10:00 – 11:00 am
Laid awake most of the night. Constantly switching between laying on either side and on my back. Bed is just barely exactly my height so any weird angle results in me touching the cold metal bedframe or bumping my head. But the bed isn’t the problem: I am. Had been in a better mode of sleep during the winter but mostly right back to being up at least several hours before nodding out most nights, which happens often during Spring. Something to do with the change in temperature maybe.
The temperature of our room then becomes strange. It’s kind of naturally comfortable in there, but I am used to sleeping with a white noise machine, and so I like the AC at least to run, but the really nice unit they have in the bedrooms has the feature of staying mostly quiet unless it’s really busting ass on making cold. So I crank it up like that for the noise, even though I’m wearing earplugs also and can barely hear it, except for when it cuts back out to take a break. My brain goes fully wired during that, waiting for it to come back on, which at the coldest setting it usually does in 10-30 seconds. If I haven’t fallen asleep yet, I lay there waiting for it to come back on so I can ignore it again, and if it doesn’t then I often end up annoyed trying to make it come back on again by pressing buttons on the remote control it has, though the controls don’t seem to make obvious sense; too many possible settings. So sometimes it takes a while to figure out how to get it back to full blast again.
Normally I’d use a white noise app on my phone but I’ve never really found a good one to travel with. Tried it the first couple nights here and all it really did was create the illusion in me that it was covering up the noises I make flopping around for those around me. Thankfully, Megan is a pretty heavy sleeper once she falls asleep, so it’s only been a few nights that my noise and cold has interrupted her—at least I think. Part of my problem conking out relates to worrying I’m being annoying and should maybe be more quiet or get up and go someplace else, which I used to do a lot more often. Lately I just try to wait it out. The sun was up today before I finally made it, and slept a couple hours before waking back up and feeling like I’m right back where I started: thinking the repeating thoughts that keep me from sleeping.
I don’t even know exactly what those thoughts were last night. Sometimes it’s something very specific, thinking about something someone said online or irl that I find myself rolling over in my head, seeing it from differently angles, thinking about what I think about it and or feel about it, and maybe whether I should have responded differently than I had. Or sometimes I just lay there thinking back at myself: stop thinking, idiot, go to sleep. I had gotten pretty good at using meditative techniques to override that, like listening to my breathing, or repeating an “I am” mantra, each of which feel like their own internal version of a white noise machine. But lately I find my focus tends to waiver before too long, the way it used to when I would scoff at advice ppl offer for the problem, like counting sheep or focusing in segments on your body and imagining them loosening, relaxing. It takes practice, and usually I’d be too certain it would only make it worse to put it front and center like that. For a while I had finally found a sweet spot and could actually do it, so I know those methods can work, though you had to be able to conceded. And right now brain isn’t interested, I suppose.
Right now I think I’m the only one awake, which I have been the last few days, deciding to go ahead and get up when I find myself back at square one again when it’s already light out. Hopefully this will make it easier to get back on schedule when we go home in a few days, but also really I’m so used to not sleeping right that it doesn’t feel weird to be up after only a couple hours sleep. It’s nice to be up and getting into the day with several hours lead on the day you would have had if you slept normal. Have gotten a lot of writing done that way this week, resulting in a 11,000 word short story that I thought I found an end to yesterday but am planning to go back and look again at after I write down the day so far.
Took shower to wake up. Have gotten back in the habit of sitting down in the shower, which I had been doing frequently from 2020 to 2021, when I was at the height of my depression/anxiety/etc. Since then don’t do it as much but when you have time and space it feels good to just sit there and feel nice instead of just washing efficiently.
Went into kitchen and made espresso. The machine had been left on accidentally overnight so it was already ready to pump when I got in there. I’ve been going a little too hard on the espressos in the morning since I’m used to volume dumping regular coffee, which has resulted in upset stomachs and loose bowels. Took the one shot, realized it was cold from the machine being on too long, poured the last of the latte milk on top of it per Julia’s suggestion as to how not to rip your guts out, though I greatly prefer black. Took a banana and a glass of juice and some yogurt into the second bedroom on Meg and I’s floor and cranked up the AC and getting set up on the bed I guess to write, though if I end up nodding off again that’s fine—would be nice to not be ass tired all day again.
Feels weird to write about my sleep, like I’m complaining, when really I’m so accustomed to the patterns that it just feels like I know myself and understand, though of course I much prefer the more consistent periods.
Just remembered last night at one point getting out of bed to go to the bathroom and feeling really like there was someone with us on our floor. Like when I opened the door to go into the hallway I saw a flash of a human form composed in the rush of light leaking out of the bathroom. It looked exactly like Gian, which hasn’t been the case any of the other times I’ve been aware of sensing a presence in this house, after listening to Giuseppe tell about the structure’s history, like there should be ghosts from all sort of different periods, not just my dead friend. I’ve avoiding putting myself in situations where I would run into a haunting here, because I would prefer not to have to, but feeling Gian there wasn’t scary in the least, like he was just seeing what was up. The image also reflected in the shower once I went into the bathroom, just a flash, which I’ve been seeing a lot of lately, honestly—figures in my periphery that aren’t there when I look up. Mostly I’m aware it’s all in my head, a sense or feeling and not ‘reality,’ but I like to keep an open mind.
Caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the bed from me in this room. Going to try to take an espresso shit and then get back to work on my story.
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Ran into Megan coming out of the other bedroom at the exact same time is me. Pretty much the exact same set up as my coming out and thinking I saw Gian standing there. Megan had clearly just stumbled out of bed, bleary eyed, and we hugged, happy to see each other, then we carried on about our ways doing our morning stuff. Ran into her again when she came up and we went to lay down on the bed in our room and catch up briefly about the night and morning. Told her I have “already got a lot of liveblog,” talking in a half funny voice, and she thought I said “prose” instead of “liveblog” and recoiled, like “Oh my god did you just say prose.” Megan is funny about language like that; hates when people say words that seem like they’re trying to sound fancy or trendy or whatever. We laughed about the difference, and I lightly negged her about her sensitivity in that fashion, as though I’m not a guy who would say “prose” in that situation I think it’s funny to tease and play with the line between the two.
Words are just words, you use them to communicate, and often people know what you mean without you needing to say all the words, but sometimes they think they know and they really don’t, and you don’t either, because there are so many ways to say everything. One corny thing academic-leaning people do is really play up the “nothing is sayable” thing re: their prose, a throwback to Beckett I guess, but that feels outdated and often precious, in the exact way Megan hates and I do too. Like maybe sometime shut up talking about how unsayable it all is and just give it a try. A lot of the time it seems like people don’t actually have anything ‘substantial’ to say, so they dress up bullshit into more than it is, and that is less compelling than just like…actually writing. You are here.
The weird thing about trying liveblogging is there really is so much you could choose to say. It could take a LIVEBLOG-sized book to describe everything that happens in just a few hours, any hour, any day. A good exercise in sequencing and layers and levels of attention and figuring out voice. Take that, Megan, I am thinly and vaguely addressing the ambitious literary aspects of the liveblogging process, which is something Megan often downplays as if there’s something lesser about writing about your life, even though everything you write, no matter what it is, comes from your life.
On that note, time to go work on my other story. Actually, first I’m going to go take a shit again. Can’t believe how much I’m shitting here in Sezze, or at least feeling the urge to shit even if there’s nothing really in me. The espresso here is like a skeleton key. Feel like I understand Italians more.
1:00 pm
Worked on story for an hour, added 2-4 grafs to the end section that felt like it made sense and added levels to what I’d left there last. Still not sure if the story gets to where I want it to but also at the point where I think I’ve exhausted the impulse to keep writing it, so will have to come back further down the road and see what’s up.
I used to be a really big revision-person, like I would say I love nothing more than a big wild draft to spend forever going back into, rewriting over and over until I finally lose the will. The older I get, the more I feel the opposite; like if it doesn’t come out more naturally and near to form then I find it harder and harder to milk the energy. Also I used to write with the goal in mind of eventually having a polished finish product that I can send to try to publish somewhere, but I genuinely have less of that drive than ever. So I have shitloads of drafts of a wide variety of styles of stories on my drive now, most of which I am uncertain who or where it’d fit outside myself. Used to be there were so many magazines and places to publish and now it all feels limited and competitive in a different way than it always was, and like I don’t even know why I’d want to, since it feels harder and harder to find venues that aren’t overrun with corporate linkfest mindset. It bothers me more in an existential way, as a reflection of the state of culture, than it does as a limitation of personal opps. Make shit, move on.
Took 2-3 more attempts at shitting, I swear to God this coffee makes my body go berserk, tho it’s probably just as much the disruption of travel and of eating lots of rich food here.
Stopped in again in the bedroom and chatted with Megan about the fun of blogging, which ended with Megan pronouncing herself “Gordon Lips” and launching us into a shared singing of “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” where we took turn switching out the lyrics to be about blogging. Now I can’t get the “na / na na na na / na na na na / na na na / na na na / na na na na” part out of my head. Feels better than “If you like Pina Colada,” which has been in my head for at least 2 weeks, in an unwelcome but also hard to disrupt way.
In general, however, my normal “spewing nonsequiturs constantly as a form of relief / oblique communication has been way less while here in Sezze. I really feel at ease here in a way I rarely do even on vacation—probably a mixture of being around chill friends who understand having lots of bizarre peccadillos, and of truly feeling less insane being outside America. We’ve all been bitching about America a lot here, comparing the differences, which are aplenty: fully paid healthcare system, really high quality food for like 1/3rd of what it costs at home, and more importantly: private ownership of guns being heavily restricted, requiring permits, training, and other should-be obvious limitations that result in most people not being armed. At home, I often feel paranoid to the point of stress walking down the street or even in the grocery, expecting at any second for someone to pull up and start shooting, which I know is both a PTSD-linked reaction to Molly’s death, but is also very clearly an ambient state in which we all live in NRA’s America.
More realistically, guns or not, people in America are so much more high tension seeming, full of anger on the road; drivers not slowing down for pedestrians and leaving it to you to get out of their way, even speeding up when they see you; a general air of possible provocation and retaliation at all times. Here the locals seem to be able to tell I don’t belong here, but all they do is look at you like you have a funny shirt on. And I’ve been shocked at how friendly and unassuming people are when they realize you don’t speak the language; like they actually seem happy to help, like you are a guest in their world and they would like you to enjoy that. Perish the thought.
It's quiet in the villa. Can hear motorcyles revving up in the distance, a slow breeze. There’s a school and a church nearby so occasionally you’ll hear a group of children singing or playing, or you’ll hear bells at certain times of day. Otherwise, it’s peaceful, birds chirping, a kind of quiet background hum. Makes my addiction to white noise feel like a symptom, not a solution. But we live where we live.
Going to leave my writing room now and see what’s poppin with the others, maybe go for a run if there is time before whatever else.
2:30 pm
Warmer sunnier day than most of the days we’ve been here. Felt sluggish running, mostly due to not sleeping, but also due to tying on a few extremely heavy alcoholic apertifs after the meal last night. It’s interesting being here with 3 people who are all in recovery after intense addictions, and strong in their understanding of their need to abstain from life destructing habits. I don’t drink at all as much as I used to but I have mostly been able to control myself when it comes to recurrence; it’s just that mostly when I did drink, I drank to blackout. Julia explained the difference between alcoholics and problem drinkers, and it seemed clear that I am the latter. Still, it was nice when I’d already had a few and Julia remembered me mentioning that if I went too hard I wouldn’t want to go to see Thomas Aquinas’s grave today and asked if I really wanted another one at the expense of that, when I was about to pour another, right at the upper limit of descending past some kind of point of no return.
I feel like this liveblog is more wordy and serious than the other time I tried it; more like a journal, though also reflective in real time. Megan has been expressing her concern that she’s not as funny or entertaining as she once was in her 10-years-later Liveblog, and I think I understand the way she feels. You can’t keep being a certain kind of freak for your whole life or you’ll probably die. You have to learn to be the kind of freak you can live with. Seems like Gian had begun working to figure that out too when he died, and we all acknowledged that last night when we agreed it could have been of us who tempted fate getting wasted and rolling the dice in a wide variety of ways. Sezze feels sort of wrong without Gian, but it also would feel wrong to abandon his vision and the people he brought together through that because he veered too far off of the course. A lot of the last 3 years have been about learning how to want to live after things that make you want to die happen; big things, many in a row. I’m bad at giving myself freedom to feel my feelings, always wanting to make progress and proceed as if my health is not at stake, when it very clearly is. Not everyone will tell you. Some people like to watch you fail, so they feel better than they haven’t yet. Part of me is glad they are able to maintain a distance as such, for their safety, but another part of me wishes they understood at least enough that they could shut the fuck up about other people’s problems, or how other people choose to live. America was supposed to be all about that freedom, and now it feels like we’ve crossed a line and we are headed in the opposite direction. The good news is: no one knows what’s really going to happen. It can change in an instant, and it will.
Funny small interactions with locals out on my run; mostly more of the same, people seeing me coming, sometimes staring, other times nothing. I mostly keep my head down and don’t make eye contact, the way I’ve learned to do in Baltimore, as more northern people don’t have the same eye contact and nod demeanor as Atlanta. Passing an older gentleman on the sidewalk while jogging uphill, though, we made a little eye contact, and I nodded at him, and heard him say, I’m pretty sure: “Howdy.” Felt kind of sweet. Can you imagine someone in America seeing an obvious Italian goomba jogging in Italian looking running clothes and going out of their way to say, “Ciao”?
Felt bored with my running path a little, too much beauty already becoming normal. I love the way an area you visit changes after exploring all the little paths a town can have, like opening up a map in a video game by exploring the clouded portions. The streets are narrow here and feels like any corner could bring a car, so I am very careful, requiring a different sort of concentration than ‘put on music and exert’ style on familiar ground. Feeling the air, the lay of the land, seeing how places connect in different ways. Also felt the pressure of the day passing by quickly, trying to just enjoy the present moment.
Got back and found Megan in the shower and asked if I could come in, though I was already all wet and sloppy from my run. Was nice to open the window in there (it’s a big shower) and feel the cool air from outside. Had a funny convo measuring Megan’s hemorrhoid and trying to explain its currently dwindling size to her, which she interpreted as a “anal clit,” and then we had a discussion about clit sizes. Finished rinsing off and let her finish her shower with some privacy. Now sitting back in the second bedroom up here in expectation of leaving soon to go see Aquinas grave.
3:15 pm
Waiting for ppl to be ready to leave. Megan is wearing a sexy purple dress and blogging. I had wrapped up my stuff to be ready to go but seems like everyone is still doing stuff. Nice mixture of personal time and group time, everyone is good at respecting boundaries and doing right. Dipped my toe into the ARC of Molly ms Chris sent me a few days ago; felt weird to pop it open, as I haven’t looked at it in a while. More to say but now that I am typing people are texting they are ready to go.
Thought of two things I’d miss about America if I left: BBQ and Mexican food. But you can probably figure it out here.
3:30 – 4 pm
We all piled into Catherine’s car again to ride 20m to the church. As we have at various times this trip, shared memories of Gian, in particular how we heard he had died, and what it felt like in the aftermath of that; how strange people can be about death and discussing death with others; how much so many people just want to get away, as if dying is contagious. What makes it contagious is pushing people away at the edge of the raft, spreading dread, repressing fear.
Part of the hardship of mourning is feeling alone in it, and feeling like there’s nothing you can do after the fact. This trip has been a great remembrance of the vitality available in finding people who understand you, or who want to understand you, to give you space to be yourself. Of all of Gian’s gifts, that is the one that continues giving, and carries on. I feel grateful to have known him, and to have had my life changed by being a part of something larger, written in people, explored through people.
I could say a lot more but I’ll give it a rest. My liveblog is getting unruly with the words. Thinking of a dog kicking its backlegs to spread dirt and grass over its shit, which never works to actually cover the shit. It just gives the dog a reason to move on.
4:00 to 6:00 pm
Just got back from the Aquinas spot. Good visit, but not sleeping has caught up with me, and I feel a little more run down than I would like. Not sure I have much to say about the visit anyway; hard to tell what I really think when it comes to visiting old churches, which feel like a cross between a community center and a museum and a theme park. An old thick part of me immediately starts imagining repression and the fear of nothingness religion seemed designed to have quelled for control; another part of me wants to be open to imagining something sacred behind it, like there must be a reason it has carried on so long, been so much to so many people. Really I just try to let my logic fade and experience what’s right in front of me, though I can’t say standing in front of the confession booths made me feel anything but a sense of delay of sense of superstition, imagining centuries of people coming to a place to be absolved.
Couldn’t help myself from asking where the medieval torture device museum was.
Couldn’t help myself from thinking ‘Costco-Disney something-something’ about the strange coloring of the display idols. Not that they aren’t beautiful and amazing relics of their time, but interesting to think about production, and compared what the mass culture of religion produced then and what corporate culture (its own religion) would create now. In a way it makes them the ugliest things in the world. But that’s my fury talking, mostly—partly deserved, and partly pain.
What a fool I am, I kept remembering. In that way, the very basic structure of the room and the simplicity of air and silence it contains is a relief from the abject ambient horrors of the world. Which, of course, would make it even more horrific if what was behind it was actually evil, a big trap. Its being ancient doesn’t stop me from imagining ill foundations.
Kept looking at the kneeling stools trying to imagine all the knees of all the people who had come there to pray, seeking.
Decided to try to combat my burnt instinct and stopped and lit a candle at one of the altars, kind of without thinking why. I kept thinking of Molly—who was a hardcore atheist most of her life—traveling to Poland and writing about going to the churches there, waiting and listening and lighting candles, hoping she’d find something. I think about how lost I’ve felt and how most of my experience of organized religion has done little more than alienate me even further. Tried to challenge myself to think beyond that for a second when a monk began to sing his chant with heavy echo reverberating off the walls, clearly a moving sound though also haunted to me in a way, and kind of uncomfortable to me for how it makes me wish I felt something more for it. Felt nice to sit next to Megan, who was obviously very moved, and I didn’t want to interrupt that, so eventually I just got up and went to sit outside. Pretty soon after everybody came out too, and Megan came up to hug me, and I felt better seeing the smile on her face and her having a great time surrounded by friends and deepened experience.
That’s what matters, no matter where you are.
Bought a 20 minute hourglass (same as the distance between Sezze and where I bought it) at one of the small gift shops, I guess for myself. I don’t really have people in my life that I give regular presents to any longer—though of course I could invent that and find a reason. In a way it felt like something mine there, a different way to think of time, and a relic that will remind me over the years of today. That’s its own sort of experience I guess. I’m not sure I’d call it comforting, but that also isn’t a bad thing. Had a flash thought of Flavor Flav wearing my hourglass around his neck, watching me type this.
The guy who ran the shop was basically the opposite of Flav, dead silent and not looking up when customers come in, just busying himself unboxing trinkets and organizing them in silence in his shop. Reminds me now, not then, of opening scenes of The Holy Mountain, before the guy leaves behind society and all the false idol creators and ascends into the actual mouth of enlightenment by embarking on his quest to the land of the gods.
Laughing (inside, not outside) about how much Megan likes quoting Jodorowsky saying, “Move back, camera!” at the end of HM. How much she likes it makes me like it even more—not just an aesthetic trick, but a gesture toward discovery, passion, in a way that feels less archaic and compulsory and more so open to the mystery that binds us all.
Had a nice lunch eating sandwiches and pizza in the café beside the church, though I felt a little out of it, and mostly all I remember is talking about what we were like in high school, and Stanley Kubrick.
6:40 – 7:15 pm
Sat on the bed trying to decide whether to lay down and rest or just keep going. If I nap now I’ll be up all night again, but I’ve been up most of the nights here either way. Megan came in and assumed I wasn’t going on the walk they’d talked about going on once we got back, and reminded me it was okay not to go, which I am getting better about knowing. Scott makes it easy to not feel bad for not participating since he’s so straightforward about what he wants and needs to do. I’m not used to people helping look out for me so when I adopt that it’s often defensively, trying not to feel bad for being a “spoiler,” when really everyone here just wants everyone to get to have the time they want to have. Good people exist.
7:45 pm
Going to take a shower and maybe try to liveblog less voluminously per entry. Really get to the heart of the goat, I thought, trying to come up with a reason I need to be less voluminous. Eating a 40 mg weed gummy. Yes it is my third shower of the day. I am a clean boy.
8:06 pm
Laid down in the shower and let it fall on me until I felt like getting up.
8:25 pm
Browsed around internet/twitter for a while. Should say that likely has been key to feeling so light-spirited here, not spending all day with stupid websites in my face. Just enough connection upstairs to be possible to connect for things you really need, but slow enough and buggy enough that I mostly just don’t use it unless I’m laying down on my phone for that specifically. Would say I need to get better at internet habits when back at home but don’t want to set bars I’m not going to undo. Sometimes things are annoying to use and you use them and it doesn’t really matter all that much, but I can’t imagine who would argue it’s not a bit of a torture chamber all its own.
Realized I’ve referred to things as “Machiavellian” multiple times this week, both in describing the internet and my own self.
Also thought “problematic people have always been my people” when thinking about Gian and a certain stripe of friend I’ve had since my earliest regular friends, back to third grade, and many major friend figures throughout life all the way up to and throughout my marriage with Molly, which wasn’t healthy at all in so many ways I couldn’t see until too late. Always liked the kinds that got in trouble and acted out even though I felt I wasn’t as unhinged as them, too worried about the consequences to really throw myself over the edge. I guess that’s what has saved me from shooting myself in the foot so many times. I also guess I’m grateful to have grown up a bit instead of dying. I enjoyed hearing Catherine speaking in the car about how their aim for Gian’s foundation is a place where individuals can find common ground while still being able to be themselves. Also remembered saying something to Scott and Megan, I think, about substance abuse being common among that set because it isn’t easy, maybe even impossible, to walk that road alone. It’s an old trope and one I’ve been battling regularly in therapy, inheriting from my father the idea of “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
It really sunk in at the beginning of this trip when I am being a fucking spazz about getting to the airport on time and hitting all the tiny marks of things you have to do to travel internationally, and finally agreeing to let Megan take the lead and get us to where we’re going without sweating it so hard. At the same time, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t pull myself up when I was down so I can understand how I’ve been split in two, in a way. I would like to no longer be split in two for a while.
For some reason just thought of a tweet of mine from a long time ago when I said something like “the skin tags on my face are there for you to lift me up with” and Gian liking it almost instantly, because he got what I was saying when I wasn’t even thinking what it meant. Twitter used to be weird and fun, now it’s a used car lot where they sell propaganda weapons.
8:40 pm
Meg texted her and Julia are safe and having a good time on their walk. Megan is the best at staying ahead of my nuts stuff and just reminding me that I am good. Autocorrect in reply changed my ‘hungry’ in ‘I am getting hungry’ to ‘bundy.’ I guess I feel like I am getting bundy also. Scott also texted me to tell me he heard from Julia they are safe and having a good time, and I felt glad everybody is feeling good and normal.
I’ve gotten better about worrying so much lately but it still gets under my skin in ways I can’t see coming, and ways I can, in a good way, like spending two weeks in the family home of your dead friend, and in other bad ways, which I will spare myself from getting into writing down.
8:51 pm
Drank the rest of the water in my bottle and set the empty bottle on the windowsill without looking up to see the sky at dusk.
8:57 pm
Thought “fuck you” excessively reactively while glancing over what I wrote about safe and happy and getting better in previous update. I’m not sure if the “you” in that is fucked up me saying fuck you to trying to be better me or if it’s me saying fuck you to people who think talking about what’s going on with you like that is some kind of evidence of weakness or both or neither. Didn’t feel as “fuck you” as I often am saying “fuck you” at inanimate things, in an almost objective way, not actually feeling the anger through the language, but wanting to express the urge of wanting to break something. Little hot flashes of unchained rage. Like getting hit in the face by something unseen. Like trying to carry on in a moment as if you don’t feel like you’ve just gotten hit in the face by something unseen.
Megan and Julia are almost back, about to go eat some food downstairs and chill.
9:19 pm
They still ain’t back. Laptop was about to die so had to go get my cord from the other room. Tried to plug my phone into my computer cord though my computer is what needs charging and the cord fits the computer.
Heard Megan say from downstairs, “Hello, house!”
11:35 pm
Everybody is in the living room typing at the same time. Everybody stopped typing when I typed that.
I don’t know how people write in front of other people. Usually I wear earplugs even when I’m alone trying to think. My sensitivity to noise and attention is in bizarre shape.
Scott finished his blog first and once again I appreciate Scott for doing what he wants. We had a good conversation at dinner about Six Gallery Press and how small publishing was ten years ago and how it seems different now, and what else could be happening.
Ate a shitload of desserts at the dinner, have been really eating hard the last few days to pack in as much eating as I can on this trip to Italy before I have to go back to America and hook my dick up to the black hole.
Everyone is quiet now.