Mysterious and Wondrous Ways

Tags

Charles, Debbie, Dudley's writing group, Libraries, Our meeting story

The Monday morning writing group at Dudley’s bookstore, Bend, Oregon, 2016 October 31

Prompt – Mysterious ways in which libraries and animals enrich humanity.

I stood in awe in front of the big desk in one of the biggest library reading rooms in the United States. The University of California Berkeley Doe Library is enormous, and the designers back in 1911 spared no expense in making it a clarion call to scholars all over the world that this is where they should spend their academic lives.

To make my astonishment and awe deeper and even more humbling was the young woman behind the counter. She was so beautiful it made my toes tingle, and when she spoke her obvious intelligence let me know instantly I was in the right place. She was so interested in helping me get what I wanted that I soon forgot my own anxieties and followed her over to the exact book I was searching for. That book was a few years before a common book in some places, but now it was rare and only available in a research library. Probably the Library of Congress would have it, but that was several thousand miles away. I came back to that shelf of books several times and a week later I asked that librarian if she would have a coffee with me at the local coffee shop. She said she couldn’t. She was a graduate student at the UC library school and next week was final exams, and she didn’t have time.

A few days later I was running through campus coming back from the top of Grizzly Peak where I ran to from my home twice a week. It was a nine-mile run with 1662 feet of elevation gain, and I had run that route about 500 times. I was in great physical shape and I was even running marathon races occasionally. That’s when it happened.

She was sitting on a park bench as I ran by on my way home, more or less at my top speed—I always pushed myself when running—and after some fifty steps more, I thought I should go back and ask her if she would have coffee with me after she had finished her finals. As it happened she was going to give a verbal presentation in about ten minutes, and she was obviously terrified. Speaking before an audience is one of the most stressful things there is for most people, and speaking before your professors for your final exam has got to be at the top of the anxiety scale.

There she was all anxiety ridden and studying her notes, and there I was all sweaty and panty from having run to the top of Grizzly Peak. It was a strange situation.

Yes. – Tomorrow at noon.

That was how I met Debbie thirty-one years ago.

Yes, libraries have been mysterious places for me and my animal nature.

Clockwork Purple

Tags

A writer's group prompt, Clockwork purple, Intellectual evolution

Dudley’s bookstore writer’s group met on April 17, 2017 at Ahonu and Angeal Rose’s home. Usually, we do a random prompt from a random book. The book is chosen at random by one person, from it another person chooses unseen a random page number. Then an unseen line number is chosen by yet another person. After we have read that random prompt line aloud a timer is set to 45 minutes. Strange things soon come out of our fingers and when the timer rings we do five minutes of proofreading. With trepidation, we read aloud our desperate efforts.

Today there was a need to create a title for our coming book and we settled on – Clockwork Purple. Because of the need for an explanation for the strange title we chose “Clockwork Purple” for our prompt. Weird was in the air, prose was in our minds and the timer was set. … START!

---

Clockwork purple.

A blank of confusion has settled into my mind. “I have nothing to say!” Everyone agrees that my life is empty, meaningless and that my behavior is weird. Those strange words are not me, not the real me, and I am not a clockwork and I am not purple. Those are external fantasies imposed through words by other people’s expostulations vibrating in the air. That’s not the reality of who I am.

I’m just a person interested in solving problems that face me and especially those problems that confront all humanity. I prefer to ponder problems where I can contribute a meaningful new idea into the current of human understanding. That is, I seek to add something significant into the vastness of human wisdom.

There is an infinity of problems to be found and I do mean infinity in the mathematical sense of the word; the infinite vastness beyond the current human situation and comprehension. There is an infinity of undiscovered problems beyond those met by the hundred billion people who have lived on this Earth.

There are without doubt problems that could be discovered and revealed now with a simple declarative statement. Undoubtedly a sentence, a phrase, even a few words could be said at this moment that would change humanity forever. For example, a common simple phrase known now by nearly everyone was unknown by anyone two-hundred years ago. It changed the world. There are many other examples, but the phrase “survival of the fittest” has had a major impact on all humanity. That idea was obvious even to Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, some eight decades before Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859, but Smith didn’t understand its broader applications and limited his idea to a “hidden hand” that brings about the survival of the fittest in business.  Darwin et al. expanded the concept to biologically adaptive things and not just to business. Darwin’s phrase had a much broader application and vastly greater impact than Smith’s.

There are in all likelihood many ideas and short sentences as powerful as “survival of the fittest” that could be stated right now by you; but they haven’t been said, at least not said in a way that reached the public and “went viral.” Those are the ideas I like to search for and the strange places I like to seek out and explore. It is a simple thing to be doing, and it seems like everyone is doing it every moment of their lives.

So … Why am I said to be weird? I dress in clothing that isn’t particularly different. I speak with common English words. My grammar is apparently understandable to the people I meet. From the feedback I get from others it appears the thoughts I express are generally understood. I try diligently to obey all laws and never lie. So, I ask again … Why am I considered weird?

The prompt – “Clockwork Purple” – is a simple English phrase. The word “purple” refers to a common color and is a common word. The word “clockwork” is a bit unusual, but it’s an easy compound of two very common words and is easily understood. In our writer’s group, the usage implies a clock in our background guiding the timing of our work and encouraging prompt productivity. And, the word “purple” is commonly associated with florid spontaneous writing. Thus, the title for our book “Clockwork Purple” is descriptive as well as colorful, and it implies the exploration of the outer realms of our present reality.

Our title, “Clockwork Purple,” implies weird, but it also implies prompt, important, colorful and royal.

“They’ll float too” – writing prompt

Tags

Don’t worry!, Strange writers prompts., They’ll float too., You can throw an Irishman into the sea.

Dudley’s writers group April 10, 2017 – Prompt derived randomly!!! Random book chosen by Aingeal Rose – My Story as Told by Water by David James Duncan –

Random page 72 from Charles

Random line chosen by Joanna # 12

Alexa set timer to 47 minutes

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They’ll float too.

Once in grade school, Jack Wilhelmy and I were playing on the swinging bar with Jimmy Hingston during recess when Jimmy fell with an uncontrolled flapping about of his arms and legs onto the dirt. As Jimmy was getting up and brushing himself off, Jack said, “Don’t worry! You can throw an Irishman into the sea.”

As I was trying to parse that obscure statement into a meaningful thought, our games were interrupted by the school bell and we all headed back to our classrooms. I worked on that ethnic slur in my sixth-grade brain for the next hour. Was this German kid just making fun of our Irish friend because of his hilarious airborne antics, or was it something more profound about Irishmen?

My father’s mother was born a Rowley from Rooney and was pure Irish, so I am a quarter Irish. Was a quarter of me being threatened with being thrown into the sea? What would I do if I were thrown into the sea? Would the sharks instantly eat me up, because of my Irishness, or was the statement a comment on the resiliency of Irishmen and no matter what happened to them they would cope with it with a characteristic comic aplomb?

My ten-year old brain was confused and now seventy-two years later that unforgettable statement still confuses me. Even Google failed me. Google usually comes up with millions of answers in an instant, but in this case it hadn’t a relevant clue. “Will Irishmen float better than other people? Or what?”

I had that idea in my mind when out in San Francisco Bay in my kayak during a heavy storm, searching for Sir Francis Drake’s buried treasure. The waves were so high that when in a trough I couldn’t see over them to the horizon and when on top there was a dangerously stiff wind. Would I cope with a capsizing? If Irishmen could be thrown into the sea and float, would it be enough to buoy up my English mitochondrial heritage and my doughty Dutch ancestry too, both of which had some extensive nautical experience? I’m probably okay there, but my German ancestors made a quick voyage as paying passengers so probably that would lead to my sinking if thrown into the sea. I can’t imagine anyone saying you can throw a German into the sea. Well, I suppose some other people can.

They’ll probably float okay, but it’s only part of all my heritage. I have some distant Dutch Astor relatives that went down on the Titanic and some from my German side, too. They were totally unknown to each other. Some of them being of the very richest class and the others were either steerage or servants. But, no matter, the ice-cold Atlantic water swallowed them all.

Neither of these two groups of my ancestors were Irish. Perhaps, it they had had a little Irish in them, like I do, they would have floated too. If Jack was right, “You can throw an Irishman into the sea.”

And now for this business of not talking

Tags

A writer's group prompt

Dudley’s Bookstore writers group at Ahonu’s house –  March 27, 2017

I came to this morning’s meeting with these words roaming my mind: “Truth isn’t dead yet, but it is moribund.”

Our writer’s group random prompt was created in the moment by one person calling out a page number and another a line number from another person’s randomly selected book. It turned out to be page 10 line 6 from Inspired Heart by Jerry Wennstrom.

“I knew I was being criticized for my strange behavior, first for destroying my art, and now for this business of not talking.”

Ahonu called out, “Alexa set the reminder for forty-five minutes.”

—

Officially I am an artist. I can say that because I have a Master of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco State University in California, and I have had my work displayed in public art museums. But more important for me was that I was accepted into the circle of famous Bay Area artist-photographers in the 1960s.

My favorite artist photographer was Wynn Bullock. He had a lead photograph in the most successful photo exhibit of all time back in 1955. It was called “The Family of Man.” His image was a photo of a naked girl lying face down in a lush undergrowth in a dark forest. Very disturbing!!

There is still the gallery book available called the Family of Man in used bookstores. That whole art project was super successful, and I worked with a picture in that book. It was on an inside cover facing Wynn’s photo. It was of the nebula in the Orion star galaxy. That picture was completely independent of my art works because it was taken with the telescope at Lick Observatory where I was working at the time, and I only made prints of it. But it makes me feel good that the picture I worked on from the original negative is pressed against Wynn’s famous picture of his daughter, whom I was acquainted with in the 60s.

Yes, I also knew Ansel Adams, but our relationship was not very friendly. I remember having a heated argument with him about color photography becoming the more important medium, and the coming wave of visual art. That argument took place in his fabulous castle of a house perched on a cliff over the Big Sur beach on the Pacific Ocean. He is now considered by the public as the pre-eminent black and white photographer ever, but I didn’t think so then, nor do I now. He was too formulaic for my tastes in his thinking and in his pictures. I much preferred Bullock’s work and more exotic world view.

There were other art photographers of that time and place that I knew. Bret and Cole Weston, for example. I was with them on the one-year anniversary of their more famous father’s death, and we had a few beers to his memory. It was in Cole’s cabin up a canyon only a few miles from Ansel’s home. Their father Edward Weston was so famous that he had a one-man show in New York in 1938 with the greatest attendance of all time.

My point is that I was accepted by these famous artist photographers as one of them. Then a few events happened which turned me off to human society, yet again. I had a few large color photos that toured the world in American embassies. That was wonderful, but I never got the photos back. For a starving artist, and I was not quite starving but I had very little money, making big color photos for the exhibit took nearly all I had. All I have to show for those pictures is a letter from Estes Kefauver‘s secretary telling me what a wonderful opportunity that exhibit was for me.

Another event, actually there were at least ten that I can remember, happened at the Oakland Art Museum. I had given them about ten color photos for their consideration for a one-man show. They were to give them back in a month, but when I went to pick them up they had them displayed on the walls of their offices and asked if they might keep them for a while. I felt honored that they thought highly enough of them to hang them in their offices, if not in their gallery, and of course said they could keep them. But, when I went back a month later to get the pictures they were gone. They claimed one of the curators had taken them to New York and would be back in a while. I never saw those pictures again. They had vanished.

My experience at that time was that my several years of work kept consistently vanishing. These were unpleasant events for me. People valued my work highly enough to steal it, but not enough to reward me for it in some way.

Then a couple of kids playing with fire unknowingly burned down the garage where my negatives were stored. I took it as a sign from the vindictive gods, and I stopped talking, that is, creating work for the public’s consumption. That was forty-seven years ago. Strangely I am still pursued by those vindictive gods and have been carrying on like the Greek martyr Sisyphus, who just keeps pushing his rock up his mountain.

I do what I do, and even though others willfully destroy it, I just keep doing what I do, and take it as my destiny that all I do will soon be destroyed, as will the destroyers. I have grown comfortable with the knowledge that all we do will soon evaporate into the vastness of eternity.

Back to the prompt: “I knew I was being criticized for my strange behavior, first for destroying my art, and now for this business for not talking.”

I write a blog instead.

We each then read aloud our productions and they were amazingly different. The other writer’s line that caught my attention was, “I discovered that my art had destroyed my former life.” That was my experience too. Another weird coincidence was that another story reminded me of The Adventure of the Hanging Baskets.

We lived and lived and nothing happened.

Tags

A writers workshop, Driving strategies, The Laugh-Out-Loud-Diet, Walking after lunch, We lived and lived

Today was easy living. Nothing special happened, or did it? I went to the Looney Bean coffee shop for an hour and chatted with my old dudes about our various personal adventures. A little about art with my retired commercial artist friend, a little about sales of innovative products with my retired entrepreneur friend, some world travel experiences with my world traveler friend.

I’ve been talking about how many extra seconds it takes me to drive from my home to our fireplace in the Loony Bean beside Mirror Pond on the Deschutes river. I only count the extra time at stop lights, or extra time waiting behind someone at a STOP sign. This morning it was 93 seconds extra because I hit the lights wrong, but it’s impossible not to go through some lights, so that was unavoidable. Yesterday, I only lost 33 seconds. Of course, everyone laughs at me for wasting my time counting seconds, but I now have routes that I know are quicker than just going by the main streets. The way I look at it, I drive slower and safer that those people speeding along the main drags, and almost always get where I’m going sooner. The benefit is that I get to spend a few more minutes with my friends rather than sitting alone waiting for a red light to turn into a green one.

Later I drove back home, picked up Debbie and dropped her off at a meeting. It was to last about two hours and then I went to a writers group that would last for about an hour. I read two recent blog posts, Only a fool would throw away a trillion dollars. Is it me?, and A Short List of Super-Easy Diets, and we discussed those for a while. They liked my new name for those diets – The Laugh Out Loud Diet. Perhaps it should be The Laugh Out Loud Diet Plan. Or maybe something that contracts to a single word … for the cognoscenti … like, Lolodip! I hung around for some wonderful short stories read out loud.

I met Debbie at her event, and we had lunch together at the Looking Glass Cafe. It was fun playing our new diet games. Of course, we didn’t start eating until after noon, and we did drink a glass of water first, but the new wrinkle on our diet was to intentionally leave a half-tea-spoon of food centered in the middle of the plate. We upped the ante slightly by searching through the last of the meal for the very best morsels and leaving them rather artistically arranged.

We are the masters of our food not it masters of us, and our leaving a bit of something we know we would enjoy eating gives us greater satisfaction than eating that pathetic little pile.

We drove home and immediately went for our half hour walk and along the way we watched our friend Michael putting the last external panels on his big new workshop. When we got home Debbie went to her online work and I spent a couple of hours manipulating a very strange two-thousand-year-old mosaic picture searching for steganography. In this case it is concealed things about astronomy buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The 7 Sages of Greece found buried at Pompeii

Why is the guy in the middle pointing with a stick at the globe, and why do the scrolls held by the guys align perfectly with that pointing stick? There are many other equally obvious but hidden things about this ancient Roman mosaic.

Drop your arrogance.

Tags

Human folly, Human wisdom, Pompeii, Pompey, The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece, Writers group prompt.

Our Dudley’s Bookstore writers group met at Ahonu’s and Aingeal’s.

Here is our randomly chosen prompt taken from a random book. The book was:

We – Understanding the psychology of romantic love – by Robert A. Johnson

The randomly chosen page number 33, random line 7 – it was:

“This is what forces a man to drop his arrogance and go voluntarily.” 40 minutes! (I inserted the links and corrected the dates and some minor details of the original script.)

A few minutes ago, just before coming to this meeting, I was online at Pompeii, Italy (lat/lon 40.7493, 14.4849) looking at the two millennial old mosaics covered up by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. The quest was to find anything new relating to the mosaic of the Seven Sages of the Ancient world which I had used in a post about three years ago in Philosophers Squared – 147 Delphic Maxims. I had just been looking at that image again and wondering, once again if the large globe sitting in a box in front of the sages represented the Earth.

The 7 Sages of Greece mosaic found buried at Pompeii

Then it hit me as so obvious that it was a representation of the Earth because it had latitude and longitude lines drawn upon it. These lines were not idle scratches; they were evenly spaced and very pronounced black lines. Also, there was stuff on the globe too that looked like it might be a representation of some part of the Earth.

If that is true then it would seem reasonable that the artist may have chosen the stones on the globe to have tiny details that would be familiar to those sages looking at that symbol of their world. That would be a symbol inside a symbol inside of a picture which is itself a symbol inside of a computer device producing symbols of a moment in time when these symbols of thoughts were buried in the modern classic symbol of cataclysm.  This gets far too deep into multiple symbols for my simple mind and it’s things like this that forces a man like me to drop his arrogance and go voluntarily into a humble reverence for the grandeur of the existing and pre-existing world of his fellow man.

But there are more strange things in this picture of thoughtful sages. If one takes a straight edge and goes from corner to corner both ways to discover the center of the picture, the center is found to be the man’s hand with his finger pointing at the globe, and in his hand only just visible is a long stick pointing at the globe too, and the carefully arranged alignment goes straight back to that man’s eye. And, strangely, that exact point of this convergence is where the other guy’s toe touches the globe, and that line continues to another guy’s toe. Thus there isn’t any doubt that the center of attention of the conversation is the point on the globe where the lines intersect. Furthermore, when you follow the gaze of the other sages close to him, to our right, it becomes apparent that their attention is upon what he is saying about the globe. The fellows on the outer edge of the group on both sides have scrolls in their hands and that would represent the idea that these guys are spreading the idea that the Earth is a sphere. With their measurements, they would know that Italy and Greece occupy a relatively small place compared to the whole of the Earth and that implies there is much left to be discovered.

It is known that these ancients knew the exact dimensions of the Earth based on the report from Eratosthenes of a deep well in Syene, Egypt, where the sun only reflects off the water at the bottom a single moment per year. The measure of the sun’s angle on that summer solstice day allowed Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the Earth as accurately as possible given the limits of ancient technology. That idea is represented by the sundial at the top of the column behind the sages.

The stories about the flatness of the Earth being the common knowledge of the ancient people is proven to be false by this picture. It is so sad that the Egyptian woman Hypatia, an astronomer living in Alexandria, was murdered by Saint Cyril in 415 AD for writing about these astronomical observations.

This forces a man to drop his arrogance and become humble at the wisdom of some of his fellow creatures and at the foolishness of others.

Chopping wood, carrying water, shoveling snow.

Tags

Carry water, Choose to be more mature, Chop wood, Shovel snow

Dudley’s writing group met at Aingeal and Ahonu’s – The prompt: 40 minutes.
“One way or another that gives poetry its musical qualities.”

It was a stormy morning here in Bend, Oregon. Most of the snow had melted away that was exposed in our open fields, but where the snow plows had shoved it, along the sides of the roads, there were still four-foot-high berms. I had driven to the Unitarian Church an hour early planning to attend a pre-church meditation group, but during the drive over it started snowing again and snowing heavily by the time I arrived for the meditation. By the time I parked, the snow was covering the ground an inch deep and accumulating fast.

The regular services weren’t scheduled to begin for an hour, so rather than go to the quiet fireside room and meditate I decided to shovel snow to clear the paths for the oncoming congregation. I had done this simple work several times at various places this week of record snowfall with the intent of developing more mature habits. My previously posted idea is that when one is feeling good and has some psychic energy they should look around and intentionally choose to do the most mature thing available at the time, that needs doing.

Shoveling snow may not sound like a mature activity, after all a child can do it, but when one of the great sages of ancient times was asked what he did now that he had achieved enlightenment, he replied, “I chop wood, and carry water.” His disciple asked him how that differed from before he became enlightened? How did it differ from when he was a youth being forced by his parents to chop wood and carry water?

“It’s no different. No different in the physical activity. The difference is in the mental and spiritual activity. As a child I felt rebellious and angry at having to do such stupid things as chop wood and carry water, but now, as what you call an enlightened sage, I feel a satisfying rush that permeates my whole being for the opportunity to be of service to my fellow human beings and to my animal friends and to my plant friends, too.”

Some lyrically inclined people would call this attitude toward those simple acts a form of poetry. It gives structure to an otherwise dumb physical reality. It gives meaning to the results that come from the uses of the water and from the uses of the chopped wood. This attitude generates the most beautiful music that exists in our world.

These simple physical acts that seem so lacking in spiritual meaning ultimately give everything the essentials of life and permit living beings – people, animals, and plants too – to thrive. What could be more poetic? What could be more musical? The rhythmic sound of chopping wood is poetry and it’s the finest music that can be made because it is the sound of life being brought into a higher state of being.

Chop, chop — carry, carry — shovel, shovel, shovel.

The Adventure of the Hanging Baskets

Tags

A Sherlockian pastiche., A travelers story., Dudley's writers group, Writers group prompt.

The Adventure of the Hanging Baskets.

It was a dark and stormy night, as it always is in London on Christmas Day at five in the afternoon. Trevelyan was standing on the East side of the London Tower bridge watching the bits of litter slowly flowing down the Thames. There was one of those baskets used by old ladies for hanging flowers in their windows, still with a few stragglers of flowers and papers hanging on. Curious? He wasn’t exactly depressed, but how can an American toff who just lost a thousand pounds cash be feeling good? He wouldn’t be getting his allowance for another week, and other than those skinny fingered thugs who just relieved him of all his gold coins in the beautiful leather coin purse his grandmother had made for him, he was penniless and he didn’t know anyone this side of the Atlantic ocean.

Some of his indolent young Harvard friends still back in Boston, typically sent abroad in the summer to do their obligatory European tour, would have jumped off the bridge. But Trevelyan, even though he felt miserable just now, wasn’t that kind of guy. No, no, now was a time for an immaculately dressed Harvard student to consider his options. He could go to the police and ask for their help; after all, they must have had plenty of experience with this kind of problem. Surely, they would put him up for the night, give him enough to eat, and have the resources needed to contact his rich uncle Grosvenor, who would advance the money Trevelyan was expecting to receive on New Year’s Day. No. No. No! He had been sent abroad to learn how to cope with the world, and damn it, that’s what he was going to do.

Perhaps he should chase down those thugs who relieved him of his cash, creep up behind them and bludgeon them with some convenient item. He had noticed a pile of bricks at the end of the bridge where he had just come from, and where the thieves were still visible walking happily away. They were skipping along and looked like a couple of happy school kids who just got bicycles for their Christmas presents. But for Trevelyan it was a thousand pounds sterling gone, and in cash too! … But for the robbers … Blimey, it was a happy day, they had never even seen so much money.

Trevelyan considered running after them and yelling something … “Help, help, stop those thieves!” That sounded like a reasonable thing to do, but the traffic noise would drown out his voice, and they were now vanishing into the infamous London fog. Perhaps he could track them down, Sherlock Holmes-like. He had noticed some unique little details about them. The ruby-faced fellow had an unusual lavender piping on his jacket and square-tipped shoes and he walked with a unique limp. Obviously, he was an ex-soldier, and the shoes corroborated that assumption and the limp too. That narrowed the suspects down a lot. And … if he was an honorable man and so reduced in circumstances that he would have to rob people, he probably would be staying at some flophouse for soldiers who were “down on their luck.” Now Trevelyan was getting someplace. His classic Harvard background education wasn’t a hindrance, after all, it had given him the tools to think. To think for himself, and the motivation to figure out problems and the courage to explore his convictions and to act on them too.

Well, an hour later after some similar cogitations he was sitting in The Sisters of Mercy Home for Fallen Heroes, reading yesterday’s Times that he had fetched from a basket hanging there, just like the one he had seen floating down the Thames. He noticed a hook for hanging another basked in the ceiling. Curious? A local constable, one of the big friendly fellows for which London is so famous he had just met, was sitting across the hallway from him, also appearing to be reading an old newspaper. Everything seemed artificially friendly, as things usually do in such establishments.

Slowly, the heavy ancient ornate front door creeks open and in limps a red-faced fellow with lavender piping and square-toed shoes, obviously quite happy from having downed a pint or two of ale. Trevelyan says, “Alrightee mate, how’s it going? Haven’t seen yee for a donkey’s years. Have ya minted any coin lately?” He looked around and without any fuss, he handed over grandma’s coin purse to Trevelyan. Curious? No, not for a Harvard student.

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Dudley’s writing group prompt, “hanging baskets,” obtained randomly from the third shelf over to our right, the third book in, page 17, line 20, where were found the words, “The hanging basket.” We each then wrote for forty minutes and read aloud our stories. I recommend joining a writing group doing these random prompts. It’s fun, and it takes you to strange places in your mind that you didn’t know existed, but when you get there it feels familiar.