Visualization Entry - In the Night - 10-11-08

There are so many more worthwhile things to do than write in this journal, things that are more intriguing to do right here, right now, with such possibilities laying asleep beside me. But my heart is full and I must preserve this moment. I must say all that had gone unsaid for so many years because it hadn’t been true yet.

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He lays here beside me, flung out in sleep, his deep breathing like a life support machine for me. I glance over and am arrested by his throat. If I keep very still, and look very carefully, I can detect his pulse softly, subtly throbbing under his skin. It fascinates me. He is so still that if I closed my eyes, I might almost believe I lie here alone. But no, I could still scent him out, still detect his heat reaching my skin.

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He is so beautiful to my eyes. I smile when I think how his hair will be odds and ends tomorrow morning. But then I lose interest in his hair as I study his collarbone, so strong. The line of it runs across his shoulders and chest, drawing my willing eye across his breadth.

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He stirs in his sleep, disturbed probably by the lamplight, and shifts my way. My heart splutters as his hand unconsciously settles on the small of my back and my breathing grows erratic as his heat spreads on my skin. Oh, yes, there are many more worthwhile things I could be doing right now. I’m so crazy in love that I wonder how I can keep still and just observe, just absorb. But that’s always been my way. I naturally fall still and silent, and let my brain grow thick with my thoughts, just letting my eyes rove as my breathing steadies into an almost sleep-like rhythm.

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I look so hard at him. I’m learning him, and not just him, but us and me. Who needs sleep?

Visualization Entry - Freedom - 10-10-08

Some days I am just captured all over again by my good fortune. I think back to my teaching job, that horrible start to my fifth year. The behavior problems, the sheer number of below grade level students, the drastic change in atmosphere from the year before, the inexorable banding together of the staff in the face of a common enemy in Sherry, the impossible increase in paperwork and expectation of teacher performance. Just a perfect storm, with all the elements coming together at the same time to make a truly miserable time for me.

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I think back on that time and remember the slow, steady influx of the toxicity of my work life creeping into my personal life, tainting everything I had that I swore would never be tainted by my job: my evenings, my runs in my beloved neighborhood, the very walls of my gorgeous new home which had heretofore only had positive associations from summer. I consider all the nights I wept, truly sobbed, even coming to my parents and breaking down more, I think, than they’ve ever seen me. Lord bless them, but they handled it well. I remember desperately using the Secret and expending so much of what little energy I had in being positive and trying to deny the tears that were sogging up my brain. My sweet team members tried whenever they saw me starting to dive in spite of my best efforts, to bring me up with kind words, long hugs, and understanding looks. They were really the only bright spot in the whole of my professional life. I had to always have my music going on my computer throughout the day just to survive. The downward spiral was slow, almost imperceptible but uncompromising. I went from being angry at these circumstances to gritting my teeth and bearing them, to becoming sad and despairing, breaking down at work and at home. I really was nearing the breaking point and began to suspect that I would go the way of Analiese in her first year and have a nervous breakdown and have to be medicated and put on a week’s medical leave.

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And then the sky broke open and manna fell down. On a dizzying rush, I got the call I had been waiting for, put in my two-weeks notice, started my new job, and met the man of my dreams! I’m still processing it, actually, and what I find helps me to process it is reflecting back on how bad and hopeless everything seemed and then how very suddenly all of that changed, turned on its ear, but in a very, very good way. I felt like my whole life, the life I was trying to attract, was contingent upon that call, upon leaving that dreaded school forever.

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And here I sit, writing with an aching arm instead of getting ready for a date that I’m actually – wait for it – excited about, marveling at how my dreaded present so drastically, so dramatically, and so very suddenly became my past.

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I don’t ever have to be there again. I don’t ever have to write another lesson plan or mini-referral. I don’t ever have to grade another paper, fill out another Child Study form, or hold another parent conference. No more interim reports or report cards. No more insults to my professionalism or printing limits. No more staying late to get everything done. No more reading groups and think-alouds or PALS or STARS or comprehension strategies or math manipulatives or lunch and recess duties! I am free and I don’t ever have to go back. I spontaneously break into a smile on my way to work, not only because I’m going somewhere pleasant where I have a reasonable chance of feeling successful and like I’m making progress, but also because I am free and rid forever of that horrible place, that horrible job, that horrible profession. I breathe now. I breathe in and out all day and never feel like I’m about to choke. God, it feels so good to be free!! My life has finally begun! Now, where is that lipstick?

Visualization Entry - One Big, Happy Family - 10-10-08

My parents and I have always said that surely no family laughs so much as we do. Within five minutes of getting together, we are cracking up. I mean it literally takes about ten minutes before we are hysterical. And we keep laughing until we part company, and that is true even if we’re closeted with each other for a solid week. I don’t quite know what it is, but I think it has something to do with how much we enjoy being happy, and how much we enjoy harmony. We have all three of us been very considerate of each other’s feelings, and when we hurt or offend one of the other’s feelings, as is inevitable in a thirty-year relationship, we apologize and forgive very quickly because, quite frankly, we don’t like being mad at each other. I’ve often noticed other people who seem almost to take pleasure in being offended and will hold to a grudge until they can’t even remember the reason. And I’ve always been grateful that my family has never been like that.

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And I’ve often wondered how another person could fit in with us. We have always been such a happy threesome, sharing a brain and truly understanding one another, cognizant of our individual identities as well as our collective identity and as joyful as that has made me, I have also felt an adjacent anxiety that my husband couldn’t possibly fit because he wasn’t raised for decades with this.

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Now, I could never imagine anyone not falling in love with my parents. All stereotypes and hellish stories of in-laws disappear like so much ether when my parents are the in-laws. I always knew that anyone I brought home would be charmed by my parents simply because I had brought him home, so he must be special. And even though my parents, as innately private as they are, wouldn’t show the full force of their personalities to a virtual stranger, they are simply incapable of not charming others. And then when the familiarity had grown and the walls had come down a bit more, I knew that my husband would simply fall in love with my family. This was always the only logical picture I had in my head, as I knew I would never choose someone whom my parents disliked since we were of one mind in so many things, the most important of which was what sort of person we admired, respected, and wanted around us, and also because I knew I would always be guaranteed of my parents loving and welcoming with open arms anyone I brought home because they would want wholeheartedly for me to be happy.

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So I never worried about my family, snug and small as it was, opening up and welcoming new additions, but I did always wonder how well my husband would fit. Would he understand the jokes and thought processes and little idiosyncrasies that so uniquely define and characterize my little family?

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I probably should have realized long ago that as my parents and I are so alike, and I would only fall in love with someone who truly understood and accepted me, that it would naturally follow that he would understand my parents. So much of what he would love about my came directly from my parents. If a = b and b = c, then a = c. and this is precisely what did happen when I finally found my soul mate and brought him into my family. But what is so astonishing, although in hindsight not surprising, was just as he brought his own unique personality to me, so too did he do that with my parents. No, he is not exactly like me. Of course not. But he understands me as no one else does and loves me as no one else does. And what I find is that he is still himself with my parents, confident from the beginning in who he is, not nervous about “meeting the parents” (although who ever had such an easy sell as my parents who were near to choking with satisfaction at the sight of me with someone I loved). And I find that as lovely and perfect as the three of us were, such a pleasant, harmonious little trio, that dynamic only flourished and was enhanced with my husband’s addition to the piece. Our trio swelled to a quartet, with the addition of a brand new instrument, without ever missing a beat. Mozart himself would have been brought to tears. I’m constantly astounded every time the four of us are together, at how sweet we all are. I always knew I would be drawn to a calm, mature, easy-going man. Never one for drama or touchy mentalities, I have always gravitated to people who are mature and sure enough in themselves that they don’t need to create or respond to melodrama. And sure enough, my husband, as different as he is from me in many ways, is my perfect match in that respect. And so the four of us are just, in a word, sweet.

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And I have a confession to make. I was always leery of parading your mate in front of others as if to say, “Look how well I did for myself,” and I still feel that way, but is it so wrong that I think exactly that of my choice of man? I do! I confess that whenever we’re with friends or family of mine, my chest swells till I think a rib will snap that this man is with me, his hand at my back and his eyes on my face.

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I’ve lost count of how many people have said since we met what a catch he is, how wonderful he is, how handsome he is, how lucky I am, how happy I must be. And I can’t hold back the smile splitting my face as every cell in my body agrees. So it is with a secret delight, when he and I are having breakfast with my parents or playing board games or going to a festival, every single glance he casts my way, every word rumbled into my ear, every unthinking touch, every time I tilt my chin to say something to him or kiss him, my parents nearly bust.

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You see, they have never seen me with a man. Never seen anyone pay me particular mind, seen anyone kiss me. They’ve never heard a man say something under his breath just for me to hear, never witnessed any intimacy of any sort between me and a man. And with the two of them being so happily and deeply in tune for so long, in drastic contrast to the sheer drought of intimacy in my life, they wanted so much for me to experience that. Now I have that. And I absolutely revel in others’ pleasure in seeing me have that. It’s as if there was always a bubble of space around me that was never punctured, never shared, never touched, so much so that everyone else in my life couldn’t even picture me with someone else, as much as they may have wanted to, because they had never known that for me. And now, that space is shared. I’m no longer alone. I fit with them and even though I want him for him, it is much easier to just fit in with everyone else. I’ve always been a bit of a lone wolf, running with whatever pack is around that strikes my fancy, and it’s a good think I have developed the self-confidence it takes to go my own way, because I could feel like a freak. But it is much nicer not to have to draw on that store of confidence on a daily basis. It’s all a non-issue now, so that now I can just enjoy what I have. I have finally joined the human race.

Visualization Entry - Intertwined Hands - 10-6-08

I wonder if, when my life is at its shadowy end and I have the completed manuscript of my life tidily placed before me, this will be the thing I hold the closest to my heart: the feel of my hand in his, the freedom of touching that big, warm hand anytime I like. Of all the experiences of my life, all the touches I was privy to, if this simple, basic touch will be the defining one. This one touch seems to hold in its modest sway all contentment and safety, the physical representation of that for which we all strive. I waited so long for it, too; that probably has something to do with the affection I have for that touch.

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In its own way, the sight of our skin touching, our fingers intertwined, is like a train wreck; I can’t take my eyes off of it. I keep glancing back at this sign to which, after all this time, I still have not become accustomed. My hand practically disappears in his wide grasp. He whispers to me he can feel all the bones of my hand, feel the tiny warmth of my palm against the vast heat of his. He’s always fascinated by the smallness of my hand, the softness of my skin, the delicacy of my wrist. I think he notices our entwined hands almost as much as me.

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It seems to me so fitting, so perfectly and unexpectedly matched, that he should harbor the same fascination with my smallness and delicacy that I feel for his tall frame and strength. I think sometimes that I will never know – when we pick up the same object – precisely how much easier it is for him than me. If I pick up a stuffed suitcase, how is it that I labor under it while he hoists it in the air like Popeye? It intrigues me. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to have all that strength to spare. And I’m strong for a woman! But I can’t mind. The heat that flares out from my chest when I see another sign of his strength, especially when framed by his gentleness, is too delicious.

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And I can’t help but smile when he shows me that strength just to impress me. It’s too sweet-natured a display to be considered arrogant, too self-deprecating to be defined as showing off. It’s just the same thing I feel when asking him to open a jar or move a piece of furniture when out of necessity I did it myself for thirty years. It’s just so nice to have someone to do it for you, just as I imagine for him, it’s so nice to have someone to be strong for. We both win.

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I go still sometimes with secret delight when I see just how strong he is, so much stronger than me, his strength so much more effortless than my own, and then he takes my hand and I can feel how safe I am from that strength, and how safe I am made by that strength.

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I’ve often thought that while few men can be as fierce as a woman in certain circumstances, when her mate or cub is threatened, nevertheless, it is man’s lot to be the protectors. It’s nice that it is not their exclusive domain, but they are the natives while we women are migrants. I’ve wondered idly what it is in men’s makeup that defines this protective urge and in turn is defined by it. Where precisely does that instinct reside? What part or pathway marks its place?

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Sometimes, I admit, his protectiveness of me chafes. After all, I had been independent for so many years before he came to me. Only my father had shown that protective instinct for me, and I could draw the boundary line with that when I moved out. But this protectiveness is different because I have to negotiate it, grow familiar with it. And, too, I can’t dismiss it when I’m feeling bold and independent as I could do with the protectiveness of others. I am no longer my own. I promised that when I let him slip his ring on my finger. He has a right no one else has ever had, even my father, to set boundaries of his own for me not to cross. It’s one of the sacrifices I took on when I joined my life to his. And I can’t resent him for it on those occasions when the very protectiveness I cherish limits me; I would expect the same heed if he did something I felt truly threatened him, and I asked him not to do it again. He is not his own, either, any more than I am mine.

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It seems to me that as you have what I would consider a real life, and go deeper down its path, you commit to certain obligations which increase in number or intensity as time in that life goes on. You’re free as a bird when you’re trekking, alone, but you’re also alone. Then you commit to one other person and you can still be free and take risks, but you have opened yourself up to certain potential promises. After all, no one wants to open themselves up to someone who may kill themselves with idiocy or carelessness. But essentially, you are still your own person in many ways. And then you have children and you now have something even more needful than each other to keep yourself alive for. And the risks necessarily become tighter and fewer. It’s a necessary loss. Some people let their perspective become clouded by all they gave up when they committed to sharing a life with someone, but I wonder if their unhappiness originates in the imbalance they slowly embrace. Yes, you have to live more carefully and more considerately, but what you get in return is a witness to your whole life. Someone who is making the same sacrifices as you who isn’t complaining about it because they understand they get tenfold what they are laying on the altar of their selfishness. They value their life with you more than all they trade for it. I wonder if maybe sometimes people are so willfully blinded by trees they’ve cut down to make room for the person they love that they miss the vast forest they are planting with them. I don’t know. I can’t say. I only know my own perspective and I waited so long for him that it’s not so impossible for me to balance my perspective when I see his face. Sure, sometimes I have to be more careful than I would like to be, but then I remember it’s because he cares so much for me.

Reflection on my first Visualization Entry - 10-5-08

Writing and then reading that entry of the bliss I want is, perhaps, the entire reason why the stars aligned so that I would be here, now, when I had come to the breaking point with my job. It somehow puts everything in a more complete perspective. Maybe this is the final frontier of making the Secret work for me. Putting down on paper not just a list of qualities I want in a mate, but an account of what my life is right now in my future which on some foreign plane is a current reality – it all snapped my spinning life back into focus. This is what I truly want. This is what the Secret is ultimately about for me – so that I can attract my perfect mate when I see that picture my pen described – so clear and strong in my head – my job just pales in significance, fades in comparison to the vividness of my true dream. Maybe my job doesn’t have to take over my life. Maybe it is just the residue of my past and doesn’t have to even really exist for me now. I see now with renewed clarity what my priorities are – and they begin with my perfect mate. I can see now what it means to live in the future you’re attracting. I’m already there. My job suddenly seems awfully brief. It will not – cannot – last long. It is – I see now – in its last dying gasps. And maybe finally I see the key to being able to live out that quote which I felt signified my life right now but seemed at the same time out of my reach to live out:

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And what is it

to work with love?

It is to build

a house with affection,

Even as if your beloved

were to dwell there.

- Gibran

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Maybe I can return to work the day after tomorrow, not with dread or misery or the agony of unmet desire for another life, but with the peace of a more complete perspective. Maybe I can go back and face conferences and reading groups and planning templates and observations and behavior, and hold around me like a cloak this peace. Perhaps as long as I keep reading that account of my life as it will be, as if it is already here, I can remember that this job, these circumstances, are – as the Psalm says – “to be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb.” I’m not here anymore; I am there, in the future I so fervently desire and believe in again. I had begun losing hope; it had started to flicker like a bulb about to go out, but this place. Today, this afternoon, I thought about how it was all going to be over soon, but then my next thought was that there was still a whole day left. And that there was a reason this vacation was four days long and not three or two. That there was more still to be thought and grasped. I felt there was still more for me to discover here. The hours I had left had a purpose, and sure enough, here I sit, with mere hours before we wake up and leave for home, beginning the long journey back to the life I left on “pause,” and all the hours that came before in this lovely remote place have in truth been subtly, quietly pushing to a particular conclusion. This then is the purpose for this whole trip, different than I’d thought it but so much more potent than I could have expected. Here, then, is the key to survival, to working with love at something I hate. And the God I am so often angry at shows me again that he does see me and has not forgotten his promise.

Visualization Entry - My Life - 10-5-08

I can’t believe it. This is my life. I keep looking around with the ridiculous urge to watch out for a cosmic jester to snatch it back and say, “Just kidding!” But he won’t and this is all mine.

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This house, in all these trees and running paths, is mine. I wake up every morning, full of the day’s activities, and begin cleaning and polishing my life. This is my job, and I revel in it, glory in it. A modern-day Donna Reed, and in those moments when I pause and wonder about all those other aspects of my personality that all the Comet in the world can’t satisfy, I think how in today’s world – the world I was born and bred to even though there are parts of me that don’t fit – I have many options open to me. There are so many options open to me that didn’t exist – weren’t even imagined – for centuries of women.

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And one of those choices that surely no woman ever had open to her was to love this man. This perfect man no woman ever had the privilege of loving because he was made for me. My mate. All this time, though all those lonely years and nagging doubts and unasked questions, he was there. What made the moment we met and he swept me off my feet the right moment, I don’t know. What was it about that instant, that ordinary day, that was so specially made to be the beginning of my life? I don’t know. I can’t say I care much. Something about his face nullifies the question. It simply was the moment. I had wondered for so long how it would happen and then how it could happen, the further I delved into my own life. I had plagued the air with so many concerns and questions that turned out to be nothing but more air, clashing cymbals because they were not spoken out of love, for love hadn’t found me yet.

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I can smell him before I even open my eyes in the morning, scent him out like the most delectable prey. Though it’s all around me all the time, I don’t grow inured to it. I pray I never will. I can feel his heat next to me in bed, somehow aware of it on a subconscious level even in sleep. And all those little looks and incidental – and not-so-incidental – touches and mundane conversations about picking up the cleaning and unexpected phone calls in the day just to hear the other’s voice – all of that which I had witnessed throughout my life as an untouched outsider – they are all mine! It is my time now, and his time, too, because – wonder of wonders – he waited for me as eagerly and impatiently. Finally it is our turn and we drink each other in with the wonder that comes with the attainment of a desire held so long it grafts into you like a second set of fingerprints.

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What makes me tremble is how perfect he is to me. My life has become surreal with happiness and awe that it all worked out so finely and harmoniously. I’m struck by all of the little parts of him that I had wanted but struggled so hard to admit I wanted, that all snap together like puzzle pieces that never quite came together until he met me because I had the final picture of how the pieces fit.

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And the way he loves me! I can say with freedom, with boldness, with winging joy that I am someone’s idea of perfection. This is no off-kilter love with me doing all the work, all the loving. No, he can’t get enough of me. When I’m off alone, concentrating on some task or reading or cooking or some inconsequential thing, he seeks me out. Imagine that. He never seems to tire of pursuing me, as if he never got the message that I’m already his. It makes me dizzy. I’ll talk and he is intensely interested, just because it’s my brain creating the thoughts coming out of my mouth.

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How easy it all was. The stories and poems and songs and advice were all correct. He saw me and wanted me. He saw the woman countless men have seen and passed over and didn’t think me undesirable because of it. He tells me it was as if God had put scales on all men’s eyes so I would be preserved for him. Preserved! He makes me laugh with the way he sees life, and me, but I make him laugh so I guess we’re even. I’m unabashedly pleased with his tender view of me. It’s strange – I can still be the strong woman that is such an indispensable part of me – tough and capable – but it doesn’t turn him off or cause him to take me for granted or grow passive or arrogant; rather, his view of me is so tender, so cherishing, so protective and gentlemanly, that that side of my personality only increases his admiration. He can laugh at me without devaluing me, rely on me without taking me for granted, protect me without stifling me, claim me without possessing me, love me without intimidating me, guide me without tugging me along. He is a wonder, and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve told him that he, and only he, was worth the wait.

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And now his eyes follow me with a deeper, subtler fever, a passion edged with awe, a protectiveness shot through with intensity. And I relish it. I know why he looks at me like this. Every movement I make strikes him as a new grace, an untold story. I can feel the flutter in my belly and feel his power within me at every movement. My heart throbs with heat and energy as I watch him watch me, as he seems almost to curve the air around me to protect his wife and unborn child. I feel in a way nestled in cotton wool, as if I’m the one in the womb. I spend time with our family and friends, go out into my world to live my life and care for our home, and all along, no matter where we go, or what I’m doing or how ordinary my day is, exposed to the world at large, nothing can puncture this deep, hidden sense of our little home. I carry it inside me, alongside my baby, and it goes with me wherever I go. I give it to the father of my child whenever he’s with me – this preserved connection to our little house and the life we’re creating and the undeniable love we give each other. I pretend to be concentrating on or distracted by the conversations and activities of my daily life but truly, I am always aware like a struck tuning fork of every touch of him, of every word he speaks to me, of every sign that he was designed just for me.

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I knew. I knew. I knew it would be different for me than it is for my friends and family. I would never say this to them, but their marriages which are acceptable for them, which are enough and make them happy, are pale reflections of the glories I find in mine. They all tried to tell me of the frustrations of marriage and men, would look at me tolerantly while I stumbled in my explanation of what I pictured for my life. And I think with blazing clarity and conviction that what I have is so much more than they could have ever envisioned for their life. I had almost wasteful imagination and the inexplicable instinct to wait, to hold out, and here! It is mine. I find I have to hold back when we’re together with others or we would put them to shame, make them feel on some indistinct, indefinable level that they can’t compare. But sometimes, I think it shines through anyway.

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It’s just that he is so passionate about me, he matches my own conflagration – how can we not soar above the others as eagles over swallows? Oh, I knew. Even when I lost hope and stopped cocking an ear to his approach and let the belief in his existence slide off my fingers, I knew that I could only be happy with everything. Only that which had never been imagined or discovered would satisfy me. It really is no wonder it took so long to find each other. But oh! To have finally done so. I was half a song, a poem written with no ink, a future I couldn’t reach with my own two hands. I had grown accustomed to moving through my life, accepting how different I was like a chameleon in a nest of lizards. I could blend in but my own unmatched nature inevitably glimmered out and could not be understood by others. Inarticulate avenues of my brain, the way I arrived at the destination we all aimed for in a different way. It made for such a lonely life, to always be a little different, unique in ways that caused distance not interest, to always have to smooth myself or angle myself so that I fit in and belonged. But while that can be enough for a while and for a few of the many purposes of life, it was never a true belonging. Only my parents understood me and there was still a way here and there they couldn’t follow me down. What wonder is here, now, to have found that which I always wanted and yet never have known – a true belonging. So many people nowadays are so leery of that word, like it’s a chain, a millstone, but how can you fear such a thing as belonging to someone who wants you so completely, in all your imperfections? Who can resist such a siren call?

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He’s watching me now, thinking I don’t notice. I am conscious of the line of my jaw, the hair swept over my shoulder, my hands writing so fast, the soft glow of the lamp on my skin. God, he makes me so aware! I was so drugged, so sleepy through my life, as awake as I tried to be. But I was never totally awake, missing bits of information and data from the world until he came. Sleeping Beauty is not just a fairy tale. I was awakened with a kiss and suddenly objects were limned with new light, colors saturated themselves as with a spilled pot of paint. My lungs whooshed with breaths they could never take before, my brain lit up in dusty corners that had never been used, my skin sizzled with electricity that was suddenly switched on. I came alive to his kiss, to his touch. Thirty years of being preserved – like a fossil, I tease him – made for an awakening I couldn’t have anticipated. Waiting can be good. And thirty years of it surely yielded some benefit. Maybe I had to wait so long and so utterly – so untouched – to ensure I would never tire of him, never grow jaded. The very thought is laughable. Time flows on but I don’t fear it anymore. I am no longer alone. And I never have to be again. I have found my life. And he’s touching me now.

Glendorn, PA - 10-5-08 - 5 weeks into the worst year of my life

My misery is still there. I know that, looking out on the burnt colors of the lake and forest. I see with unfelt dread that time is drowning in the water of the lake, burning away in the shades of autumn laying themselves thick on the leaves. I think ahead in rare moments of solitude to that tenaciously encroaching hour when this escape will finally take on the mantle of a finished dream, and I cannot feel the dread. It is as if the unhappiness that awaits me has frozen or stumbles through my head with the backsliding, uncoordinated stagger of the events of a dream. I can’t even feel the insistent wistfulness I expect to find in this beautiful place, the arching yearning for time to stop. All my emotions have been somehow retarded by the brisk air, the totally separate place around me. I have been placed in a womb of sorts for a few precious days and birth will come, in a blaze of pain and light, but somehow I can’t seem to be present in that close future because everything is muffled. Some force outside my own sore head has taken from me all past and future so that the balm of the present can reach me. Time has stopped here but I know it will start soon. And what will I find then?