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19 Years ago, on a Clear Tuesday Morning...
5 years ago
First Written the year after the events.:
Tuesday Morning, I am barely awake, and drifting in and out of
consciousness. I woke at 6 to let the cat in and in am not very
successfully trying to get back to sleep, before the 8:00Am alarm. At about 7:15-20 My Phone rings, and if it's ringing, it’s
solicitors, bill collectors, or my dad wanting me to move my car. It's none of the above; it's my friend Francis, harbinger of bad news.
Usually he calls me at work, and tells me of some gun control
legislation that the state house has cooked up, or some smug
pronouncement by some ivory tower groups. This results in me having a stomachache and some anger for the rest of the day. In person he's a cheerful, and jovial sort, but he I guess likes to spread bad news. He nearly yells, "Have you heard? The World Trade Center is gone! Two planes crashed into it, and one crashed into the pentagon!"
My Response was almost "bullshit", as occasionally Francis will drop a bad joke on me like that.
"I'm not shitting you. Turn on the TV.” he breathlessly commands.
I am a news junkie. Fox and CNN are the let and right buttons on my remote (It's usually between Cartoon network, CNN and FOX, but Cartoon network shows the execrable "Scooby Movies" late at night, so I turn on the news, usually Hannady & Colmes on Fox). One of them comes up, and I don't know what I am seeing. It looks like a city, maybe Manhattan, covered with a huge cloud of dust. Nothing except structures near the waterfront is discernable I watch, and the sound is the reporter, I
think from Fox, speaking in the same sort of quavering, broken voice, you hear from someone who’s either been shot at, or beaten. The views change, and its one long look down the street, over the pudgy reporter's left shoulder as he's facing the camera. And the horizon is dominated by a huge beige cloud. They then play tape of the twin towers smoking, much like they did in 1993, except it's both of them, and the amount of smoke, reminds me of the MGM Grand Fire of 10 -15 years ago.
Then one of them "fluffs" at about the 80th floor and the floors
above flatten in a huge mass of smoke and dust, then to my surprise the rest of the building goes with it. I thought they built these things stronger, but the plume expands sideways, like a tree, then floats downward.
"Holy Shit", is about all I manage.
Francis asks what Channel I'm on. I tell him Fox, and we both play dueling remotes. Flipping over to CNN,
I see the impact on the second tower, but not what caused it. Turning back to Fox, I see a much better shot, from a traffic copter, of an airliner, trimmed for level flight (flaps in, gear in, lean and fast, probably near it's 600MPH cruising speed) slide in from the right of the picture, and rather than seeing it pass behind the building as one usually expects, Liquid fire, squeezes out of the building, like mayonnaise on a hastily grabbed sandwich, and then it turns to smoke, and roils thickly op the sides of the tower in ponderous slowness, while a spatter of glittering debris, fans out and away from the impact to drift
down to the streets below. On a perfectly clear day, the sun just glitters.
I talk with Francis, as they show footage of people on the ground
running away, and of the collapse from the street level.
The second tower collapse is more dramatic, as it looks more like an inverted mushroom cloud, spreading from the bottom as the building slides ponderously into it. The cloud engulfs everything, so at this time, I am "caught up". Rumors are reported on the news of another plane. Shots of the Pentagon, on fire, and speculation of other planes in the air, also being used as large, jet powered Kamikazes. I tell Francis, there was a book like what's happening called "Storming Heaven", by Dale Brown, but it was just one jet, and there seemed to be three.
I finish up with Francis, and my Dad is up. He was 7 when Pearl Harbor happened, and his TV is on, but I knock on the door, and ask if he has seen the news. Duh.. It's on. He seems interested, but not particularly disturbed, or anything. I go to get dressed for work. We had a morale crushing speech last week, and new hour tracking methods and daily report requirements that have turned a 3d Games gig, into a McJob, because of
some incompetence in higher management. I am not looking forward to working long hours. I shower and get dressed. In the shower, I start to get angry.
""The U.S.", My Country, has been attacked. It's not a loud
anger, but like a reaction to an insult, tinged with a little worry as
the events seem to still be happening. I watch more news on TV as I dress, then I get in the car, and discover I am becoming a little emotionally fragile. It makes me angrier. I start posting a few messages on Yerf.Yap, and Polycount. The polycounters are pretty gung ho, especially since one of the Moderators, an NYPD Detective Sergeant has not checked in.
I hit McDonalds for breakfast, and the cheerful Mexican lady I see every morning is her cheerful self, and I order my lunch, but she notices that she didn't get a smile from me in the morning, and asks if it's about the news. I tell her that I am angry about the news. She nods, and tells me to go to the next window, her usual smile faded slightly. I get an idea, and drive back home, and in the front closet I keep two flag. One an old 48 Star flag that I use for public displays with the Historical club, and another I purchased when I was in ROTC. I take the 50 star flag,
and hand the 48 star flag to my Dad. And mention he ought to put it up.
I resume my trip to work, listening to the radio. Limbaugh is not on, instead it's continuous ABC news feeds, 50% ABC Radio, and 50% ABC TV, with Peter Jennings. He talks and speculates while I drive through fairly normal traffic. I pull into work, and see one of the other artists on my team leaving the parking lot on his Italian Racing Bike. I ask, "Not staying?"
He says, "Nope, not in the mood", darkly and I nod, and he rides off. I then promptly lose it, and pull into the garage sobbing quietly. The employee, Jem was recently in the Rangers at a Middle Easter Language Specialist. He’s a decent artist, a bit of a jock, a deadly Q3A player, and a natural when it comes to languages, speaking several Middle Eastern languages fluently. Think of a slightly more Mediterranean Chris Issak
and you won't be too far off. I didn't think I'd ever see him again. I recover, clean up, and walk into the bullpen with a flag under my arm, and Dad’s hammer. The two Russian ladies, Olga and Inna, who also work on our project are looking exceedingly worried and are talking amongst themselves. I must have looked like an ax murderer coming in, as people just got out of my way. I climbed up the cube, and punched the pushpins into the wallboard, and hung the flag very carefully. Only then did I
check in and begin to work.
No one was in the mood. When working on the Playstation 2, you need to have a version of one, called a "Debug Station" which is a PS2 with an Ethernet connection. The other end of the PS plugs into a television so that you can "check your work" to see what it looks like through the hardware. Well the Televisions were Aiwa models 21-inch screens that
take up an inconvenient amount of space, but have a great picture, so people will bring in unauthorized VCR’s and hook them up and play the tapes they like to watch. However,
they also came with a pair of rabbit ears. I plugged mine in eventually when the radio wasn't giving me any info. ABC was the only channel I could get and there was Peter Jennings in his shirtsleeves, extemporizing, while listening to reporters calling in from all over Manhattan. They showed the footage, and people at work would pause or halt, when the plane smacked into the tower, or either of the towers collapsed. One by one people snuck out of work. I didn't get much down, working on a tank model for our game (Type 95 Light tank). And as the news wore on, I became more angry, and touchy. Francis called, and
suggested we go out and donate blood. Some of the employees I confide in were unavailable, though I managed to track down a fellow employee and mutual friend or Francis' and suggested he join us to give blood. He liked the Idea and as soon as the boss said it was okay we left.
I asked on the newsgroup of one was supposed to eat, or not eat, before giving blood. I was told it would be a good idea to eat a high protein meal and a lot of fluids, so I would not be woozy for very long. So on the way to Francis I got in line at In & Out Burger. When the cheery young voice in the speaker asked how I was, I mumbled "shitty", and lost it again, though I did manage to get my order out. I haven't been this fragile since my best friend died in 1994, and I didn't like it any better then either. I collected my order and drove over to Francis' place, and met up with Francis and Randall.
Francis was amped, and angry, and had the TV going on CNN. Randall was subdued and thoughtful. Francis was calling around, but at it was near 3:30 and all the blood banks we called said that they had received enough blood, and unless we were type "O", we should come back next week. Getting enough of the news, we went out to his car and drove around, first to get gas, then food for Francis. Randall left, and Francis and I sat and vented a bit, then I went home.
As I drove up, I saw Dad getting into the car of one of the roomers at the house, Jamal. Jamal is a Palestinian. A middle aged professorial type, who is hard of hearing. Dad said He and Jamal were going to get a burger, and I suppose having an authoritative looking American in the car was a comfort to Jamal as the first reports of sporadic racist incidents had also become known. Jamal and Dad returned safe an hour later, though I think they just got groceries to cook.
By now things had become fairly clear, Three Jets had achieved their targets, a fourth had not. The Government denied they shot it down, and rumors of cell phone called from the plane led to speculation of another cause for its demise. No arrests were made yet, but a few leads sprang up. The death toll was unknown, and speculation ran high. Rudy Giuliani looked like a pro, remaining in front of the cameras, and losing a little of his polish, but never gracelessly. The president came across like many of my midwestern relatives. Stern, thoughtful, motivated, but lacking at all in any introspection. Not a bad thing in my book, and he spoke carefully, though perhaps a little too briefly. I was imagining that Ronald Reagan would have been a bit more comforting, a bit more fatherly, and a lot more righteously angry. I miss Reagan.
Dad checked up on me to see if I was okay. I was, and got a thought. After seeing Cara Mitten's series of pictures up on Yerf, I decided to draw, and an idea sprang forth fully formed. Lacking enough Bird reference, I just sketched out the composition, and then went scavenging through Mom's books to find any bird reference. Other than a few head shots, I found little, though a Xerox I did find of Sara Palmer's wing tutorial helped me greatly. Around 5 or so I paused, as I heard Fighters taking off from nearby Muffed Field. The only Jet noise I have heard since Monday.
Around 7:00PM dad knocked on the door and said Mom was on the Phone. Mom was in Santa Rosa. She was there to care for her mother, who was recovering from Cancer Surgery. It was a bit emotional for me, because mom has not been around in more than a week, and I needed someone to confide in. We talked. She updated me on Grandmother's conditions (steady but progress was slow), and some other topics. She was rather
understated about the news, and I told her how angry I was, and that I hoped she would be back soon. We said our goodbyes, and I resumed drawing.
I finished the inks around 11:00PM, but lacking a scanner at home, I could not post it right away. But I felt a lot better after completing it. Odd how these things work. Despite my unsurity with avian anatomy, that was one of the fastest and easiest pieces I have done in a long time. Upon finishing it, I got ready for bed. The cat joined me briefly and I gave him a lot of scratches and attention. Soon he wanted out, and
I turned in, feeling still angry, but getting the picture out steadied
me, and I was no where near as fragile as I had been earlier in the day. I flipped the channels away from the news, but some things never change, Cartoon Network was showing Scooby Movies.
...and that was my first day of the War.
Tuesday Morning, I am barely awake, and drifting in and out of
consciousness. I woke at 6 to let the cat in and in am not very
successfully trying to get back to sleep, before the 8:00Am alarm. At about 7:15-20 My Phone rings, and if it's ringing, it’s
solicitors, bill collectors, or my dad wanting me to move my car. It's none of the above; it's my friend Francis, harbinger of bad news.
Usually he calls me at work, and tells me of some gun control
legislation that the state house has cooked up, or some smug
pronouncement by some ivory tower groups. This results in me having a stomachache and some anger for the rest of the day. In person he's a cheerful, and jovial sort, but he I guess likes to spread bad news. He nearly yells, "Have you heard? The World Trade Center is gone! Two planes crashed into it, and one crashed into the pentagon!"
My Response was almost "bullshit", as occasionally Francis will drop a bad joke on me like that.
"I'm not shitting you. Turn on the TV.” he breathlessly commands.
I am a news junkie. Fox and CNN are the let and right buttons on my remote (It's usually between Cartoon network, CNN and FOX, but Cartoon network shows the execrable "Scooby Movies" late at night, so I turn on the news, usually Hannady & Colmes on Fox). One of them comes up, and I don't know what I am seeing. It looks like a city, maybe Manhattan, covered with a huge cloud of dust. Nothing except structures near the waterfront is discernable I watch, and the sound is the reporter, I
think from Fox, speaking in the same sort of quavering, broken voice, you hear from someone who’s either been shot at, or beaten. The views change, and its one long look down the street, over the pudgy reporter's left shoulder as he's facing the camera. And the horizon is dominated by a huge beige cloud. They then play tape of the twin towers smoking, much like they did in 1993, except it's both of them, and the amount of smoke, reminds me of the MGM Grand Fire of 10 -15 years ago.
Then one of them "fluffs" at about the 80th floor and the floors
above flatten in a huge mass of smoke and dust, then to my surprise the rest of the building goes with it. I thought they built these things stronger, but the plume expands sideways, like a tree, then floats downward.
"Holy Shit", is about all I manage.
Francis asks what Channel I'm on. I tell him Fox, and we both play dueling remotes. Flipping over to CNN,
I see the impact on the second tower, but not what caused it. Turning back to Fox, I see a much better shot, from a traffic copter, of an airliner, trimmed for level flight (flaps in, gear in, lean and fast, probably near it's 600MPH cruising speed) slide in from the right of the picture, and rather than seeing it pass behind the building as one usually expects, Liquid fire, squeezes out of the building, like mayonnaise on a hastily grabbed sandwich, and then it turns to smoke, and roils thickly op the sides of the tower in ponderous slowness, while a spatter of glittering debris, fans out and away from the impact to drift
down to the streets below. On a perfectly clear day, the sun just glitters.
I talk with Francis, as they show footage of people on the ground
running away, and of the collapse from the street level.
The second tower collapse is more dramatic, as it looks more like an inverted mushroom cloud, spreading from the bottom as the building slides ponderously into it. The cloud engulfs everything, so at this time, I am "caught up". Rumors are reported on the news of another plane. Shots of the Pentagon, on fire, and speculation of other planes in the air, also being used as large, jet powered Kamikazes. I tell Francis, there was a book like what's happening called "Storming Heaven", by Dale Brown, but it was just one jet, and there seemed to be three.
I finish up with Francis, and my Dad is up. He was 7 when Pearl Harbor happened, and his TV is on, but I knock on the door, and ask if he has seen the news. Duh.. It's on. He seems interested, but not particularly disturbed, or anything. I go to get dressed for work. We had a morale crushing speech last week, and new hour tracking methods and daily report requirements that have turned a 3d Games gig, into a McJob, because of
some incompetence in higher management. I am not looking forward to working long hours. I shower and get dressed. In the shower, I start to get angry.
""The U.S.", My Country, has been attacked. It's not a loud
anger, but like a reaction to an insult, tinged with a little worry as
the events seem to still be happening. I watch more news on TV as I dress, then I get in the car, and discover I am becoming a little emotionally fragile. It makes me angrier. I start posting a few messages on Yerf.Yap, and Polycount. The polycounters are pretty gung ho, especially since one of the Moderators, an NYPD Detective Sergeant has not checked in.
I hit McDonalds for breakfast, and the cheerful Mexican lady I see every morning is her cheerful self, and I order my lunch, but she notices that she didn't get a smile from me in the morning, and asks if it's about the news. I tell her that I am angry about the news. She nods, and tells me to go to the next window, her usual smile faded slightly. I get an idea, and drive back home, and in the front closet I keep two flag. One an old 48 Star flag that I use for public displays with the Historical club, and another I purchased when I was in ROTC. I take the 50 star flag,
and hand the 48 star flag to my Dad. And mention he ought to put it up.
I resume my trip to work, listening to the radio. Limbaugh is not on, instead it's continuous ABC news feeds, 50% ABC Radio, and 50% ABC TV, with Peter Jennings. He talks and speculates while I drive through fairly normal traffic. I pull into work, and see one of the other artists on my team leaving the parking lot on his Italian Racing Bike. I ask, "Not staying?"
He says, "Nope, not in the mood", darkly and I nod, and he rides off. I then promptly lose it, and pull into the garage sobbing quietly. The employee, Jem was recently in the Rangers at a Middle Easter Language Specialist. He’s a decent artist, a bit of a jock, a deadly Q3A player, and a natural when it comes to languages, speaking several Middle Eastern languages fluently. Think of a slightly more Mediterranean Chris Issak
and you won't be too far off. I didn't think I'd ever see him again. I recover, clean up, and walk into the bullpen with a flag under my arm, and Dad’s hammer. The two Russian ladies, Olga and Inna, who also work on our project are looking exceedingly worried and are talking amongst themselves. I must have looked like an ax murderer coming in, as people just got out of my way. I climbed up the cube, and punched the pushpins into the wallboard, and hung the flag very carefully. Only then did I
check in and begin to work.
No one was in the mood. When working on the Playstation 2, you need to have a version of one, called a "Debug Station" which is a PS2 with an Ethernet connection. The other end of the PS plugs into a television so that you can "check your work" to see what it looks like through the hardware. Well the Televisions were Aiwa models 21-inch screens that
take up an inconvenient amount of space, but have a great picture, so people will bring in unauthorized VCR’s and hook them up and play the tapes they like to watch. However,
they also came with a pair of rabbit ears. I plugged mine in eventually when the radio wasn't giving me any info. ABC was the only channel I could get and there was Peter Jennings in his shirtsleeves, extemporizing, while listening to reporters calling in from all over Manhattan. They showed the footage, and people at work would pause or halt, when the plane smacked into the tower, or either of the towers collapsed. One by one people snuck out of work. I didn't get much down, working on a tank model for our game (Type 95 Light tank). And as the news wore on, I became more angry, and touchy. Francis called, and
suggested we go out and donate blood. Some of the employees I confide in were unavailable, though I managed to track down a fellow employee and mutual friend or Francis' and suggested he join us to give blood. He liked the Idea and as soon as the boss said it was okay we left.
I asked on the newsgroup of one was supposed to eat, or not eat, before giving blood. I was told it would be a good idea to eat a high protein meal and a lot of fluids, so I would not be woozy for very long. So on the way to Francis I got in line at In & Out Burger. When the cheery young voice in the speaker asked how I was, I mumbled "shitty", and lost it again, though I did manage to get my order out. I haven't been this fragile since my best friend died in 1994, and I didn't like it any better then either. I collected my order and drove over to Francis' place, and met up with Francis and Randall.
Francis was amped, and angry, and had the TV going on CNN. Randall was subdued and thoughtful. Francis was calling around, but at it was near 3:30 and all the blood banks we called said that they had received enough blood, and unless we were type "O", we should come back next week. Getting enough of the news, we went out to his car and drove around, first to get gas, then food for Francis. Randall left, and Francis and I sat and vented a bit, then I went home.
As I drove up, I saw Dad getting into the car of one of the roomers at the house, Jamal. Jamal is a Palestinian. A middle aged professorial type, who is hard of hearing. Dad said He and Jamal were going to get a burger, and I suppose having an authoritative looking American in the car was a comfort to Jamal as the first reports of sporadic racist incidents had also become known. Jamal and Dad returned safe an hour later, though I think they just got groceries to cook.
By now things had become fairly clear, Three Jets had achieved their targets, a fourth had not. The Government denied they shot it down, and rumors of cell phone called from the plane led to speculation of another cause for its demise. No arrests were made yet, but a few leads sprang up. The death toll was unknown, and speculation ran high. Rudy Giuliani looked like a pro, remaining in front of the cameras, and losing a little of his polish, but never gracelessly. The president came across like many of my midwestern relatives. Stern, thoughtful, motivated, but lacking at all in any introspection. Not a bad thing in my book, and he spoke carefully, though perhaps a little too briefly. I was imagining that Ronald Reagan would have been a bit more comforting, a bit more fatherly, and a lot more righteously angry. I miss Reagan.
Dad checked up on me to see if I was okay. I was, and got a thought. After seeing Cara Mitten's series of pictures up on Yerf, I decided to draw, and an idea sprang forth fully formed. Lacking enough Bird reference, I just sketched out the composition, and then went scavenging through Mom's books to find any bird reference. Other than a few head shots, I found little, though a Xerox I did find of Sara Palmer's wing tutorial helped me greatly. Around 5 or so I paused, as I heard Fighters taking off from nearby Muffed Field. The only Jet noise I have heard since Monday.
Around 7:00PM dad knocked on the door and said Mom was on the Phone. Mom was in Santa Rosa. She was there to care for her mother, who was recovering from Cancer Surgery. It was a bit emotional for me, because mom has not been around in more than a week, and I needed someone to confide in. We talked. She updated me on Grandmother's conditions (steady but progress was slow), and some other topics. She was rather
understated about the news, and I told her how angry I was, and that I hoped she would be back soon. We said our goodbyes, and I resumed drawing.
I finished the inks around 11:00PM, but lacking a scanner at home, I could not post it right away. But I felt a lot better after completing it. Odd how these things work. Despite my unsurity with avian anatomy, that was one of the fastest and easiest pieces I have done in a long time. Upon finishing it, I got ready for bed. The cat joined me briefly and I gave him a lot of scratches and attention. Soon he wanted out, and
I turned in, feeling still angry, but getting the picture out steadied
me, and I was no where near as fragile as I had been earlier in the day. I flipped the channels away from the news, but some things never change, Cartoon Network was showing Scooby Movies.
...and that was my first day of the War.
It is a war no one - most certainly not the West or America - can win. Our two cultures are direct antipodes of one another, and will forever conflict.
Much in the same way that our support of brutal dictators in South America led directly to socialist revolutions in countries that otherwise would have emulated the US.
Ho Chi Minh was all ready to have a US-style Constitution and a democracy, but supporting the French in their brutal colonial war against his people was more important to the US than freedom was for the Vietnamese, so Uncle Ho found help where he could get it - the Communist Bloc. We've never failed to fail.
I remember taking the day off because I was worried about terrorist attacks.
When they blamed bin laden I prayed for his soul
My mother, terminally ill with cancer, was trapped up in Maine, unable to fly back to Philadelphia for her treatments. We eventually got her home, but she wound up dying two weeks after the attacks. I blame Al-Queda for robbing her of at least six months of life.
Never forgive, never forget.
Imagine what would have happened if, for example, France would have not forgiven Germany after WWII? Imagine the devastation of many successive wars, the innumerable deaths and the suffering that would have plagued the whole continent. But you know what? We forgave without forgetting. We forgave Germany and built a lasting friendship with them, becoming the two core countries for the EU, leaving behind many centuries of wars and strife at last. And yet, we did not forget: the atrocities committed during WWII are taught in school, remembered through countless monuments, museums and such in both countries. We recognize the sins and use them to grow by knowing what not to do, the mistakes that we should not repeat.
You can forgive without forgetting. That is the way to go forward.
The repercussions felt since then...this nation went from bad to worse. Scared of it's own shadow. Suddenly scrutinizing every foreign power as it's an attacked and sank it's self into trillion dollar debt trying to find the man that claimed credit for it. I spent two years in Iraq. I lost more friends in the military then I think was karmicly fair but, I live. And I see the nation we thought we were defending drift a little further from the beautiful nation we thought it was every day. May the rats who enjoy these political games, the ones who profit on the suffering, be struck with a pain that no amount of money will ever fix!
do you have that drawing here on FA?
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/24160081/
Later on, I learned about the attack on the Pentagon and the third plane that crashed in a field instead of hitting the Capitol, as was apparently it's intended target. Then every country closed their skies, grounding planes for what seemed forever, and it was strange to not hear or see planes land or take off from the nearby airport.
In 19 years, I grew up, learned a lot about the world and history, especially 20th century history, and hopefully got a bit wiser. And I realized several things, and I now see what happened that day under a new light.
19 years ago, on a sunny afternoon, for the first time, the war that the United States of America has been fighting against most of the world, whether in the open or in the shadows, since about the end of WWII, struck at home for the first time.
The USA got a stark reminder of what war is, of what it feels like to have one's home come under attack, of what it looks like when bodies and debris litter the streets, when death literally comes from above and there is little you can do about it.
And it drove the country deeper into the madness, instead of serving as a wake-up call. One more generation has been sacrificed, sent to fight useless wars that achieve nothing, and certainly not make the USA any safer.
I hope that one day, the USA will understand that, in the world of today, the wars it wages are useless, and that there are other ways to seal with threats, real or potential, than with weapons and destruction.
I remember it for two reasons. One: My study hall teacher. I made the realization that not all the debris was debris, it was people jumping. I uttered a profanity which she, being the old school disciplinarian type (she started when corporal punishment was allowed), sharply responded to. When I explained, she watch the TV for a bit, looked very tired, turned off the TV and told us to focus on our work.
Two: A period later I find out from a basketball teammate of mine that his girlfriend and her sister got pulled from school. Their parents were good friends with mine and both traveled a lot, so I began to wonder. This grew when I was notified that my mother called and was told that I was to be dropped off at a neighbors house that day. It turns out, the dad was suppose to be on flight 11 out of Boston that morning, but canceled the morning of the flight when the business partner he was meeting with was still having issues. When he saw the news, the phone lines were completely jammed (he didn't have a cell phone, and his pager couldn't send) so he couldn't get a hold of his wife, who ended up at my family's house and my mom tried to console her. He ended up getting a rental car and driving back the next day. He and the family took part of the next week off.
My most honest condolences to every deceased American who died on 9/11.