JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

When he isn’t running his own animation Studio, my friend Steve publishes an excellent web magazine for animators called FLIP. Recently, for an up-coming article, he asked his animation friends for some of their childhood drawings. This sent me on a hunt for a pile of old, yellowed paper I knew I had some place…. Here are a few scans from that stash.

First, behold this epic battle-spread of German Knights VS English Knights. Gasp!

I’ve always drawn, for as long as I can remember, and these drawings here are certainly not my earliest (my toddler-scribbles are probably in a pile, along with those of all my siblings, collected by my Mother and hopefully still at my Dad’s house). These date from that period when I began to take an active interest in drawing, not simply doing it but also thinking about it; consciously trying to get “better” by understanding how other people did it. In my case, this fascination began in 1972, the year that I turned 8 years old.

The previous year, we had just moved to a new town. I often wonder if the period of alienation that followed inspired the escapism of drawing. But it is quite possible that this interest would have happened anyway. I had always loved animation and you can see some attempts to draw famous cartoon characters were there right from the very beginning. Though these few scribbles shown here are of famous DISNEY characters, the cartoons that played most often on TV were by WARNER BROTHERS and they were the ones that made me laugh the hardest and consequently got most of my attention.

I became even more fascinated by cartoons, beyond the fact that they made me laugh. I tried to figure out why the drawings were so good. “How come I can’t draw like that?” I have never understood why the inability to do something “well” was sometimes off-puting to me; leading to the abandonment of certain pursuits (mathematics, sport) whereas, my inability to draw was an obstacle to overcome and explore. Of course, this choice is unique to each individual. Other people (most, in fact) give up drawing to pursue other things.

Seeing this crude page of BIRD drawings (an attempt to draw the Warner Brothers CHICKEN HAWK so obsessed with Foghorn Leghorn) brings back a vivid memory of a frustrating day trying to draw BEAKS… “How do they make the beaks look so good in cartoons?” I still have a scrapbook of images cut from magazines that I would look at, from this period. Single-panel gag-cartoons, pages from Mad magazine and so on… Hilariously, around this time I also compiled a crude “portfolio” (using some left-over wallpaper from the renovation of our new house for the cover) because someone had told me that artists needed a portfolio. These drawings survive mainly because I had kept them in that binder.

A few years later, when my drawings began to improve, I became ashamed of these early scribblings and almost threw them out in a fit of self-consciousness. But I am glad now that I did not. I will post more from later years when I have scanned them.

Seeing WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE recently (which I enjoyed a great deal) reminded me of the time that I too ran away from home as a child.

I can no longer remember what caused the argument between myself and my mother on that particular day, long ago, but it probably wasn’t serious. At the age of 11, I had not yet acquired even the maturity expected of a child but already owned all the moodiness of a teenager. I was prone to statements like “it’s not fair!” or “you just don’t understand!” or “I wish I were never born!” and other such melodrama. While often silly, these churnings of my mind were not mellow-drama from my point of view… it was all intense drama to me.

Whatever the cause of the friction between us that day, it caught fire when my emotions got the better of me and I swore horribly at my mother, using a cuss word I didn’t fully understand then but that burns me with shame to remember now. The word launched from my lips, flew across the room, and struck her. The pained expression it marked on her face made me briefly but keenly aware that I’d crossed a terrible line between she and I, yet the insight was but a flash; I was still possessed by the boiling emotions that had conjured the vile incantation in the first place. Rather than reverse direction and apologise on the spot, which was certainly required, the momentum of my juvenile petulance flounced me not just across that terrible line, but also out of the house altogether.

I couldn’t believe it myself; I was running away from home.

Of course, I was really running away from what I had just done… but if that realisation came to me at the time, it was quickly trammeled underfoot by self-righteousness; I immediately re-cast myself in the role of a bold outlaw, on the run from injustice and a world that didn’t understand him… YEAH… Muttering grimly to myself, as I often did at that age, I stomped off to the far side of my tiny home-town; unfamiliar neighbourhoods where I felt I would not be pursued by my foes. Though it seemed to me then that the forces of oppression (ie; Mum) would round up a posse and try to hunt me down immediately, it is obvious to me now that this was not so; my mother had other children, including an infant, to watch over that day, and my father was at work.

Now that I was finally FREE, I thought of where, actually, to go… I had no idea at all. After considering my options, I head towards my friend Stephen’s house… then, half way there, thought better of it… I cannot now remember why. Perhaps, even then, I subliminally realised that I would appear absurd to anyone else, including a child of my own age, and therefore wanted to stay alone in order to enjoy my outlaw persona for a while…

It was a summer day; possibly during the end of year school holidays. I angrily kicked stones along the road, frustrated that the pockets of my shorts were empty of anything useful to a fugitive (not even a pocket knife) and my flimsy T-shirt would be useless after sundown. Even summer evenings can be cool in my home town, up in the mountains. I mused that it would have been superb to have prepared an escape package in advance; a bag of money, clothes and food, stashed somewhere in the garden, to be snatched up with a dramatic flourish as the parting-shot of a most-marvellous exit. That is what I should have done… This regret over my lack of forethought and stage-craft was an annoying pebble in the boot of my defiance; although I wasn’t actually wearing boots, I was wearing Flip-Flops, which was yet another source of regret for the great outlaw that day.

Well, too late to worry about that now; I am out in the world now and never going back.

As afternoon turned to evening however, my thoughts turned to home. I wondered how the family was dealing with my absence. I bet they miss me now that I am gone… A picture formed in my mind’s eye; my mother slumped distraught at the dining-table, in a kitchen bustling with police men and ambulance men, all offering comfort to the rest of my family members, each now heart-broken by the ME-shaped hole in their world. This vision of their pain was very moving… so much so that it moved my legs back towards my own neighbourhood. I suspect that my “compassion” was merely a glove-puppet manipulated by my ego, fascinated by the vision of a family hollow with the loss of ME and wanting to see this charming tableau for itself. Or else, it was my hollow stomach in control; simply walking the body across town towards its dinner. Whatever was driving my machinery, I furtively made my way through the darkening streets towards home, entered the vacant paddock behind our house, quietly jumped over the fence into our back yard and stealthily crept up to the house to peer inside…

I have a vivid memory of my family as seen from the kitchen window, though I am not sure if that is actually possible, given that that particular window would have been too high for me to peer into at that age… so either (A) I saw the kitchen from the bottom of the backyard where it was possible to see into the room, though from a distance (B) I pushed something up to the window to stand on, to get the closer view that I seem to remember (C) I actually saw my family through the (much lower) window of the TV room or (D) what follows is actually the memory of an entirely mental picture; inspired by the sounds I heard coming from within as I crouched in the dark outside.

Whatever the case may be, the memory I now see in my mind’s eye is not the the touching Pre-Raphaelite oil-painting of abject misery I had imagined and scurried home to see, instead it is the very picture of a family happily eating their dinner; exchanging stories from their days’ events and laughing at one-another’s jokes. My ego was outraged by this cheery Norman Rockwell scene; No one seemed disturbed that one member of the family was absent. My stomach was also peturbed; every last one of my family members was heartily and noisily enjoying their food. As tempted as I may have been by the sight of all that tasty chow, the affront to my ego was too much to bear, and away I stomped once again, into the gloom. My wounded-prince performance was pitch-perfect and spoiled only by the fact that nobody saw it, apart from the stray cat that lived in our yard.

I skulked in the shadows at the bottom of the garden while my wounded ego and rumbling tummy battled for the decision of what to what to do next. Meanwhile, the more thoughtful part of me tried to make sense of the difference between what I had imagined my family would be doing versus what they were actually doing… surely my family must eventually become worried at my absence… surely they will come to understand that I am serious and not kidding around… While evening became night, I watched the house intently; scanning for any sign of a search party… where were the Policemen? The ambulance men? Where was the visual-sweep of the yard by a concerned relative? I would have settled for even a perfunctory, bored glance out of a window by an uninterested relative…

Surely such a thing must happen eventually? No?

But the attention of the household was elsewhere… I could hear the theme music to various TV shows of the time, one after another as the night wore on, accompanied by the raucous laughter of a telly-watching family sitting comfortably inside, while I hungrilly shivered (with cold) and quivered (with rage) in the bushes outside. Grimly, I resolved to wait until everyone was asleep, then sneak inside the house, grab a few things (the bundle I had ruefully imagined earlier) and then depart, never to return. Ever again…. EVER. For real this time. This momentus decision was reached as my family, up yonder, noisily enjoyed the bald-head patting, high-speed antics of Mr Benny Hill.

Behind our house was an empty plot of land (used as playing fields by the primary school across the road) where I went to hide from the cackling mockery of my family and wait until they chortled themselves to sleep, choking as they did so, hopefully. As I’d done many times before, I lay in the grass and looked up at the stars… On that particular night, My thoughts were every bit as dark as the sky above me but nowhere near as beautiful. The night sky in the Southern hemisphere has infinitely more constellations on view than in the Northern sky. One feature of my home town to this very day is that the streets are not well lit at night. This lack of light pollution, plus the fact that my home town is up high on a plateau, means that the view of the night sky is even clearer there than most places. It is really something to see. On that night however, the beautiful, tiny clusters of distant worlds out there in space merely reminded me that I longed to be somewhere else.

They’ll be sorry when I am gone… said my ego. My stomach made the argument that the “punishing them with my absence” strategy didn’t seem to be working. Despite having a noisy stomach and a whiny ego as my companions that night, I felt utterly alone. My dog Jock; my tiny comrade from early childhood, had been “put to sleep” the year before, otherwise I would have had some warm-bodied company out there in the dark, not to mention a furry pirate for the noble outlaw to run away with… but as things stood, I was alone with my thoughts; Stewing in the brine of my own mind…

I checked on the house. Some lights were still on but the house itself was absolutely silent. I made my move. In my memory, it was around Midnight, when I finally re-entered the lair of my oppressors… but allowing for the time-dilation effects of childhood memories (not to mention childhood hunger) I now suspect it was much earlier when I stealthilly entered the back door which, like all the other doors in our house, was never locked (well, not until after a robber finally crossed the threshold 20 years later). In trying to piece together my frame of mind from that time, I believe that I intended to quickly grab supplies and head out immediately, to make good on my thus-far poorly executed escape. However, it is entirely possible that on some unconscious level I wanted to be caught, (as caught I soon was). What I am absolutely sure of now is that, as I entered the house, there was no hint of remorse for my earlier brutishness towards my own mother.

None that is, until I saw her sitting alone quietly in the kitchen waiting for me. I have no idea if my mother had planned to be there alone when I came home. Clearly the other children were in bed and my father, who played the Dirty Harry role when Mum and Dad did the “good cop bad cop” routine, may have gone to bed too (no doubt the evening’s hilarious TV entertainment had worn them all out) so the final showdown was between just she and I, in the exact same Saloon where the whole shooting match had begun; the family kitchen. It makes sense to me now that she may have wanted to handle this situation on her own. I would love to ask her now what was on her mind that day but sadly she isn’t around to tell me the answer any more. My mother died many, many years ago.

If she’d had a stern expression; hands on hips and a mouth full of recriminations, I could have kept up my “persecuted outlaw” performance but my mother’s wide-open face and compassionate eyes made that impossible. She gave me nothing at all to fight against… and, as I stood stunned, staring at her, my conscience, which had thus far been kept at bay by self-righteous mutterings, finally saw its chance and did what it had been trying to do all day; it gave me a thorough-going, savage internal pummelling, and relished every moment of it. I was overcome with emotion. During the thrashing emotional battle inside of me, the ego-fog was blown away, revealing what I must have known all along; I had wronged her and not the other way around. I was the bad guy in this story and nobody else. The extent of my theatrical posturing that day was the degree to which I had tried to convince myself otherwise. I burst into tears at this realisation, apologising profusely for what I had done. I was absolutely mauled by my shame. Pounded by guilt. But more than that, I was overwhelmed by gratitude, for though it may not have been in my conscious mind until I saw her waiting patiently for me, at that moment, I saw with great clarity that she was so much better than I… and how much more she deserved than what I had given her.

She welcomed me into her arms and I knew then that all, unbelieveably, was forgiven… which made my tears flow even more freely, rather than less, as you might reasonably expect. When I had calmed down a little, she had me sit down at the kitchen table and attempt to compose myself as she prepared me some food; my dinner was being kept warm in the oven all along. She had not forgotten me. This too, provoked another blubbering wave of emotion. I wolfed the food down hungrilly, through wracking sobs of tears, in that way only children can do… and as she watched me eat, Mum stroked my hair and gave me silent comfort through touch, in that way only mothers can do.

——-
This is one of the earliest memories I have of my conscience having a profound effect on me, forcing me to see myself not just in the 3rd person but also firmly in the wrong. It is one thing to say “sorry” because you know it will get you off the hook, and it is another thing altogether to actually be sorry because you realise what you have done is wrong, or hurtful to others. It was many years before I finally gained a fully functioning conscience; one that operated without authority figures present, or fear of punishment or other external consequences, but that allowed me to make moral judgements purely on my own… The conscience I have now isn’t perfect; it still sometimes takes some reflection for it to kick-in, though I do believe it is a reliable moral compass… but if I have have any consience at all today it is largely due to the long-suffering parenting and compassionate moral example of my own mother.

You are welcome to download this mini for free.

PROLOG
I meant to post this earlier, but got waylaid by technical difficulties and the distractions of real life. So, without further ado, here’s the story of an adventure from this time LAST year.

In September 2008, I went back to my hometown, met up with 6 childhood friends– Some having known each-other ever since kindergarten— and together the 7 of us, foolhardy middle-aged gits one and all, went on a back-breaking, thigh-quivering, mind-punishing, yet soul-stirring and ultimately-uplifting 5-night/4-day backpacking trek though the bush.

THE INCITING INCIDENT
This idea was hatched at the end of 2007, when I was back in Australia to be Best Man at my father’s wedding. At a BBQ a few days later, while waving those ever-persistent Aussie flies out of my face and chewing on a sausage that had been grilled into leathery submission, I caught-up with two of my childhood pals; STEPHEN (my first ever friend, we’ve been great mates since the age of 7) and MARK (a good friend since high school).

After comparing bald patches and love handles (I was the “winner” of BOTH contests) I mentioned that I’d be back again the next September for my Brother in Law’s 50th birthday. Surely we could synchronise schedules, meet each-other again, maybe rope-in some MORE school-mates and plan something more elaborate than another fly-blown Australian BBQ?

MARK proposed that a group of us walk the KOKODA TRACK, a grueling Trek through New Guinea that has almost become a rite of passage for some Australians. I liked the idea of a backpacking journey but suspected that I may not have been equal to a 10 day slog through tropical Jungle. I have a tendency to liquify in proximity to the equator.

STEPHEN suggested the THORA TRAIL, which goes through a National Park near our home town. The shorter trail, better weather, distance from head-hunters and proximity to where our Mummies and Daddies lived, all appealed to THIS particular thrill-seeker, and I was eloquent in my support of these logistics to the other two. Thus, we tentatively set the date for the trek to be 9 months away, contacted the rest of our group of friends — all of whom were immediately interested in the plan —and our number swelled to a total of 7 men.

Some had stayed in touch ever since we were kids. Others had lost contact over the years. I was excited by the prospect of almost a week with these old friends whom I so rarely see, but secretly, I wondered if I’d make a fool of myself, out there in the bush.

ANXIETY-ESTABLISHING FLASHBACK
My childhood memories show me as the runt of our pack. The yappy chihuahua running along behind the other motley mutts (the little one that goes “YIKE YIKE YIKE”). Whenever we kids jumped on our bicycles and pedalled out into the countryside on the shenanigans-du-jour, which usually involved setting fire to something, or blowing-up something… or catching poisonous creepy crawlies and making them battle (or a gruesome combination of all of the above) I was the kid asthmatically wheezing along at the rear of the posse.

Now as an adult, I dreaded the idea of yet again holding up the crew as we wandered through the bush… So, When I got back to San Francisco, I resolved to get into better shape.

PREPARATION-MONTAGE
I ask you now to project several different scenes onto your mental movie-screen: Me, middle-aged and puffy, wheezing red-faced on an aerobic hamster-wheel at the gym. There I am again, now hunched over a laptop, exchanging trip-planning e-mails with trekking-cronies on the other side of the world. Now, throw in a few shots of me ogling equipment in camping stores, and breaking in new hiking boots on the hills of San Francisco, and you have the perfect “Rocky training to Face Mr T” montage that defines my life in early 2008…

The pages of the montage calender have now flipped forward to September 2008….

TREKKERS ASSEMBLE!
DAY ZERO: One-by-one, the crew began to converge on ARMIDALE; the old home town. MARK (who still lives there) was joined by MYSELF and STEPHEN, then RICHARD (who I had not seen since 1991) and JOHN (a great friend who I have stayed in constant touch with all these many years, including adventures we had in Japan). While waiting on the arrival of the final TWO, due the following day, we went to buy food supplies. Good-natured bickering ensued over the definition of “necessity” and “luxury” and there were hilariously differing opinions as to how MUCH of each to buy, so in the end, we just bought ALL of it.

DAY ONE started with MARK cooking us a hearty breakfast at his house. We set up a mini production line to ration-out the food-supplies, then went to pick up some gear-essentials such as the EPIRB; an I-WANT-MY-MUMMY panic-button that would summon a rescue-helicopter if anyone was so lacking in team spirit as to snap a shin-bone or get themselves fanged by a snake. (I wanted the button that called someone to tuck you in with a cup of hot chocolate, on scary nights, but that one cost extra).

Back at MARK’s place, PHIL arrived (I had not seen him since STEPHEN’s wedding in 1991) and we all did a last-minute gear check. Strapping on my pack, I tried to affect an expression of nonchalance, despite my spinal discs being squished into pikelets by 30 KILOS (65 pounds) of equipment, clothing, food and water… The other lads were likewise bent double under their burdens, when we got word that PETER, the last of our crew, had missed his flight, would catch a later connection and meet us at the drop-off point that evening. So, we loaded our gear into cars (of people kind enough to drop us off and later pick us up at the other end) and set off on the adventure we had been planning for so long.

We grew-up inland, on a plateau called the NEW ENGLAND TABLELANDS, which is itself a part of the GREAT DIVIDING RANGE. An hour’s drive from our home town is POINT LOOKOUT, where the tableland escarpment can be seen to dramatically drop away, down to the ocean, many miles away. From this vantage point, at an elevation of 1500 meters (5000 feet) on a clear and beautiful day, STEPHEN pointed out our entire route; a 3-day walk down the escarpment through bushland within NEW ENGLAND NATIONAL PARK to the BELLINGER RIVER and then a one-day Canoe trip downstream to the town of BELLINGEN, near the coast.

While this was half the distance I had once imagined (initially thinking we’d walk ALL the way from our home town to the sea) it looked daunting now that I could see the scope of the trek with my own eyes… not just the sheer distance we needed to cover, but the terrain we would tackle, the drop in altitude and the time-frame we had to complete it in… As this became clear to all of us, so began the self-deprecating jokes about our physical failings, some of which become painfully real over the journey. Yet this sense of humor fueled the camaraderie that enabled us to deal with the fact that many of us would have been more sensible had we stayed at home and just rented DELIVERANCE, if we wanted an adventure.

As We pitched our tents, our number finally became 7 when the last of our crew showed up; good old PETER, (who I have stayed in touch with and had prior travel adventures with too; a great comrade on any mission). As PETER’s family drove away, so too left our connection with civilisation; we would see no other person in the next 3 days. We were on our own.

We cooked a huge meal, using as many of the “luxury” foods as possible. I found that 7 STEAKS I had bought were left behind in MARK’s Freezer. I’d planned to wait a day or two, until my fellow-trekkers had grown weary of reconstituted camping food, then unveil the 7 meaty treats (shrink wrapped to preserve them as long as possible) and thus bribe the other trekkers to tag-team piggyback me to the finish line… but alas it was not to be…

MARK’s wife and children dined well that night though.

A bonfire blazed, some grog appeared, and with it reminiscences of explosive adventures from our school days… then, by firelight we sketched the outlines of our adult lives: Of the 7 men assembled, only one still lived in the hometown. Though 4 had lived abroad, I am the only one who still does. A few had travel-adventures to tell… All but me had married. Two had since divorced. 5 had become fathers. One had even become a grandfather. Staying in contact with these old friends while living on opposite sides of the planet is challenging, and yet spending time with them makes the years melt away.

WITH LIGHT HEARTS & HEAVY PACKS…
DAY TWO was when hiking began. We got up early, once again ate as much of the perishable or heavy food as we could, broke camp, put on our packs and set off down the trail by around 7.30 AM… With full bellies, even fuller packs and one or two of us carrying heads heavy with hangover. Let’s ASSESS the trekking-crew shall we?

FITNESS: Some of us used to be splendid physical specimens but had now gone to pot (you all know who you are). Some had never been much to look at in the first place (I hereby nominate myself for this trophy). Some had been trying to get into shape for this trek with limited success (my 2nd nomination) and some either couldn’t be bothered or couldn’t find the time… A rare few had stayed active all along (MARK, PHIL & STEPHEN). In other words, physically speaking, probably only THREE of us SHOULD have come on the trip.

EQUIPMENT: Some had bought new gear (Myself, JOHN, and STEPHEN) while others used whatever old junk they found in the shed. PHIL’s approach was a hilarious combination of the two; his trekking-ensemble was some kiddie backpacks (labeled “MILO“) worn both front and back, to which he’d lashed pots and pans with pieces of string. This “jolly swagman” rig was complemented by boots so NEW that they literally had the price tags still on them. Though PHIL scoffed that he would BREAK THEM IN on the trip, in truth it would be the other way around; the boots would break his feet (though not his spirit). Let’s just say that, In terms of equipment, the well-prepared were, once again, the minority.

EXPERIENCE: All of us had done basic camping, in fact we often went camping together as teenagers (ironically, the fathers among us admitted they’d have difficulty letting their own kids go on the adventures that they themselves had done as kids). However, only STEPHEN, PHIL and RICHARD had done true wilderness backpacking (RICHARD having done military survival training). STEPHEN had considerable experience using topographical maps and GPS as a Field Geologist working in some of the most remote parts of this here Planet Earth.

Because his name consistently appears on the FITNESS/EQUIPMENT/EXPERIENCE matrix, STEPHEN would be the leader/navigator of the crew. Which is lucky for the rest of us galoots, who probably shouldn’t have come along and gotten in the way… Yay, STEPHEN!

For the first hour the trail was a joy to walk down and I fooled myself that the entire trip would be easier than I had feared. Then we came to a fork in the trail. To the left was a dark, twisted tunnel of fallen trees and tangled undergrowth. To the right was a path lit by bright sunshine in which danced pretty little butterflies. Which path do you think we took?

I’ll give you one guess…

We plunged into a trail so densely packed and overgrown that it resembled the creepy forest Snow White got lost in when she was being chased by the huntsman. It required a lot of stooping, climbing over fallen trees, clambering up crumbly embankments and pushing through tangled undergrowth in order to make headway, which is hard going with an overstuffed pack, and harder still with flabby muscles and 45 year-old knees. Another frustration was that just beyond the tangle of undergrowth were spectacular views of the escarpment, but we didn’t have time to go looking for views if no overlooks were presented to us on our journey through the stygian jungle, which, sadly, they were not.

Apart from a few short breaks to boil coffee and eat trail mix, we had a hard slog from 9 AM till 4.30 PM when we finally found the creek, our goal in order to stay on schedule. We finally pitched our tents and sat down to eat. I reflected on the grueling first day. All the stooping, twisting and turning really took its toll on my knees. I had the cardio-vascular fitness to go the distance but my legs were already giving out. If we’d had to walk even another 10 minutes that day, I would have been wimpering like an abandoned puppy.

DAY THREE we followed the creek, unless it meandered too much, when we’d take off our boots and walk THROUGH the water (sometimes up to our chests) negotiating the submerged and slippery rocks in SANDALS; a precaution against the BULLROUT, a freshwater puffer-fish that poisons if stepped on in bare feet (later, our canoe guide confirmed, from personal experience, that it was the worst pain of his life). That evening, we camped in a beautiful natural meadow and just had time to get some warm food in our neck-holes and compare foot-blisters and back-aches before being hit with a thunderstorm.

Lying in a rain-battered tent with the already-snoozing STEPHEN (ever an early-to-bed and early-to-rise type) while thunder passed over us and lightning lit up the tent-fabric, I thought about the day’s walk: less strenuous and scenically prettier than the day before. Happily, my legs, though aching, had done their job. I began to realise that my Achilles heel was actually my KNEES. Going UP hill was relatively easier but going DOWN hill was brutal and slowed me down considerably. I was happy with the gear I had bought; my boots were not chaffing (unlike some of the other lads) my pack was comfortable (though heavy) and my sleeping bag was warm and cosy (as I proved by sleeping like a baby that night).

DAY FOUR began with PETER tipping an enormous CENTIPEDE out of his boots. Apart from this creepy crawly, one RED BELLY BLACK SNAKE seen the same morning, and the LEECHES we were constantly pulling off of ourselves, we didn’t see any native wildlife. Hardly surprising given the racket we made, thrashing through the bush. Just the gristle-popping sounds from my knees alone were enough to scare away wild beasts.

However, we did see herds of abandoned horses and cattle roaming through farm lands long ago acquired by NEW ENGLAND NATIONAL PARK and now being reclaimed by the native Australian bush. We walked through hauntingly beautiful landscapes; from densely-forested misty hills, to undulating lush meadow-lands as we approached the coast. I tried to get ahead on the uphills, knowing I’d be dawdling down the other side on trembling knees.

Most of the trek was in a MOBILE PHONE DEAD ZONE. Being incommunicado was a plus for adventure but a minus in terms of safety (hence the EPIRB panic-button). Thus, if we did not call family members that night, when we were due to re-enter signal-range, there were contingency plans… I never heard what would happen if we did NOT check in on time… something involving helicopters and cadaver-sniffing dogs, I expect.

We came upon a pretty little water hole and PHIL did a little fishing while the rest of us watched, hoping he’d provide us with something other than a freeze-dried dinner. We still couldn’t use mobile phones, and STEPHEN didn’t want rescue-teams alerted unnecessarily, so he left us with detailed instructions on how to find the next camp site (on the nearby property of his friend) and set off alone, to find a phone-signal and contact family ASAP.

STEPHEN had not been gone 5 minutes when I decided to follow, both to keep him company and help set up our tent. After 10 minutes of walking I had not caught up, but after all, he was the fittest of us… I checked a turn off from the trail… nothing. After 10 more minutes walking, I wondered if I’d messed up the directions and 10 more minutes later I was sure of it. Heading back to the fishing hole, I hoped to get clarification from the other blokes.

They weren’t there.

How did they pass me on this simple track? Perhaps in the moment I’d explored a turn-off? Now I didn’t know how to find the camp site and couldn’t ask anyone who did. The afternoon turned to early evening as I thought what to do… Thankfully, 5 men leave a lot of boot prints. Following their tracks, I considered the possibility of spending the night alone… I had a sleeping bag and my share of food and water so that would be have been do-able.

Thankfully, it did not come to that; 20 minutes later, MARK came jogging down the trail in my direction with a relieved grin on his face. The lads had indeed shot past me, not realising I was missing until meeting up with STEPHEN, when MARK was despatched as NONG-recon patrol. He led me to our final camp site. We all ate, and made a huge bonfire.

Though happy, everybody was visibly tired. Even a FIT bloke can be tag-team pummeled by the cumulative effects of sub-par equipment; a day shuffling on feet blistered by ill-fitting boots, followed by a sleep-deprived night shivering in a thin sleeping bag can take its toll. Our leader was fit AND had quality gear but, by the end of day 4, even he looked tired, as the responsibility of getting us other idjits safely from A to B was his extra burden to carry.

And it wasn’t over yet. We slept to get our strength up for the NEXT and FINAL day…

DAY FIVE: The wicked genius of our plan was that once our LEGS could walk no further, our ARMS would take us the rest of the way, in CANOES. The river water-level was such that we could not start from the point of our last camp site. Instead, our canoeing company picked us up, and drove us about 20KM (12 miles) further downstream and put us in the river there.

Poor JOHN got clumsy ME as his canoe-partner. We were still learning how to work together when the group paddled to a fork in the river. The guide shouted that both paths converged later but that one was harder. We prudently head for the easier path, to the jeers of “YA SOOKS!” from the others, who’d gone the harder way. Thus baited, we made a last-second course adjustment, almost over-turning, and went through the more turbulent path.

Later, on shore, while eating our lunch and licking our wounds, JOHN and I resolved to “POUR IT ON.” Back in the water, we paddled like men possessed! Our steering was sloppy and we zig-zagged across the river like a drunken snake, but pulled ahead of the rest through (A) sheer volume of water shifted by our paddles, (B) post-lunch food-coma kicking with the others, and most importantly (C) the fact that nobody but us saw it as a “race” in the first place. Be that as it may, reaching the end-point first, and waiting smugly for the other blokes as they limped in, one by one, was a soothing balm for our chapped egos.

High-Five.

I am not a drinker, except on special occasions, such as our return to civilisation; a PUB in an old Victorian Hotel in the pretty town of BELLINGEN. Despite not having any enthusiasm for beer, it tasted like amber ambrosia on THAT particular night. We ate fine food (peppercorn kangaroo, in my case) at the hotel bistro as we happily reflected on our TREK.

Backpacking teaches how little you need; carrying it all on your back requires simplification. Then, on returning to modern life, there’s a keener appreciation for simple pleasures; Dry feet! What a magnificent invention. A bed! With linen! How sublime. After a week hanging your arse over the side of a log, a flushing toilet is a wonderful thing. We relished each of those joys while staying overnight at the hotel. It was a very happy end to a satisfying trip.

The last to leave after breakfast next morning were myself and JOHN, picked up by his brother Martin, who noticed a fat, blood-engorged LEECH thrashing around on the ground outside the pub, where we’d just said good-bye to our departing comrades. Clearly this blood-sucker had fallen off one of US, during the back-slapping farewells, and was now wondering where all his good times had gone to… a parasitical Wall Street Crash.

THE WRAP-UP
Talk of leeches, aching muscles, and blistered feet doesn’t convey the immense satisfaction of the trek. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of our adult lives… The physical pain was handled with grace, and self-deprecating laughter. Nobody had a meltdown. Hardship can actually be a joy if endured in good company and the right spirit, yet even a PARTY can be made miserable if someone can’t deal with life’s inevitable little setbacks…

Looking at my photographs from the trip, I am struck by the fact that most of them show us resting (I didn’t think to take pics in the midst of the hard stuff) so the impression they give is of a bunch of scruffy, puffy duffers sitting on their arses at various picturesque spots.

Thankfully, JOHN shot some video of the trekkers in action and sent a wonderful mini-movie to the rest of us earlier this year. In stark contrast to the heroic image of us that I have lingering in my mind’s eye, the video shows a doddering bunch of old geezers, so I can only conclude that JOHN must have somehow messed up the settings on his camera….

OK, sure… we 7 goobers, in questionable physical condition, carrying bulging backpacks festooned with clanking pots and pans, while traipsing through the forest, could accurately be compared to the 7 DWARFS… However, I PREFER to see us as somewhat adventurous, even heroic… A Muffin-Topped 7 SAMURAI, or A High-Cholesterol MAGNIFICENT 7…

Writing about this Journey has taken me almost as long as it did to walk it!

Sony Trinitron TV set: Jan 2001-Jun 2009.

This ballpoint sketch of my TV also accurately shows the level of clutter in but one tiny corner of my crummy apartment… and so it is with the clutter inside of my mind.

Not long ago, when television broadcasting here in the Bay Area switched from analog to all-digital, my old Sony Trinitron TV set, the constantly-chattering room mate that has shared my apartment since 2001, went silent. I do not plan to replace it.

I love watching TV, and that can sometimes be a problem, for I can sit in front of bad television for hours with my mouth lolling open, a caveman staring at the flickering images in the fire pit… Lately I have been feeling that I do not have the time to waste. I would prefer to do other things altogether, ideally making media of my own to numb OTHER people’s minds with; Comics, drawings, short-stories and so forth. And when it comes time to relax and be a media consumer, I would rather be looking at stuff that I am actually interested in, and nothing else.

Last year, my pal Mike introduced me to the concept of a “cleanse”; a diet where the goal is not to lose weight (although that can be a by-product) but to clean out your body of a lifetime’s-worth of preservatives and junk food. So, in that spirit, I am trying the MEDIA equivalent and hope to clean out the insides of my head and cash in an extra-time dividend as well. Quite some time ago I gave up cable TV, now I don’t have broadcast TV or even radio in my apartment. Not only that, I have no home-internet either, for I have learned (the hard way) that there is no time suck worse than spending a day on Facebook.

As I have disconnected myself one-by-one from all of the nodes of the media matrix, my Apartment has become something of a sensory-deprivation tank in terms of the audio visual media. Or more accurately, it is a sensory-selection tank, as I am not truly sensory-deprived at all; I am now exposed only to the media that I choose to take into my tiny life-pod with me, one morsel at a time.

Even though my old Sony Trinitron no longer functions as a TV-set it still serves me well as a monitor with which to watch rented DVDs. There is so much wonderful Television being made now but I find that my favourite way to view it all is to wait until each series comes out on DVD and watch several episodes in a row, free from commercials and the temptations of channel-surfing.

There have been earlier periods where I tried living without TV. Long ago, when I was living in Asia, I couldn’t understand what was being broadcast anyway, so I barely watched television. Well, apart from psychotic Japanese game shows and equally insane anime cartoons (two cases where non-comprehension was somehow enjoyable). For those several years I got out of the habit of watching TV. That trend continued when I moved to France, where I didn’t even go to the trouble of buying a TV set, and the first few years living here in the USA were also television-free.

I remember well how many conversations I was unable to participate in back then, simply because I had not seen the previous night’s episode of SEINFELD or the SIMPSONS. I got tired of hearing about those shows (though I found out years later that all the fuss was justified). I continued to live in my media-free bubble until someone gave me their TV to look after while they traveled abroad. While baby-sitting that lonely telly, I turned it on one day and was suddenly back where I had begun; a man without the strength of mind to shut off the flow even when all that pours out from the box is crap.

Even now, I was unable to get rid of the TV myself. I had to wait until my TV set died before I could finally shut it off. But I hope to make the most of this change. When not watching the cherry-picked best of the TV-show crop on DVDs, I hope to read more books (I have a pile of gifts that I have yet to read) and do more drawing, free of the distractions of telly-oggling. I know myself well enough by now to realise that it is only a matter of time before I am back chewing through media crud, but until then I hope to make the most of this quiet time.

Although, now that the handy dandy white-noise machine has fallen silent, I am much more able to hear the squabbling couples, flushing toilets and crying babies in the apartments around me, not to mention OTHER people’s TVs. Not exactly what I had in mind when I began this sensory deprivation idea, but there you go….

This is one of my favourite photos that I have ever taken, though I realise that it is entirely for personal reasons, rather than for any photographic merits (after all, it was taken back in the days of manual focus). It is a picture of my Grandfather’s hands taken on a very happy day; a 51st birthday celebration for my own father, almost twenty years ago.

This was not a surprise party, but my arrival was unexpected, as I had been away from Australia for many years, and it is one of the very few times that I think my family actually pulled off a genuine SURPRISE. Security leaks spoiled any subsequent attempts (although those later celebrations were still fun). However, the operation went smoothly on this occasion, partly because I didn’t tell ANYONE that I was coming home to Australia from France, after 4 straight years abroad.

It was the middle of winter and just a few days later it snowed (I have some shots from that same trip of the Baker family home covered in white, which is unusual in my home town) but on THIS particular day it was just about the most beautiful weather, and so the celebrations took place outside, at tables set up in the garden behind the house that I grew up in.

I was sitting opposite my Grandfather on that day, and couldn’t take my eyes off of his hands, (unless it was to look up at his cheery old noggin) and, happily, I had the presence of mind to snap a photograph of them back then, because seeing those hands had a similar, mesmerising effect on me again, on the day that I re-discovered this photo of them. Almost 20 years after the picture was taken and 10 years since my Grandfather died.

There’s as much history, character and expressiveness in hands as faces, but we don’t often look at them. In fact, I think that hands tell a story that faces do not because, relatively early in our lives, we learn to mask the feelings on our faces, but our hands often show what is really going on inside of us (this is the animator in me talking, now).

These rough old hands, that spent a lifetime working with horses and in rural stables, and their dirty yet somehow delicate fingernails ever-so gently caressing a fancy drinking glass, say so much to me about the many aspects of the lovely man who was behind them.

Last year, during a conversation about the delights of Mexican food (between Rhode, Ted and I), someone hit upon the idea for a TACO TRUCK CRAWL; an epic journey from taco stand to taco stand, in quest of the best Tacos. Many months later, the idea came to fruition, as a group of EIGHT of us, Rhode, Ted, Myself and 4 others (Julia, Sherrie, Elaine, Jeff and Anita) wandered down International Boulevard in Oakland, stuffing our faces every few feet. The entire route was walk-able and cooked up ahead of time by the well-organised mind of the formidable Ted. The milestones along the way, where we all dutifully put food into our necks, were as follows:

1. TACOS ZAMORANO (Taco Truck) The Carnitas at this truck were afterwards voted the best of the entire crawl… however, I can not comment on that assessment, as at this first stop of the day I had me a CARNE ASADA taco, which was a great start to the proceedings.

2. EL GORDO (Taco Truck) Here, I shared a tasty CARNITAS taco with Rhode. We went halves thereafter, in the interests of pacing ourselves. There was a lot of eating yet to be done!

3. EL GRULLO (Taco Truck). This is where I had my favourite taco of the day; a CHORIZO taco, that was a little greasy but very tasty nonetheless. Oh yummy yum.

4. LOS MICHOACANOS (Taco Truck). This place offered hand made tortillas (on weekends, anyway) and also offered BIRRIA (goat) which I tried and enjoyed… The Goat was quickly chased down my throat by a pig… in the shape of an AL PASTOR taco.

4A. CHURROS RELLENOS (Churro Cart). Next, Rhode led us all to his favourite Churro cart. His belief is that a churro needs to be eaten fresh (I have the same opinion when it comes to donuts; cousins to the churro) and this is the place to get a Churro made to order; battered in front of your eyes and then stuffed with the flavouring of your choice. I had never heard of stuffed churros before and was dying to try one but I wanted to hold off on the sweets until I had eaten my fill of tacos first. Ted was of the same mind, and so we high-tailed it away from that Churro cart, lest we would be tempted to break our steely resolve.

5. MI GRULENSE (Taco Truck). At the next truck, Elaine, the last member of the crawl-crew, finally showed up just as I was ordering a BUCHE taco, which was my least favourite edible consumed that day. I found out later that Buche is Pig Esophagus… And it actually tasted just as unappetising as that sounds…

6. EL OJO DE AGUA (Torta Truck). This place had a huge selection of TORTAS and also some tasty AGUA FRESCAS. A chicken, bacon, avocado and ham Torta (shared with my fellow crawlers) and a mango Agua Fresca both did their part to reboot my palette after it was crashed by some malware installed by the deadly Buche.

At this point, the crawl-crew split up. Elaine was interested in the Goat taco experience which we had partaken of before she showed up. Ted and I were now ready to have some CHURROS…. Oh yes, indeed we were. So a group of churro eaters set off for the Churro cart as Rhode took Elaine back to Los Michoacanos, in quest of the Goat Taco.

7. CHURROS RELLENOS (Churro Cart). Fortified by my share of the huge Torta, I was now ready for some sweets. I bought one of each of the stuffed Churros on offer at the magic wagon I had seen earlier; VANILLA, CHOCOLATE, CARAMEL, STRAWBERRY and one good old PLAIN (unstuffed) Churro…. They were all good but, in my opinion, the Vanilla was the best of the flavours. Tears of joy flowed freely as I chewed on that healing Vanilla Churro. Sniff… I shared my bounty with the rest of the CHURRO AWAY TEAM as we headed back to rendezvous with the GOAT TACO AWAY TEAM.

7A. LOS MICHOACANOS (Taco Truck). Elaine was enjoying her goat taco (as I knew she would) when the rest of us showed up with the sweets. This would not be the first time (or even the last time) on our mission, that people who were already complaining of being “full” reached over for something else to stuff in their neck-holes, double-handed. After some reflection, we realised that we needed a place to sit, unwind and drink….

8. LA PIñATA (Restaurant). This fine restaurant in nearby Alameda was crowded when we showed up at day’s end. Thankfully, we found a table out in back of the huge, maze-like place. We ordered some drinks and some bacon/shrimp guacamole and proceeded to amaze ourselves by guzzling it all, even though we all were quite full when we sat down. Thereafter, conversations flowed about such diverse subjects as naked clowns, super heroes, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and other such nonsense…

At the beginning of the day, some of us knew each-other well, some of us knew each-other only via the internet and some didn’t even know each-other at all but by the end of a punishing day’s worth of eating and laughing, we had all bonded, as anyone on a grueling, yet rewarding, mission is likely to do. Crawl-Crew Unite!

Thanks to my fellow crawlers for their photos (my camera battery died after the first truck).

There has been a meme going around the Facebook community whereby people write an autobiographical list of 25 factoids about themselves. Mine took a while to type (I am both a windbag and a very slow typist) so I thought I may as well post it here too, for posterity:

1. I have been on the fence about doing this 25 THINGS thing… First, I was going to ignore it, then planned to make up 25 facetious things, but in the end just decided to do it. That internal mental tussle between different options, that ends in doing nothing new at all, is the state of my mind at any given time; passionately ambivalent about most things. The wheels are spinning constantly but forward progress (if there is any) is slow.

2. I am the first member of my family (on either side) to be born outside of Australia for 4 generations, which is very rare down there, where most people have shown up rather recently. I alone was born in Scotland. My parents met at university and had moved to Edinburgh while my dad was completing his studies and, once he was done, they moved back to Australia where the rest of my siblings were born.

3. As far as I know, even though my family has been in Australia for quite some time, there is no convict in my ancestry. This has supposedly been verified on my father’s side; a point of pride for my dad but actually a great disappointment to me… I haven’t given up hope that a long hidden cut-purse or pick-pocket will someday fall out of my mother’s side of the family tree if I shake it hard enough.

4. My earliest memories are from growing up in Tasmania, some from possibly as far back as 2 years old but it is hard to date them because there is nothing in the memories to place them into a time-line. The first memory that CAN be positively dated is of my baby sister Rachel, from when I was 3 years old, because she died when I was 3 and a half. I remember that day too. My father and I are the only two people left in my family who have any memories of her. If she had lived she would have been 42 now.

5. Most men have experienced a time in their childhood when they felt bullet proof. I never had this feeling myself. Although I feel childish now as an adult, back when I actually WAS a child, I felt like a feeble old man. Water terrified me back then, probably due to an episode when I was kick-boarding in the sea at around the age of 5. When the kick-board was flicked out of my hands by a wave, I went from misplaced confidence to abject terror within two gulpings of sea water. Thankfully, my dad spotted me going under and was able dive in and fish me out in time. Consequently, I didn’t learn to swim until I was about 17. That is very rare in Australia where your typical kid can swim almost from birth.

6. I look atrocious in a Speedo.

7. Many years later, when living in Japan, I was at the most crowded beach I had ever seen in my life; an absolute sea of humanity covered the sand. I went up onto the heads for a better view from which to take a photo of the crowd (otherwise nobody would believe such a scene back in Australia). Just below me, a group of little kids was out in the deep water with kick-boards. No sooner was I reminded of the day that I lost my own kick-board many years before…. than one of the kids was caught in the backwash of a wave coming off the rocks, lost her kick-board and went under the water. She was a long way from shore and the life-guards. So, without pausing to take off my shoes and clothes, I jumped in and grabbed her. It was impossible to clamber back up the vertical rocks, so I swam for the shore, which was hard going due to the extra weight of my sodden clothes. Anyway, I got her to safety. This is one of my proudest achievements, certainly the one where my presence on planet Earth made the most difference to someone else.

8. I am not sure who is the more cruel; Father Time or Mother Nature.

9. I have a wine coloured birthmark on my back that I didn’t even know about for years, because it is in my blind spot and nobody had told me about it. I got quite a fright when I saw it in a mirror for the first time, as a self-conscious teenager.

10. My role as the eldest child was to flush out all my parents’ bad genes to spare my siblings from asthma, excema, allergies, high blood pressure and who knows what else… I’ll probably be bald in a year or two whereas all my 4 brothers have hair thicker than coonskin caps. Despite all that, I have very good eyesight and excellent teeth. At least, I did last time that I checked… I haven’t been to the dentist since 1997 nor the doctor since 1998. I don’t like medicos and their negative trip; “you have high cholesterol” “you have an enlarged prostate” blah, blah, blah…

11. I am agnostic about everything I can think of. When other people emphatically state anything with absolute certainty it mystifies and even annoys me… However, I must confess that I am a bit jealous of the self-righteousness that must be the dividend of their dogma investment.

12. As a small child, I used to believe that we all went to some “real” place when we dreamed. According to my childhood cosmology, if you saw someone in a dream it was because both of your minds had actually met each-other in some fantastic dream-place, a sort of sleepy-time heaven. I now realise that this is utter bollocks but I still like the idea anyway. Sadly, I rarely remember dreams any more. Maybe only twice a year. I’ve always had trouble getting to sleep, and once I have gotten there, also have great difficulty in waking up. Despite (or perhaps because of) those two facts, sleeping is one of my favourite things to do. Also, perhaps related to this lifetime of sleep deprivation, I have a really bad case of Yoda-eyes.

13. Speaking of him; Star Wars changed my life. The Phantom Menace changed it back again.

14. I can tolerate more than the average amount of filth and chaos in my apartment, or my work space, but I like the emotional spaces I inhabit to be minimalist; tidy and free of clutter. I have a hard time dealing mixed feelings or divided loyalties… which is something I need to work on. I am only just realising that life is about achieving a balance between opposites rather than purging one for choosing the other.

15. Anyone who says that I have a fear of emotional commitment clearly has not seen me hold a grudge; till death do us part.

16. I have definitely been in love at least once- either that or it was Stockholm Syndrome- and it is probably true what they say; that true-love never dies, but what they don’t tell you is that the permanence is actually the worst thing about it.

17. Drawing was an escape for me when as a kid. Sadly, I’ve lost that aspect of it now that it’s a job that I get paid to do but my fondness for both it and animation (which I’ve had as long as I can remember) has not diminished even after working in the industry since the age of 17. If I wasn’t working in Animation who knows what I would do…. My current outlet for personal expression, outside of my professional work, is making comics in my spare time… which combines a love for drawing with a recently discovered interest in telling stories. The problem I am dealing with now is reconciling the desire to say something with the fact that I have nothing very original to say… which leads to a curious blend of feeling both full and empty at the same time. But Auden said: “Art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.” so maybe there is some fuel for material there after all…

18. There is so much focus on winning in our culture; stories about winners and how to be one… but it is the stories about losing and losers themselves that I am drawn to. I think that it is funny when we call other people “loser” as an insult. By definition, there is only one winner in any event, which makes all the rest of us losers. I learned to identify with being a loser years ago and I have a lot more peace of mind now because of it.

19. I have done hardly any traveling in my home country but way more than my fair share elsewhere in the world. I lived out of a backpack for about 5 years straight, during which time I travelled throughout Asia (while working over there in various animation studios) and also explored both North and South America and did a bit of looking around Europe. I still have a mental image of myself as some global hobo, but the sad fact is that I am fairly sedentary these days. I still have some adventures that I want to go on, so I may strap that backpack on again sometime soon….

20. During a backpacking adventure trip through South America, myself and my childhood pal Peter narrowly avoided jail time when we discovered that some rat-bags had been smuggling drugs under our seats. After our intercity bus had passed the security checkpoint outside Lima, searched from end to end by fierce-looking guards bristling with weaponry, the two shady characters sitting behind us pulled about 8 bags of coke (or heroin or god knows what) out from slits under OUR seat cushions, flashing the two gringo patsies some shit-eating grins as they left. By the time we figured out what had actually gone down, they were off the bus… It was a sobering moment when we realised what would have happened had the guards found the stuff… I would be Facebooking now from a Peruvian prison.

21. My palate can only hear foods when the volume is turned UP; Indian, Thai, Hunan… and some of my best friends are carbohydrates. The smell of baking bread, or any pastry, is irresistible to me.

22. I’m a late starter and slow bloomer in just about everything. I still cannot drive. I am not at all acquisitive; by the time I buy the “latest thing” it is already old news. I don’t own much and the stuff do I own I’ll keep for years. While working in LA a few years ago, a friend referred to me as an “LA quadriplegic” because I didn’t drive or have a celphone. When my old analog TV dies, after the switch to all digital broadcasting happens, I probably wont buy a replacement.

23. Though raised in a rural area, I am a city person at heart. Sure, cities are the orifices of the planet and disgusting sometimes… but orifices are the places where you have the most fun.

24. I have never understood poetry. I know that is a deficiency in me. I like the use of the word, as in ” that movie was poetic” but, although I enjoy lyrical, poetic qualities in many other things, I cannot connect with the real thing at all. Poetry always seems like a song that is missing the music, to me.

25. Being ironic was once the way to go; I looked up to people who always ” took the piss” and could see through hypocrisy, the manipulations of the media and whatnot. That approach still has its place… but after I realised that detachment is my natural state anyway, and that I need something in opposition to my over-active Bullshit-Detector to achieve some balance in life, I am now grateful for those rare books, artworks, music, experiences and people that burn away the fog of sarcasm once in a while, and allow me to truly feel something.