Kelley – Page 18 – Kelley Eskridge

CW 6: Into the Sea

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Into the Sea

for Paul Massie. Thank you for the times you carried me.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming wide awake. Below him, the sea spreads to the edge of the world, from which it brings no news; only salty secret whispers to the sand, whroom, whroom, a full-body lick to the rocks, ohhhhhh. Sometimes when the man is on the beach, the sea leaves debris at his feet like a hunting cat lays down the rabbit’s carcass in a cave where hungry kittens tumble and play. Sometimes when the man is in the water, he and the sea are kittens together. Sometimes they play rough.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming his life back so that he may live it again. He looks like an old fierce bird, and his old fierce eyes are sea-blue. His life has been like the sea: deep and rough and restless, full of storms and calms. There are monsters in his deeps. Some people, he has drowned. Others, he has carried on astonishing journeys to places farther than they ever thought to go, and left them blinking in the brightness or shadow of themselves.

And now he brings them all back, like opening a treasure chest and pulling up gold one piece at a time. Here is a boy he helped to sing an impossible song. Here is a girl who loved him so much she could not speak around him, except in other people’s words. Here is a woman he treated like the sea treats the rocks, the lick and the leaving behind. Here are all the conversations, all the laughter, all the tears, all the cigarettes and coffee, all the work, all the times we told him I can’t and he said Yes, you can, you can, and the wide-eyed white-hot joy in those blue eyes when we did.

The man on the cliff has dreamed his life back so that he can let it go. Yes, you can, we tell him. And so he leaps, with the same joy.

Whroom, whroom, the sea says. Ohhhhhh.

CW 5: Drive

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

Drive

for Jude Berg. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Madeline is driving to her lover, and even now, Maddy loves to drive. Not the motorway parking lot, not the commuter creep; certainly not all those red lights. Red is for stop. Driving is for go go go.

She is driving to Lizzie. She has a bottle of water and a go-cup of coffee in the holder. She’s jacked on the starch of road food and the fear that her soul connection to a woman 500 miles away is fraying fast, and all she can do is drive. Give herself to the road, to the big blue hand of day, the huge dark mouth of night, the machine and the music, the journey and the destination.

Lizzie is the end of the road.

Don’t go, she said when Lizzie got the job. But Lizzie had seen more than a path opening before her: she had seen a racetrack, and Lizzie loved to move fast.

I’ll go with you, Maddy said when Lizzie planned the move. But that wasn’t Lizzie’s style. The company’s temporary apartment was so small. All her energy would be in navigating those first important weeks, getting up to speed. We’ve got email. We’ve got Skype. We’ve got instant messaging, Mads, we can reach each other anytime. You won’t even know I’m gone.

“At least let me drive you,” Maddy said when she had given up the hope of everything else, when she felt dull with confusion.

Lizzie laughed. “Flying is faster.”

“By the time you get the taxi to the airport, and go through security, and wait to board, and sit out the weather delays, and fly there, and collect your bags, and get a rental car, and find your way to the new place….” We could drive there, she would have finished, but Lizzie’s face was zipped closed over impatience and anger, the same way her bag was zipped over all her favorite things. And Lizzie was going going gone.

If only she had let Mads drive.

All of Lizzie’s promises. Going going gone. Emails short on detail and shorter in tone. The wrong schedule for Skype, too tired to talk. Instant turned into farther and farther between.

All of Lizzie’s fucking red lights.

But Mads is in her car now, and all the lights are green. She’s got her edge back. It’s in the bag.

Because there are things you can only do in person.

Love.

Rage.

CW 4: The Locks and the Ladders

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Locks and the Ladders

for Ronnie Garvey. I love you, BFF.

Jet poked me hard in the shoulder. “That fucking hurts,” I said.

“No swearing on the bus,” the driver said automatically, without even looking in the mirror.

Jet said, “What’s wrong, Cassie? You look like your cat died.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“I know, that’s why it’s okay to say it. If you really had a cat, it would be completely insensitive.”

I went back to staring out the school bus window.

“So what is it?” she said. “You look like your pony died.”

You know how someone can make you smile even when you don’t want to? And for a second you want to smack them on the nose for getting inside you like that? But you’ve been best friends since kindergarten, and so it would just be like smacking yourself. That’s Jet. She’s the only one who will tell me I have something nasty showing in my nose. I’m the only one who knows that her brother’s not at college, he’s in rehab in Salt Lake, and she is terrified that he will kill himself. And when I holed up in my room last month crying over Jamal Watson and playing Evanescence so loud it hurt my ears, she snuck to his house in the middle of the night and let the air out of his tires. All four of them. It took her an hour in the rain.

“Cass,” she said. No kidding this time.

The front wheel of the bus hit a pothole. We all went up and down in our seats. The back wheel hit. Up and down, while the world outside the bus stayed level. No one out there felt the jolt. No one raised their hand and said Can you give me a break with the thrill ride, I got motion sickness here! I cannot wait to be a part of that world.

“The Dickhead is moving us to Oklahoma City at the end of the school year,” I said.

“What the fuck?” she said. About a dozen kids responded, in perfection caricature of the driver, “No swearing on the bus,” before they went back to seeing who could complain loudest about a stupid field trip to look at stupid fish.

“They told me this morning.”

Jet opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. She looked like she did the day she told me about Tyler’s crack habit. Five years old again.

“I can’t start crying about this right now,” I said. “I can’t. Not…” Not here, is what I meant. Not in front of these people whose idea of special bonding is to make fun of the bus driver.

She swallowed. “Okay,” she said, and took a breath, and pushed it all back down.

The bus turned into the parking lot of the Ballard Locks. When we got off, Jet rubbed a smudge from under my eye, and then we linked arms and followed the teacher.

We didn’t talk. Jet kept her arm in mine. I thought about living someplace strange with only Dickhead and my mother to rely on. I must have made a noise, because Jet said in a low voice, “Breathe.” I took a deep breath. Pushed it down.

“This way to the fish ladders!” the teacher called to the group. “You want to see persistence in action, salmon are it!” Because we’re just kids and none of us have any fucking idea what it’s like to swim upstream.

“Breathe,” Jet said.

A tunnel sloped down to a room with windows into the underwater. Kids pushed by, snarking about the teacher and the bus driver, Jesus, give it a rest, I thought, and I didn’t want to see the little fish swimming out to the wide wild sea where things were waiting to eat them.

I shook my head. “Cool,” Jet said. “Let’s go watch the boats.”

We stood at the observation rail over the locks. Fishing boats, pleasure boats, crowding in together, waiting for the water to go up and down.

“Breathe,” Jet said. And then, “Look!” But I was thinking Oklahoma City thoughts, and I could only see the boats at the bottom of the nearly-empty lock, tied to bumpers between the narrow walls. I could imagine the fish climbing their ladders.

Jet poked me in the shoulder. “Look,” she said.

Two seagulls were flying above the canal. Just ordinary gulls. No one else paid any attention to them. But the birds rode the air currents as if it were easy, as if they were going nowhere in particular, as if it were enough to fly together in the sun.

I leaned against her shoulder. I breathed. In the lock, the water began to rise.

CW 3: The Public Library

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Public Library

for Graeme Williams. Thank you for supporting my work and Clarion West.

“What did you do before?” the soldier said.

“I was an administrative assistant,” Mary said.

“Camp librarian,” he said. “Military and community. Liase with the teachers and commander’s personal admin. Next.”

“Wait…. you have books?”

He gave her an Are you stupid? look. She flinched. Of course there were no books. Shakespeare was the extra lining in your clothes that kept you warm. Romance novels lit your cookfires. Jane Austen wiped the diarrhea from your child’s bottoms. And the pages of all those self-help books made great stuffing for the chinks in a drafty barracks.

“Figure it out,” he said. “Next.”

She stepped out of line.

When she was six, her family had taken a beach vacation to northern Florida. It rained most every day, and there were giant spiders under the cottage porch. They didn’t scare Mary, but her brother Norton freaked the fuck out. That’s what Yessir called it, when Nordy stood red-faced and ashamed on the carpet in the small living room, and Mary and her mother sat at the kitchen table as they had been told to do while her stepfather put Nordy back on the right path.

“You freaked the fuck out over an insect!”

“Yes, sir,” Nordy said, in such a low voice that Mary could hardly hear it. She leaned close to her mom and said in a whisper, “It’s not an insect. It’s an arach… ara…”

“Arak-nid,” her mom whispered back. And as Yessir ranted at Nordy in the next room, What’ll you do when the terrorists come for your mother and sister, you little faggot?, her mom kept going. “That’s right. From the Latin arachnida. That kind is called a wolf spider. They hunt instead of building webs. They eat bugs.”

Mary thought of Nordy standing scared under Yessir’s bug-eyed fury. “I like spiders,” she said.

“Me, too,” her mom said. “You know, once there was a very wonderful spider called Charlotte. She was the kind that builds webs, and she built her web in a farmyard.” And her mom kept talking, telling her about Charlotte, until Yessir stopped shouting and sent Nordy to his room.

Why was she thinking of Charlotte now? Why was she remembering something that had happened forty years ago, before the spiders of war hunted each other down into nuclear winter and it seemed that all the world had gone to ground in camps like this one, and all the books had become just paper, and the internet was something they all hoped they’d get back one day when the armies were done with it?

And then she knew.

When she explained to the commander’s personal assistant what she wanted, he gave her a pencil and single, precious piece of paper that had only been used a couple times before: there was still space left. Then she began moving among the camp, meeting people, making tiny notes when she needed, but mostly trying to memorize everything she could. A good librarian didn’t need a catalogue of her own resources. A good librarian knew where to find the information.

Five days later, she set up a desk in a corner of the administrative barracks, along with as many tables and chairs or stools or boxes as she could commandeer. A practiced young man with a paint sprayer stencilled letters on the wall behind her. “Put it on the outside, too,” she told him. “So everyone can see it.”

And so he did. Public Library.

It took about twenty minutes for the first civilian to approach. He was maybe thirty-five; his hands were blistered as if he’d been using unaccustomed tools. She imagined a shovel or a saw.

He said cautiously, “Is this the library?”

“Yes, it is,” Mary said. “I’m the librarian. How can I help you?” She hoped it didn’t come out sounding too much like Oh my God I hope this works.

“Umm… do you have the Harry Potter books?” His face was tight in the way of someone already braced for the bad news, already feeling like a fool.

Mary said, “Can you come back in about an hour?” And watched his expression transform. It really was true, she thought. People’s faces could light up.

The guy came back in an hour. With seven other people, all of whom looked both hopeful and deeply suspicious. She led them to a table where a young woman of about twenty waited. “Have a seat, everyone,” Mary said. Then she nodded to the young woman.

“Okay,” the woman said. She looked at the group. “Okay.” She took a breath. “Once there was a boy named Harry Potter who lived with his uncle and aunt and obnoxious cousin, a real little shit. I mean…”

“No,” said the guy. “He was a shit. So…”

“So they actually made Harry sleep in a tiny little room under the stairs…”

Mary went back to the table, and turned her head so that the human book and the human readers would not see her cry.

CW 2: The Pre-Brunch Special

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Pre-Brunch Special

for Jennifer Durham. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Sandy Gustafson lost his faith the day he met Jesus.

It happened during the 10 AM service, which Sandy laughingly advertised as the Pre-Brunch Special: get right with God and still make your 11:30 reservation. Episcopalians liked to have their needs respected.

He was winding up his sermon on Surrendering to God’s Higher Purpose, right on time and with his usual flair. Sandy had gone to the circus every summer as a boy and spent his childhood yearning to be a ringmaster: 35 years later, looking out at the restive crowd, knowing that if their group-mind could talk it would be saying I believe in God and I believe he wants me to eat Eggs Benedict now, he raised his hand; their hungry gazes turned as one to the blue-and-green leaded glass windows, and he knew their imaginations turned to heaven. In these moments every week, Sandy made his childhood dream come true; he had just needed to learn that the Christians were the lions.

And having learned that, he trained them well. Souls were saved by the dozen in Monroe Corners. He was saving a few more right now, including, he hoped, whoever had just come so late into the back of the church.

“Surrender!” Sandy said, his finger pointing toward God, his voice like a bright brass horn.

“You first,” someone answered in a voice that was not loud or bright, a quiet voice that thundered through his bones and flashed like lightning along every nerve from his scalp to his toes. The voice made him hungry for a never-ending breath of fresh air, for a hug that no one stepped away from first, for time to listen to every word of everyone’s story in the room. You first, the voice said again, like a breeze so light it would not stir a grain of sand.

Sandy realized that no one else had heard it. The congregation were waiting blank-faced for him to get to the point.

The point stood at the back of the church. The point walked up the aisle. She was a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl in purple jeans and a Violent Femmes t-shirt. The shirt was adult-sized, and hung like a sack to her knees. She carried a Barbie doll.

She stopped in front of the steps leading to the altar and looked up at him. She gave him a brilliant smile. “Anytime you’re ready,” Jesus said.

CW 1: The Far West

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

The Far West

for Sharon Woodbury. I love you, Mum.

Great and terrible things come from the Far West; great and terrible things flock to it. The road through the desert brings them all past the Last Chance for Whatever, where Beth Harvey sells gasoline and milk, men’s ties, dog whistles, a selection of stuffed animals, sometimes herself. “The sign says Whatever, Lucas,” she told me once. “People need what they need.”

There’s a snow shovel in the hardware section. “It’s the desert,” I said once, a long time ago. “What does anyone need that for?”

She shrugged. “Works on sand, too,” was all she said. I didn’t get it at the time. Now, of course, I know the point of a snow shovel. It is not made sharp for digging down into a thing; it is made flat to push aside whatever’s in your way. The snow shovel is a tool to keep things moving.

Most every day, I sit at one of the three small cafe tables near the picture window. I drink a bottle of Bud and maybe eat one of Beth’s egg salad sandwiches, and I watch the road and what goes by on it. Sometimes I see things that make me want another bottle, that make me want to count my dead soldiers by sixes rather than singles; but after what happened that one time, I have never opened the cooler more than once on any given day. I won’t tell you what happened that day, not yet, but I will say that most great and terrible things are not obvious monsters or demons or gods. They are people who are trying to move something out of their way so they can get to another place, and will do whatever they must to make that happen. That is when people become great and terrible; when they know exactly what they need.

Some places are small. Some places are green and smell of springwater and secrets. Some places are a whirl of neon and human noise. The Far West is none of those things. The Far West is every dream you ever had of sky and ancient stone and silence, of possibility, of finally, finally finding someplace big enough for all the things you ever want to be. The Far West is the place of greatest pain you can imagine, where people dash each other down to the bedrock and wet their cereal with their children’s blood. People crawl across burning sand to reach it. People chew their own hearts out to escape it, and then they spend years finding their way back; because the Far West is never the same place twice. And that’s the power and the pull: once you get these notions into your heart or head, they muscle all your sensible self out of the way. And then things might get great, or terrible.

On the day I won’t tell you about yet, Beth was in the storeroom and I was drinking my beer. The road and the desert and the sky were empty of everything except sun and the sense of waiting that sometimes comes upon the land. Something is coming. Then I heard a small engine, and saw a motorscooter buzzing in from the West. A man drove; a woman held on behind him, her hair streaming hot and dusty, her eyes bright with sun. She was beautiful. One of the great ones.

U2 in Seattle

Here’s an essay I published last week on @U2, the best U2 website on the planet, where I am proud to be a staff writer.

For those of you who aren’t stone U2 fans, the essay title is a lyric from the song “A Sort of Homecoming.”

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

I’m also here to remind you that I’ll be starting the Clarion West Write-a-thon on Sunday, and I hope you’ll consider supporting me. The day sponsor slots are filling up, but there are still slots available, and I’d love to write something just for you…

And if you’re a writer, please consider participating! We’ve nearly reached our goal of 100 participating writers, and we have a challenge grant in progress — if we make 100 participants, we’ll receive $15 for every writer. Help us make that goal!

Enjoy your day.

Tonight, At Last, I Am Coming Home: U2 in Seattle

I spent Saturday afternoon, June 4, in the company of some of my warm, funny, smart colleagues from @U2. I spent Saturday evening inside U2’s music; inside myself.

It was a phenomenal day. The music was magic as only experts can make it: so fresh and new that it’s easy to forget it comes from years of practice and the utter willingness of the artists to surrender to the moment. I saw in the band, and felt in myself, intimacy and trust and passion and personal connection under the clear night sky in a stadium of 65,000 people. Pretty amazing.

And a sort of homecoming for me.

Here’s why: I’ve been a U2 fan for 30 years. I love these guys. A lot of their music is identity music for me, songs that speak to me so much of myself that I can hear them and remember who I am even when the fog is thick around me, even when I’m standing on the wrong side of one of my own internal canyons. Even when I’m scared. But most especially when I am not scared. Most especially when I am full of joy and confidence, when I love both myself and the world, the music of U2 has been my music too.

But the last few years, I’ve not been finding so much power in the new music. I like it, it’s good, I can listen to it for an hour and then move on. It’s smart, it’s political, it’s full of allusion, there are love songs … but it’s not intimate (for me) and it hasn’t brought me those moments of Oh!, that frisson of finding myself inside a song. And that’s what I want from U2. I want the intimacy that only music creates between artist and audience: I sing you.

And so here’s the thing: I’ve had tickets to this show for 2 1/2 years, and I almost didn’t go. I’m tired and I have a lot on my plate right now, and I was frightened of being on my feet for hours, crushed against people who would go get a beer because they didn’t recognize the song and were only there to video the hits on their iPhone. I was frightened of being unable to see or hear the music, unable to feel it. Unable to find myself there. I just wasn’t sure I could bear it.

But I went. Because I love these guys, and part of love is trusting that someday we will understand each other again. I also went because @U2 — the site, the team, the work we do — is important to me, and we rarely get to see each other.

I’m so glad I went. My @U2 compadres are savvy about concert logistics, so we ended up in what I am convinced was the best place in the stadium — perfect sound, great view of the entire set, no one at our backs, and plenty of space for me to dance or to lift up my arms in exultation. A place like an open door into a room big enough for 65,000 people, and small enough for just me and my band. I’m forever grateful to my @U2 friends. I never would have found that open door without them.

And then U2 walked in and played.

It was magnificent.

On Saturday, June 4, U2 and I came home to each other. It turns out we have just as much to talk about as we ever did. Through the music, we still speak of love and yearning, the complexity of life, the power of the human spirit, and the smack-you-in-the-heart simplicity of joy.

And so it begins again, my love affair with U2. Bono said that night, “If there is one idea that underpins our band, it’s the idea that you can start again. And today we are starting again.”

Then they played me. Then they sang me. I’m so glad I was there to hear it.

Nicola says…

… that if I can raise $2,000 for Clarion West in the Write-a-thon, she just might do some naked writing too! (No, not that kind of naked, office chairs are not that comfortable…)

She is fabulous. And so is everyone who has pledged so far to support Clarion West by sponsoring me. You all rock, and I appreciate you. I hope lots of other folks will join in the fun these next few weeks.

Enjoy your day.

41 days of writing. Want a piece of that?

The Clarion West Writers Workshop Write-a-thon is about to begin! Please consider sponsoring me as I commit to write — and post — something new every day for 41 days.

What’s a Write-a-thon? Imagine a combination of NaNoWriMo and a walk-a-thon. Writers sign up to participate; we set a writing goal; we recruit sponsors to donate to Clarion West; and then we write for six weeks, from June 19 to July 29. It’s a great way to get some work done and help raise money for a great organization. (There’s more information on Clarion West at the end of this post, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it.)

This year, instead of working on a Sacred Precious No You Can’t Look Because It’s A Work In Progress And It Will Melt, Melt! project, I’ve decided to write something I can share every day.

Here’s the deal: Before I turn to my current writing project or my editing work for the day, I will write something short and brand new. I think of it as “priming the pump,” and as my chance to throw out ideas and see what sticks. These pieces will not be stories: they will be conversations, scenes, moments, ideas. Perhaps they’ll be seeds for new work down the road, perhaps they’ll simply be what comes out of my writing brain that day. Some of them will probably suck (grin). I think some will probably be pretty good. Whatever comes up, it’s my goal to stretch with these pieces, and perhaps explore new territory in my work.

I’ll post my writing here every day, and will be cross-posting to Sterling Editing, where I’ll be encouraging people to practice their editing skills on me.

And you can get in on the game! If you’re willing to pledge $35 or more to Clarion West, you can provide a prompt for a day’s writing: an object, an idea, a thought. I’ll write something based on that, and dedicate it to you. (Please note, I’m not accepting Tuckerization requests because these won’t be complete stories.)

I hope you’ll consider sponsoring me in the Write-a-thon for any amount that feels good to you — every single dollar counts, and no donation is too small. I am grateful for any support you care to give.

And if you’re a writer, please also consider participating! You can set any goal you want: start a project, finish one, or simply recommit to writing for 10 minutes every day. It’s a chance for all of us to write together, and to keep each other strong. That’s worth a million bucks, in my opinion.

And this just in: Nicola has said that if I can raise $2,000 for Clarion West, she just might do some naked writing too. Now wouldn’t that be fun? (You over there, go get some soap and wash out your mind!)

Thank you. Enjoy your day.

(Edited to clarify that although I’ve set the bar at $35 for the custom prompt, I am grateful for any support at any level from $1 up. Every single dollar makes a difference!)

——
About the Clarion West Writers Workshop

For nearly 30 years, Clarion West has helped emerging writers of speculative fiction kickstart their professional lives. Every year, we select 18 writers to attend our six-week intensive residential writing workshop. Each week, a different professional writer or editor leads daily workshopping, offers additional lectures and private conferences, and gives a public reading of their own work. We encourage students to write a new story every week, and to stretch as far as they possibly can.

It’s a transformative experience for many writers.

CW graduates have gone on to great careers and have won every major award in speculative fiction. CW is committed to expanding the field of SF to include women writers, writers of color, and LGBT writers. Our instructors are the best writers and editors in the field, and have included Chuck Palahniuk, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Karen Joy Fowler, Samuel R. Delany, Cory Doctorow, Joanna Russ, Greg Bear, Nancy Kress, and many more.

I’m the Board Chair of Clarion West, and both Nicola and I have taught at the workshop.

The Write-a-thon is CW’s biggest fundraising activity of the year. Last year, 75 writers signed up. This year, CW has set a stretch goal of 100 writers participating. If you’re a writer, we hope you’ll consider being one of them. If you’re a reader of speculative fiction, we hope you’ll consider sponsoring one of the fine writers who are participating. Do you know a writer? Persuade him or her to sign up, and then support their work with a donation to Clarion West!

Here’s to standing up

A while back, I posted a video of the ABC special show What Would You Do? staging a scene of discrimination against a Muslim woman to see how people would react. It made me cry and I wanted to share it, and it made me hope aloud (in internet terms, and over beer with Nicola) that I would do the right thing and stand up for others.

The same show went to Texas to see whether folks there would react to a gay family experiencing discrimination in a restaurant. This one made me cry too, and it gives me hope that if I need it, other people might stand up for me. Especially, it turns out, people in Texas. Texas may be one of 26 states where LGBT people can be refused service (which I did not know and makes me want to shriek!), but the people in this restaurant are not some faceless homophobic state statute, and I hereby apologize for every offhand dismissive generalization I have made about their state. I should know better, honestly, and it is just too fucking easy to paint in broad strokes. When I see things like this video, I remember to get out my finer brushes.

Enjoy your day.