The oil men. On the owners and their officials,  representatives, spokespeople, hired hands, hired guns.  

The town and surrounding area. It was its own place, in certain ways special to Mike, and in other ways, he knew, it was a place like many another place. It was America. It was the world. And there were plenty of city blocks not much unlike this small village block, all around the world. This town was an American town like many other American towns and cities. And a town like many other towns in many other countries, even, on every continent, all over the globe. Maybe in Antarctica there were no towns such as this.  

Mike stood in the batter’s box, stared out across the dark field. He was struck by images of the killing of his brother, of all who had killed him.   

Mike imagined a gun in his hands, his very own hands, military issue, automatic, a machine gun. And all the Thompson family came onto the field holding guns. And much of the town. And people from all over the country. And elected officials. And non-elected executives and owners. The bigwigs. The big owners especially pointed their guns at the people in the town.   

Everyone was present, gathered along the foul lines, people from all across America, all gathered in the ball field with their guns and flares and grenades.  

And Private Aaron Thompson stood off in the distance, in shallow center field, in a camouflage uniform.

They shot him again and again but he would not die.  

During breaks in the firing, people wiped sweat, took breaths, looked away, stretched, refocused, glanced at the big owners in the bleachers with the guns pointing down at the people – symbolism, hell, it was reality – and then they all resumed firing as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if their very lives depended on it.   

Aaron was rolled over and flopped around by the force of the impacts. Occasionally he struggled to sit up and any time he did he was blasted down again by bullets and grenade bursts. Once, he nearly got to his feet. Then the priests and preachers fired away, the teachers, supervisors, politicians, mothers and fathers, family and friends, reporters, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, farmers, service workers, schoolchildren, executives, them most of all – bang! bang! bang!   

That was how Aaron died.  

Then, for added theater, some big owners, politicians, corporate executives, and so on, flew over in military planes and dropped bombs on Private Aaron. Uncle Sam leaned out of Air Force One and shouted encouragement through a bullhorn, stamped with a sleek corporate logo. The members of the Supreme Court stood by, nodding sagely. Everyone that mattered was there in official and unofficial capacity both, in all their glory.  

That was how Aaron was killed.  

And the TV cameras zoomed in but not too close and the media crews flooded the field with spotlights but kept the owners offscreen and anyway the images would be edited and otherwise modified until it all came out as a story of noble death, in prime time. They got it on film all right – not that it might ever be shown in public until it had been transformed into the great corporate polemic lie, masquerading as objective reality.

Meanwhile, Mike saw for real, tonight, for real. The story of his time. Life. The bullet game that could only be stopped and not won. The killing of Private Aaron Thompson.  

Mike stood in the batter’s box in one of the darkest parts of the field and he stared at the body of his brother, this vision of the body of his brother, until it moved no more, and then with Aaron dead and motionless, finally, everyone shifted attention to deep center field where stood a group of Iraqis, very many of them.   

It was difficult to see how many Iraqis for sure. No one really knew or much seemed to care. A few of the Iraqis were lined up in military uniform, looking ragged. The rest were civilians.  

It was time. Mike and everyone else opened fire, and the group of Iraqis went down. An incredible barrage. Mike fired steadily, the crumpled image of his brother in one eye, the Iraqis fixed in the other.  

A few people walked up to the foul lines and fired rocket-propelled grenades. Then bombs and missiles struck from invisible planes high overhead, far out of sight, far out of hearing even. Boom! Boom! Boom!   

The Iraqis took it all like Aaron had, like rag dolls torn to shreds, cut down and killed, and killed, and killed again, until they went still at long last, not totally destroyed somehow, their images at least.  

And that was how it was done.  

Afterwards, everyone stacked the weapons in neat piles for use the next time.  

They offered condolences to Aaron’s family for the loss.  

To Mike, that was the reality of Aaron’s killing. And of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and of the economic sanctions and the bombings throughout much of the last decade and a half that have killed, by now, millions, of Iraqis.  

American history. World history. There it was, in the same vein as the slaughtering of the Native Americans, and the Vietnamese, and the many others at home and abroad. What else might be expected of the US, when it currently had military bases and soldiers in one hundred fifty plus nations around the globe and a military budget larger than the military spending of every other nation combined?   

Mike stood in the batter’s box in the dark and remembered a day long ago when his little brother Aaron had been struck twice in consecutive at bats, crumpling to the ground the second time, the twelve year-old pitcher who looked like both the whining commander President George Bush and the exuse-blathering funder and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi walking toward home plate complaining, “He never moved. He didn’t even try to get out of the way.”  

(If only they had not ordered the fighting and fully funded it! These people are the lowest of the low. Our “leaders.”)

Years later, after Aaron had been killed in an ambush and firefight in Iraq, after his parents had been notified, the first image that came to Mike’s mind was not one of Aaron in Iraq but the one of Aaron sprawled in the dirt of the Little League batter’s box.  

And soon came the image of Aaron and Iraqis being gunned down in center field – by whom – that came later.  

Mike stood at home plate. “We might have saved him,” he said aloud. “Saved them all. We might have saved my brother, Aaron Thompson. And everyone.”  

He told it to the night.   

The next thing Mike Thompson knew, a week later, a reporter called up and came by his house – and Mike called the reporter out and he began telling it to the day. 

 

 

 

One day the children went insane. All of them, under age twelve. The youngest refused to wear any clothes. If adults attempted to clothe them, the little ones screamed and thrashed and broke out in hives.

Children aged six to eight refused entirely to speak. Many were brutally spanked for this. Some screamed and cried involuntarily but none spoke.

Children aged nine to eleven reacted in one of two ways – half refused to leave their bedrooms, while the other half ran away. If the runaways were caught and returned, they attempted to escape even if locked up.

Since parents and other adults assault children every day and thousands of children die in this way every year in the U.S. alone, perhaps it was to be expected that the day all the children went insane, adult homicides of children skyrocketed further.

Scientists and other experts worldwide met to discuss this phenomenon of child insanity. Leaders from every nation gathered together. “What has happened to our children?” they asked one another in endless repetition (while also finding a moment to deplore the increased child abuse.)

For months, the children remained naked, silent, unmoved or in flight. Few of the children when they reached age twelve seemed inclined to continue their lives in a typical manner. This influenced some of their elders bit by bit – first those closest in age to themselves, and then a number of the elderly, and finally a smattering of people in between.

Eventually, having arrived at no definitive answers let alone solutions, the consulted scientists and experts returned to their pre-crisis work. And the leaders of nations went back to their peoples and proclaimed, “This is how it is now. The children shall remain insane.”

Immediately, all the children gave up their insanity. The runaways came home, the bedroom-bound went out, the silent spoke, the naked got dressed. When any of these youngsters were asked, “Why did you do it? Did you hear voices? Who commanded you to do these things?” children everywhere always gave a single cryptic response, “This is who we are now.”

 

One other unusual day, months later, all the children between ages five and twelve vanished from their homes. They did not show up at the schools and could not be found at any of their usual hangouts.

Mass panic ensued. Searchers went out, and by late in the day the children were discovered in gatherings large and small in abandoned houses and warehouses, in overgrown lots, in secluded forests, fields and caves, and crouched in camouflage amid nearby clumps of trees.

It was learned that the children had collected themselves with the purpose of deciding how to improve their lives. In addition to widespread traditional child abuse, the children had had more than enough of polluted air and polluted water and toxic chemical laden food. They had had enough of unavailable health care, and grotesque TV violence, and stultifying schools. They had had too much. And so they questioned – What do we do about the adults?

Get rid of them. This was the focus of many early suggestions. But soon this notion was put aside when several children pointed out that adults were good for some things. Like washing clothes. And providing food. Also, usually, shelter. Despite all attendant dangers.

Enslave them. This was a widely popular idea, having leapt quickly to the minds of many. Eventually however, adult enslavement as a solution to the world’s many problems was rejected as being impractical, given the current distribution of power. And a few children spoke out against the proposal as being not altogether humane. After much discussion their perspective came to be respected as well.

Punish them. This was perhaps the most heartfelt suggestion put forward for the difficulty of dealing with adults. Dissenting voices were at first few and far between. Then after endless, tearful and often bitter discussion, no consensus or near consensus could be reached, and so the idea of retribution was tabled.

Educate them. As the day stretched on, many of the children began to conclude that adults were simply incorrigible, that there was little or no hope of their ever reaching maturity. Bleak depression engulfed the children. All seemed futile. Soon however determined young voices began to argue that they, the children, must either give education a try or give up altogether. And who wanted to give up? No one. “We need to educate the adults,” a few children declared. “And we need to educate ourselves to be able to educate them better.” Much discussion and tumult followed. The lively day grew late. Children argued and squabbled and philosophized and analyzed. They pouted. Grew excited. Minds wandered. Thoughts sharpened on the issue at hand. They considered and reconsidered, all the children caught in struggle.

Eventually the adults began to discover their presence. Rarely did the children give up their gatherings quietly or easily. Nor did they return home or to the schools completely in the manner the adults wished, if they arrived at all. The children had decided to make their new thoughts and opinions clear to all who would listen, as well as to those who could not help but hear.

A number of groups of children were never found.

The returned children claimed that those who were missing were neither lost nor victims of some secret tragedy but had opted to remain in superbly hidden places of their own choosing. It was said that they had had enough “incarceration” by adults.

Were the children developing a secret government? Or a whole new way of living and thinking? Mounting concern among adults grew widespread, and amid no few shivers they began to mutter among themselves: “All is lost. The young have arisen. The center cannot hold. We are under siege.”

One adult claimed, “The gnomes have gone back into the woods, the faeries are escaped and once again ancient spirits are loosed upon the land,” but mostly he was ignored.

Meanwhile, the returned children continued to dialogue and act anew—the inevitable results of which they hoped adults could not help but come to understand and engage. If not, the children vowed they would again disappear to reopen intense discussion, to review all options, even the most unpleasant ones.

“We will challenge the basis of all things,” the children declared.

 

Months later, the children emptied the schools. Every elementary in the nation shut down for one week while children camped out on lawns and playgrounds or found other more convivial places to congregate. Much fun and good times. Singing, laughing, dancing. Serious talk and planning. Lots of play and purposeful action.

Everywhere the children’s demands were essentially the same: We wish to pursue our own interests. We wish to do what we find important.

The adults seemed baffled. They claimed never to have heard such ideas, certainly not from children. “How can children know what is important?” they asked. “How can children know what is of interest?”

The children reminded the adults of the progressive schools of the past and present in which every student was regarded as “a successful student, where there was no sense of competition, no ranking of students.” The students reminded the adults of the good Deweyite schools, of “education not in the sense of slapping paints on paper, but doing the kind of work and thinking that you were interested in. Schools where interests were encouraged and children were encouraged to pursue their interests working jointly with others or by themselves. Schools with lively atmospheres and the sense that everyone was doing something important.”

“This is what education should be!” the children declared.

“Impossible!” the adults replied. “These are the pipedreams of children!”

“We know it can work because it has! It does!” the children insisted. “We know it!”

There was talk of mobilizing riot police and the National Guard against the children. The captain of one National Guard unit declared, “Even if it means fathers and mothers waging chemical warfare against their own children, even if it means cracking a few unworthy skulls, we stand prepared to do our duty for the sake of our country, so help us God!”

But other security agents were not so eager to use pepper spray, tear gas, and riot batons against their young and so the idea was quietly scrapped, much to the chagrin of the President, and like-minded officials, owners, employers —most all of whom, it must be said, seemed to desire workers and citizens who would simply follow orders rather than exercise minds of their own.

Hawks in Congress called for military air-strikes against the children. Doves thought sanctions, cutting off food to the mouths of the little ones, would be more effective. The national political police—the FBI—attempted to infiltrate the young, but aside from a few exceptionally youthful looking teenage recruits, these agents were quickly identified by their bulk and their inability to fit in and keep up in the games. The children laughed merrily and made no attempt to exclude the spies.

Meanwhile, there proved to be no greater enemies of the young ones than fathers, mothers, and administrators. Teachers mostly sat in their empty classrooms, took roll, and did nothing. But the parents and administrators would not let up, hounding the children day and night, night and day. An occasional teacher, perhaps missing old times, came forth and joined in the harangue.

Finally at the end of a week, the children had had enough of this action. All across the nation, they stormed the schools and turned everything upside down. If it could be moved, it got up-ended—tables, desks, chairs, bookshelves, and—very carefully—TVs, computers, and VCRs. Nothing was dumped, spilled, or destroyed; the items were simply rearranged bottom-side up—a point to be made.

Then the children re-inhabited the schools and carried out plans they had made in previous weeks. They ran the schools their own way. Some of the young ones were surprised that most of the teachers, after a period of time and tutoring, seemed willing to assist in one way or another. But such progress was not to be sustained. The President called upon the military to reinforce the schools’ regular guards. Heavily armed soldiers moved in and patrolled every hall and classroom in every school.

“We will not be intimidated by strong-arm tactics,” the President declared in a televised nationwide address. He further noted, “This country celebrates Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, not Children’s Day, for a reason.” He did not elaborate on what that reason might be.

“Long live the resistance!” the children shouted. Then they were overpowered and restrained in traditional fashion within the school cells.

The media applauded “the appropriate stern treatment of subversive elements” in countless articles and programs and celebrated the President’s “expert handling of this treacherous situation.”

In this manner, order was restored to the schools and to the nation. The children were subdued. For the moment.

 

 

Just off hand, the guy could not exactly remember which fraternity house he was at or who had put him on the list. He was twenty-three years old, beginning his sixth year of college and hoping to graduate soon, but that was nothing new. Neither was his present state, jammed in a corner of the packed dance floor opposite the DJ and a row of speakers, clutching a beer as warm as his breath. It was time to make his move. 

The girl had red hair and stood catty-corner to him against the wall. A freshman, he decided. Classes began tomorrow, and she looked fresh out of her parents’ station wagon. She had the girl-next-door look he found so approachable. Her friends, the crowd she had come with, were shaking it up on the dance floor, while she drank steadily, watching them mostly, occasionally laughing when they looked her way after some crazy sequence of dance pyrotechnics. They were first-years, too.

She had danced some but mostly clung to her beer by the wall where she had been approached a few times and seemed uncomfortable around a few of the fraternity brothers who moved on. She tried holding a conversation with a skinny kid, a freshman not quite as tall as she whose replies were monosyllabic. The guy eyed the boy, wondering how he had gotten on the list to get in—must’ve known someone. The kid had a bad slouch and left the party entirely after he finished his beer. Other than that, she had slow-danced once, awkwardly holding her beer behind some guy’s neck, then blowing him off afterwards. Small town girl, he guessed. They could be tough. Or easy.  She had drunk a lot, slipping away from the wall, returning with a full cup every so often. At one point she had two cups, but somehow he did not see what had happened to the second one.

Now his own cup was empty. He felt dizzy and giddy, as usual, like he could burst out laughing anytime at anything or nothing. The driving dance music fell over him like a distant rain compared to the jam session taking place in his skull. It’s time, he thought, trying to slip into the “natural” mode that usually worked so well. He threaded through the crowd toward her as the DJ began a series of slow songs.

She was out of beer, which seemed to bother her for a moment, but then she said yes, she would dance some. Her hands went lightly against his neck, and her perfume was drop dead sweet. She had that smooth, silky-soft feel of girls that drugged him every time. By the second slow song she pressed sweaty and warm against him. She began looking for her friends. A thousand drunken soldiers seemed to march out of step in his skull. He needed to make his move.

Yes, she said, but her eyes told him no, and she was scared. Girls were often scared. It seemed natural enough to him now; even the eager ones, you could see how they bluffed themselves, trying to block it out, that fear.

She had brought a jacket. They looked and found it (blue denim ordinary as he had guessed) in a closet that they got hollered at for opening. She was lucky. He told her never to bring her jacket to a fraternity house again. She nodded. Could she get a beer before they left? He told her no and explained the open container law.

They left the campus district and walked past blocks of apartment buildings. The street lights at intersections dazzled his eyes and he had to go slow, taking her by the arm. She stopped him once and said she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. He would walk her, he assured. In a few minutes, she stopped him again.

I feel sick, she told him.

You don’t have to come, he said.

Lost and chilled now, away from the crowd and heat of the fraternity, Heather did not know what she wanted. It seemed they had come a long way. The darkened windows of brick houses lining the street frightened her when they left the lighted area of town. You don’t have to come, he said, but he meant something else, she thought. He held her arm almost like her father would, a bit stiffly. His apartment was just a little ways ahead, he insisted.

She had been intimidated by the throng of beautiful girls, women, she supposed. There were so many, and they were so attractive, dressed to kill, while the boys, men, maybe, were somewhat less made up. She did not like guys who looked too primped. She had almost been able to smell the sex that would happen later that night. She could see it in the eyes of the guys who came on to her, but this one had seemed different, even though he had come up to her during a slow song. At least he had not constantly offered to get her more beer. Heather liked that he was older and thought he probably knew she was a freshman, a first year student, they called it now. She couldn’t believe herself, classes hadn’t even started yet, and here she was practically wasted the last night of orientation. When they had danced he held her close but not tight, and he smelled like soap, which was nice somehow. He had not seemed as loud or so sure of himself like the fraternity brothers who had approached her earlier. He had just felt so good against her.

She went with him, shivering, despite her jacket.

An apartment building loomed up out of the dark, and he unlocked the main door, escorting her through. The lobby was well lit, and now that she finally got a good look at him, she thought he seemed tired. In the elevator he mostly stared at the numbers of the floors lighting up in ascending order and would not quite meet her eyes. In the hall, he stumbled once on the carpet, and she began trying to come up with an excuse to leave. At his door she almost said flat out, No, but then went in. He turned on a dim lamp on an end table next to the couch. Beyond that, all she could see was the shadow of a walk-in kitchen and the coffee table.

Where are your roommates? she asked.

Out, he said.

She looked around. Do you have any beer?

No, he said. Didn’t you have enough already? Do you want some water?

No, she said. He took her to the couch and unbuttoned her blouse before kissing her. It was something he always did, but then she pushed him away, her voice quick and stumbling. She wanted water now.              

He got her a glassful, and she took a big gulp, then sipped it, hunching her shoulders together, trying to close her blouse a bit. When he leaned forward and brushed her hair back behind an ear, she brought the glass up between them and took another long drink, so he pulled away and went to use the bathroom. She filled the glass a second time before he came back out. The kitchen seemed very clean and neat, she thought, like a stage.

I need to go, too, she said, standing up and moving to the bathroom.

 

When he sat down again, he stared at her glass of water. Something was wrong, he thought, wondering where he had slipped up. She reminded him of the girl who had gotten a nosebleed when he kissed her. Now he picked up her denim jacket, crumpled it and threw it back down.

 

The first thing Heather did in the bathroom was refasten her bra, then her blouse.  The light in the tiny room was blinding, it fed her headache. Back home, if you ever got drunk you just sat around the bonfire with your girlfriends and told the boys to go to hell. But at the fraternity there had not even been a place to sit, much less reliable friends to sit with. And there were so many boys, men, she guessed, so close. (Sometime during orientation, it had been suggested that they, the entering class, should consider themselves women and men now. Of course she had not considered herself a girl, but it felt awkward calling her girlfriends, women. And were these boys truly now men?) At home she had gone out with a few boys, but these college fraternity guys were not the familiar handful she thought she could deal with, coming onto her and ignoring her in waves (she suspected she had a sort of naive look that was as attractive to some as it was a turn-off to others). And the fraternity brothers were so sure of themselves as hosts.

Most of the other girls, women, maybe, seemed more savvy than her. They moved along the edges of the crowd and on the dance floor as if they knew secrets to some game she was not sure she knew was even being played, let alone knew all the rules and opportunities or how to keep score. She could dance all right but had not wanted to try it in the sudden sea of fashion, amid the alluring looks and layered perfumes, among the good-timing guys and circling sharks. Where had she heard the phrase, meat market? She had tried not to look at it that way pressed against the wall with her beer.

When—she didn’t even know his name yet—when he came over, he had seemed a little quieter, older, and not put-on.

Dance? he asked, shrugging his shoulders as if it did not appeal to him all that much either. By the second slow song, they were tight. Her whole body, drunk and heavy like her eyes sagged and hummed against him. He held her in a way that didn’t really press. He felt so warm and good and even smelled familiar, like someone she could trust. She looked around, but her friends, or at least, the people she had known a few days and come out with, had disappeared.

Heather used the toilet, then closed the lid and sat down on top of it. She waited and hoped he would fall asleep. The thought of him going at her blouse again made her nauseous. Maybe he would have been okay, she thought, if they both weren’t so out of it. She didn’t know. She didn’t know him, and she wished she were back in her lousy little dorm room now so hard it hurt.

 

She was taking forever in the bathroom, it seemed to the guy, and he had nearly dozed off, which was probably what she was trying for, he guessed. Eventually, she came out sneaking furtive glances at him. She stayed so close to the wall he thought at any moment she might slip back into the bathroom. Her blouse was buttoned, her face blank. That first-year face. She was scared. Sometimes it was so obvious it was obnoxious.

 

Heather moved slowly toward the hallway door. She wondered what he was thinking. She did not exactly want to have to race him.

Did you fall in? he asked.

I want to go, she said. I’m sorry.

He held her with his gaze. You don’t have to stay, he said.

That line again, that guilt trick, she thought, that insinuation that ran in so many directions. She said, You don’t have to take me back.

You’re lost, he reminded her.

I’ll be okay, Heather said and sneaked a glance at the door. She would leave without her jacket if she had to—if, she worried now, she could.

 

He rubbed his eyes. He picked up her glass of water and drank half of it. She really did have pretty hair, a pretty face, he thought, and it occurred to him that not many girls had seemed all that attractive recently, though probably it had just been his mood. When the girl glanced at her denim jacket, again, on the couch beside him, he set down her water and picked up the jacket. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to take her picture, escort her to a movie. He wanted to be seen with her, give her things he could not afford.

He wanted to take her to bed.

He looked at her jacket lying rumpled on his lap. KLHS Forever was marked on one of the sleeves. He couldn’t get over how obnoxious this seemed. It was obnoxious to come to college and still be such a girl.

 Goddamn, he thought. Let’s go, he said. She was like so many of them, more and more now—afraid to give in to what she really wanted. He gave her the jacket. She went immediately into the hall.

I’m sorry, she told him in the elevator.

He said nothing and watched the numbers of each floor light up in descending order not caring if his silence intimidated her. Enjoying it now, if anything.

 

In the street, Heather watched the guy stare at the sidewalk, and she followed blindly. The air felt cool and fresh against her face as it had when she left the fraternity, when they had walked down a street lined with rows of apartment buildings. Scents of perfume even stronger than the smell of beer, she remembered now, had spilled out the doorways and windows and poured down from balconies. Much of it still hung in the air. A gust of perfume thick and spicy had caught in her throat and almost made her cough as a group of girls, women, she corrected herself again, had walked by. They had been made up like Christmas presents, their hair, like bows, curled and tumbling loose and their tight skirts as sleek and smooth as wrapping paper, ready to be opened. Now she imagined their dresses and blouses being ripped off by the boys, men, she meant.  That was what you did with packages, wasn’t it, tear them open? She shuddered and tightened her jacket and concentrated on getting back.

 

The night was still a blur to the guy. He moved slowly, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, as the girl whose name he did not know walked an arm-length apart from him. He thought she relaxed when she finally recognized the campus district and saw a few students laughing and moving back to the dorms.

I can make it from here, she told him.

He watched the students going by in the distance and moving out of sight. He walked her to an intersection and stopped by a bench beneath a streetlight.

The area seemed deserted now and spookily lit, she thought, but she was almost back.

Happy now? he said, evenly, not loud.

Okay, she said, and then the guy pushed her and she tripped and pitched hard into a pole supporting a streetlight, the top of her head ramming steel.

 

After being released from the health clinic, Heather spent a few weeks at home, and when she returned to college, with special arrangements allowed by the university, she decided to take just a couple classes, one she had originally scheduled and a new one, a women’s studies class. For this she wrote an extra paper, a non-fiction narrative, to make up for the time she had missed. She hoped she did not mistake too many crucial details or overlook others. She titled the narrative “Orientation.” She turned it in during finals. That was all. Heather was glad to complete her first semester of college, and she looked forward to the next year.

 

 

“Uh-oh, the second-graders have had enough,” my good friend Marci said one day during our fourth grade history class. I followed Marci’s gaze out the window where a jumble of children were spilling through the side door onto the east lawn. Laughing, clapping, chattering, some wandering aimless smiling holding their arms up to the sunshine, some linking hands and singing songs. Several children hoisted picket signs, too far away to read.

Our entire history class went over to the windows. The teacher ordered us back to our seats and threatened us with tired old penalties to no effect.

Marci and I had been staring mindless at a worksheet on which we were supposed to record the dates of European “explorers” of North and South America for the third time in as many years. The first thing Marci and I did was cross out the word “explorers” and replace it with “invaders.” Then we doodled.

On the bus the past few weeks this fall, we had heard rumors about the blowout. The second-graders were really outraged. It was a small elementary school and usually each grade was split up into two classrooms but because of budget cuts and space limitations, this year all the second-graders had been jammed into a single classroom – all thirty-five of them. Well, no longer. Some put down blankets on the lawn which they sprawled upon. Others gathered in small groups and talked. Still others played and raced around.

Soon the second grade teacher, Mrs. Fowler arrived on the scene. She was mostly easy going but would crack the whip when things got out of hand. Apparently there was no stopping what the second graders had decided to do today. Mrs. Fowler lived on a farm with apple trees and a cider press and she took us there one day when the apples were being pressed. The way I remember it, onto this big wooden press they threw all the apples plus some leaves and little sticks that got caught up, and you had to figure worms and all, and then squash! it all got mashed in the press and out came this really dark juice, and we drank it, delicious, but you had to wonder wasn’t it a little gross? With the worms and all, I mean. It was the best tasting though. I had seconds.

Next on the scene was the Principal. We didn’t much care for him. The way I figured it, things were basically in control until he arrived. Now a mess was to be expected. Well, there is opportunity in confusion and sometimes you don’t even have to create the uproar yourself – you’re simply handed gifts. “Show time, Marse,” I said and tugged on her ponytail because sometimes you have to make Marci mad to get her to do anything, you have to get her blood flowing, the juices and stuff, and when you get her mad she doesn’t really think too clearly, or maybe the opposite, or maybe she thinks with her blood and bones for a change, and you can make her feel guilty about not being a true-good pal and all, and that’s basically what gets Marci in gear. Blame it on her parents, I say. I figured it was my job to give Marci a life, even if it meant being somewhat manipulative. I mean, whatever works when the time is right. Fight fire with fire. I can’t help it if people think I’m a troublemaker.

We went outside. Our teacher didn’t notice since he was at the window along with our fellow fourth-graders gawking at the astounding sight of the second-graders occupying the lawn.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a brother or sister in second grade?” I said to Marci.

“But we don’t,” Marci replied with that sensible part of herself that can really get on your nerves.

I looked at her.

“Well, we don’t.”

“We can adopt,” I said. But the more I thought about it, the more I respected Marci’s astute insight. The Overlord, I mean, Principal, and also Mrs. Fowler would know right away that Marci and I (especially yours truly) were not there to defend any particular blood sibling. So I had to think. We walked outside and I swung around the flagpole and waved to our history class and to our teacher behind the windows and we traipsed across the lawn toward the commotion. “What about cousins?” The idea came to me in a flash. “I bet we’ve got cousins in the second grade. Maybe cousins we don’t even know about.”

“I doubt it,” Marci said, and she gave me The Look.

The thing about The Look is that you don’t have to see it if you have a mind not to. I walked right up to the closest child holding a protest sign that read – “Whose school? Our school!” 

“You know it,” I said to the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Evie.” She glanced uncertainly at Marci and me. “Are you with us?” she asked.

“All the way and back, Jack. Put it there, Evie.” I held out my hand. The girl got the idea and we shook – she hung in there while I worked her young paw through five quick grips. “My name is Maxine and you can call me Max. Do you know who that makes me, Evie? I’m your cousin.” I winked at Marci, who attempted to pierce me with her eyes. I was having none of it. Evie blinked, and I moved on.

Marci followed. We milled among the children who were milling among each other. Some were sitting on the grass, picking it and throwing it around. Some were holding flowers. I pointed out these latter types to Marci – “Future artists or future dutiful young parents,” I told her. “You can’t quite tell at this early stage.” This was just one of many life lessons I kindly offered Marci on a regular basis, free of charge. I had no intention whatsoever of becoming a stodgy old teacher but did feel obliged to administer great learnings as often as possible to all ears everywhere. Mostly though I simply contented myself with enlightening The Marse.

I kneeled down amid the young flower children and clenched my hand in a fist holding an imaginary microphone close to the mouth of a respectable – smoothly ironed and tucked in – young boy and I inquired in my most polished reporter’s voice, “Tell me, young sir, what you and all these other fine children are protesting outside Clearview Elementary this grand day?”

The boy leaned forward and bit my hand. Fortunately he didn’t break the skin, or leave slobber. I chalked up his barbaric behavior to an infection he must have gotten from the grim spirit that haunts these grounds and I took care to hold the microphone further away from his face.

“Would you like to comment or not?”

“Too crowded,” the boy said. “Students have rights too.”

I nodded professionally and faced the camera that Marci failed to pretend she was holding. I spoke into the microphone to her anyway, explaining the overall situation, the layout of the school and grounds, including the precise location of the spotty playground, the infamous “roadkill cafeteria,” the second grade classroom, and so on. I also commented on the marital and family status of Mrs. Fowler, along with the as-expected poor handling of the overall educational environment by the too perky and in turn too dreary and most of all too predictable Principal – the Overlord, Mr. Waller.

Marci and I walked over to Mrs. Fowler who was patiently standing there as if waiting for a bus, as if she did not quite know when to expect it, as if she was not inclined to get too agitated trying to anticipate its arrival. I felt a surge of empathy, compassion even, and so let the microphone and reporter’s role drop. “Mrs. Fowler, I never thanked you for taking us to your apple cider press even though I think your husband got some worms in there but it was still good. Quite tasty. I know I’ll always remember, and never forget.  So, do you think the second-graders will take over the school by sundown?”

Mrs. Fowler hinted at a smile – you have to watch them more closely when they do that – and she put her hand on my shoulder. “Maxine…” She shook her head reproachfully, possibly because she knew I would appreciate a bit of well-placed admonishment, “aren’t you missing an important class right now?” Everything was important with Mrs. Fowler. An important point. An important test or quiz even. Important instructions, manners, behaviors. Endlessly telling us how important we all were too, as people. I don’t mean to be unkind.

Sure enough Principal Waller came right over when he saw me standing there and he started using the language I detest: “Young lady – ”

Mrs. Fowler watched me boil up red. She intervened – “Mr. Waller, perhaps you remember Maxine. Maxine Smith. I was just telling Maxine how important it is that she be getting back to class right now.”

“Young lady – ”

Ever notice how seldom adults ever really listen to one another, or, even to their own words? I mean, listen.

“I’m here to defend my cousins,” I interrupted the Principal. “I’m here – and Marse is too – ” I looked around for Marci. She had drifted over to the edge of the whole group where she squatted down trying to pass for a second-grader. I could not believe my eyes and made a mental note to get back to Marci with some quick and pointed tutelage. Meanwhile, the Overlord needed to be dealt with. “And we are here to tell you, Mister Principal Waller, that this school is our school too and we have plenty of rights like anyone else. Just ask my cousins here.” I swept my arm behind me, gesturing to all the second-graders.

Principal Waller shook his finger at me. “Back to class, young miss, or into my office.”

“I choose to remain with my cousins,” I told him. “In solidarity. Do you know what that means? My dad told me one day exactly – ”

“I’m talking about a suspension or worse, young miss. I’m warning you.”

“People are led by spirit alone,” I told the Principal. “By force they are plunged into – ”

“Maxine.” Mrs. Fowler again. “Don’t you think it important that we continue this discussion in a more suitable time and place?”

“Now is the important time and this is the place,” I proclaimed, “and my cousins – ”

The Principal grabbed my arm and hoisted me up so my shoulder was half-pulled out of its socket and he turned to drag me toward the school building. Then Mrs. Fowler grabbed my other arm, to help of course, but I was stretched and twisted between them. I looked for Marci among the mass of second-graders who were now staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the example of which I was being made. Meanwhile, my arm. Evie put a hand to her lips, and the picket sign drooped by her side.

“Let go! Mr. Waller! Let go! Mr. Waller! Let go!” Marci. Right beside me now, at last. Screaming, jumping at the Principal, batting at him until finally he released me all at once but not before half-lifting me off the ground as Mrs. Fowler pulled and lost her grip and I fell hard on the grass in front of the school. Splayed.

Marci knelt beside me, placing one hand protectively on my forehead and pointing back up at the Principal with the other. “My parents always taught me to respect people,” she told Mr. Waller angrily. “You need to respect people like my parents do.” Mr. Waller froze in place. It was not lost on anyone at that moment that Marci happened to be the daughter of the Superintendent of the entire school district.

So you see, dear and gentle reader, I choose my friends wisely.

And that’s what friends are for. Maybe they need a bit of educating is all, if not schooling exactly, a little wising up to the warped wicked wrathful ways of the world, but when push comes to shove, they are there for you. I beamed at Marci, Loyal Pal, Good Friend, Superintendent’s Daughter.

Then Marci began to wrinkle, like she was going to cry. I held her hand and got up and put my arms around her and hugged her close. “It’s just school,” I told her. “It’s just this naughty old school all over and over again.” Arm and arm we walked across the lawn toward the flagpole – yes, abandoning my cousins in the breach, I know, and I regretted it – but, at the moment, Marse needed me more.

It would have been nice to sit down in the shade somewhere on the lawn – out of sight of the day’s troubles. Instead I figured we would go inside, get a drink of water and then, I suppose, return to history class where we might blend in unobtrusively with everyone else and just keep to ourselves for awhile. But sight of all sights! Wonder of all wonders! Rousing spectacle of all spectacles! From beyond the flagpole rushing out of school spilled our entire fourth grade history class! Half the class streamed toward Marci and me. The others poured directly toward the Principal.

Now this was History. Something worth studying at long last. Everyone going for the highest grade, full speed, all together.

I stopped there on the spot. Marci did too, blinking at the sight. We smiled and waved to everyone running forth and they waved and kept coming and you could feel everyone’s spirits rise, not just our own class but the whole school, the second graders on the lawn and even those in the rooms who would find out later the whole story and wonder at it all.

The bright sun shone. The blue sky beamed.

“Marci, you and me, we did it!” Victory! Freedom! I could taste it in the air.

“What did we do?”

Okay, so maybe she still had a thing or two to learn.

I kissed her on the cheek. She kissed me back. And we were engulfed by the class.

 

The Street — by Ann Petry

Ann Petry’s 1946 novel, The Street, is a protest novel—muckraking at its best, with race and racial equity at its heart….

The Fountain at the Centre of the World — Robert Newman

This, the third novel by Robert Newman, comedian and activist, is that rarest of things: an explicitly political, indeed openly partisan novel that doesn’t make you cringe.

An adventure and misadventure story set against the background of capitalist globalisation and the struggle against it, The Fountain at the Centre of the World is, above all else, a book, the humanity of whose central characters, rapidly engage the reader. If one of the signs of a good book is that, soon after meeting the characters, you care deeply about what happens to them, then this is a very good book indeed. The challenges faced by Daniel in the search for his father, challenges which he faces on two continents and in three alien cultures, are soon those of the reader. The final chapters assault senses and emotions equally as a reunion, amidst the chaos of the Seattle protests of 1999, appears possible at last.

Newman has refused to reduce his protagonists to cartoon heroes and villains whilst making no pretence at objectivity or detachment. We are not subjected to any attempt to devalue the actions of the characters through exposing their deep psychological flaws, a popular device used by cynical hacks to explain the motivations of revolutionaries. Values are at work here and they are the values of people who believe not just that another world is possible, but that another way achieving it, beyond NGOs, Union bureaucracies and progressive politicians, is possible too. A few negatives though. Sometimes the book appears to have reached the shelves in note form, like the author was pushed for time or was writing a screenplay. And in a book that is so obviously meticulously researched and, therefor convincing, it’s a pity the Mexican Frente Autentico Trabajo is described as “anarcho-syndicalist”. It isn’t. Other than these criticisms (the latter one that only an anarcho-trainspotter could make!), this is a remarkable book….

From the Literary Saloon

Max Barry — social satire

Abuja, Nigeria — literary center

I think the purported effectiveness of much of the literature of the past is overplayed here – though not the potential of liberation literature.

The Ink Is Soiled 

by Nayantara Sahgal

Considering the dangers and challenges we face within our own borders, and the changes we need to bring about in our society, we are fortunate that we have politically conscious novelists and poets among us, for politics, like everything else, is the material of fiction and poetry, as it is the material of all art. We would not have been stirred by some of the tragedies and traumas of the twentieth century but for the plays of Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett, and the art of Picasso, not to mention many other works of European, American and Latin American fiction. The artist is a political animal, more so when the line between public events and private life disappears and vast numbers have to face the terrible consequences of public events in their private lives. Art cannot float in a void. It relates to, and is acutely sensitive to its environment.

Emily Carr

by Judy Stoffman

Book by Ishmael Beah 

by Nahal Toosi

The nightmares won’t stop. In one, fighters chase him with a gun. In another, he watches a person get mutilated. In a third, someone is hacking his neck with a machete. Yet, years after he left the life of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah has found a reason for hope in his vivid nocturnal visions: He never dies.

“It almost makes me feel like, you know, that this whole thing will never really get me,” Beah says, “that I think I have some sort of inner strength that’s able to outlive everything.”

Beah is a thin, wiry 26-year-old of medium height with a smile as bright as the sun. He loves Shakespeare and hip-hop and lives in a Brooklyn apartment filled with classic novels and African art. It’s hard to believe he was once a drugged-up, rifle-toting boy soldier who sliced men’s throats.

In his new memoir, it’s clear Beah is still coming to grips with that past life. “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” tells the tale of the brutal civil war that debilitated Sierra Leone during the 1990s through the eyes of a child not old enough to understand the politics, yet old enough to kill.

Beah’s book, now being promoted by Starbucks, traces what the young Sierra Leonean went through when the civil war first touched his life at age 12, and how he struggled to regain his humanity after years of killing.

When the war finally reached his region, Beah found himself separated from his parents and forced to travel with other young boys, seeking refuge in jungles and villages while trying to outpace rebel fighters who lacked any mercy. On dusty roads, sometimes wearing shoes, sometimes without, the children relied on another to stay alive.

They often could not rely on adults. In the disorient of war, people had lost their trust — even in children.

Eventually, Beah and his friends were cornered into taking up arms and joining in the fighting. Government soldiers handed him an AK-47 and trained him to kill. By that time, Beah had learned that much of his family, including his parents and siblings, had died.

“Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you,” the older soldiers would tell their young trainees.

“I could not put this book down — it was just an incredible story,” said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, which picked Beah’s book as the second in a series to promote. The company’s first book was Mitch Albom’s “For One More Day,” which sold 92,000 copies through the coffee chain, a sum Starbucks hopes Beah’s book can surpass.

Published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, “A Long Way Gone” is also being sold in bookstores and at online outlets such as Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com. Starbucks is selling the book for the cover price of $22, donating $2 a book to a UNICEF fund.

But the book might be a tough sell. Although it includes uplifting moments (such as how American rap songs sometimes saved the children’s lives) much of it is understandably somber.

One of the saddest notes was sounded by Beah’s young friend and traveling companion, Saidu. Saidu didn’t die from a direct war wound. He just didn’t wake up one day.

“Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death,” Saidu had told his friends. “Even though I am still alive I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon, I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.”

Beah was one of the fortunate ones.

After three years of fighting for government-backed forces, he found himself in a rehabilitation center for child soldiers. It was hard to get the drugs out of his system. It was even harder to rid himself of the anger.

At the center, no matter what havoc the children caused, staff members kept repeating, “It’s not your fault!” At the time, Beah hated hearing the mantra, but he has eventually grown to accept it.

Today, he declines to put a number on how many people he killed, saying it might serve to glorify horrendous actions. He says he feels compassion for the rebels he battled in the jungles.

“I realized they were just like us,” he says. “Most of the people who were in there, especially the young ones, had been brainwashed.”

It’s not just nightmares that have lingered in Beah’s life. It’s the little survival instincts, like checking for possible exits in every room, or trying to judge people’s character in an instant.

Good? Bad? Fight? Flight?

“Whenever I travel, like whenever I leave, I still have this fear that I will not come back, or that as soon as I leave a place, the people that I love or the people that I care about there, I will not see them again,” Beah says.

He still feels guilty, but tries to control his emotions. “I think if I take on the idea, fully, of being guilty and guilty and guilty, that will itself handicap me,” he says. As for the guilt that remains, he says: “I think it’s a small price to pay to stay alive. A lot of people did not.”

After leaving the rehabilitation center, Beah lived for a while with his uncle’s family, and was chosen to visit the United Nations for a conference for about children in war.

Later, when the situation in Sierra Leone deteriorated again, friends helped him get out and back to New York. He was 17 at the time. He went on to graduate from Oberlin College, where he studied political science. During those years, he started writing the memoir.

“When I was writing the book it was very difficult,” Beah says. “I was sad all the time. I felt physically exhausted by the sadness. I got to face all the things that I was capable of doing.”

At the same time, “the whole process was … therapeutic because I got to face all of these things. I got a chance to reconcile with certain things.”

Sierra Leone emerged from the 11-year war in 2002. Beah visited the country last year, and was dispirited to see how little had changed. There’s still a great deal to rebuild and tremendous poverty. Beah says the political corruption worries him most, because it’s often a prelude to more conflict.

Through various organizations, Beah promotes the message that child soldiers need help, and that they can regain their humanity, though it won’t be easy.

“The process of recovering from a war, recovering from having lived through a war … it’s not a one-two-three step,” he says. “It’s a process that you have to do for life.”

He’s somewhat awed by the attention brought on by his harrowing memoir. He can barely keep up with his schedule, and had to leave a job as a tour guide at an art museum to prepare for a book tour through Starbucks. He even appeared on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

He sees a novel in his future. Maybe a law degree. Perhaps a home in Sierra Leone.

And probably more nightmares.