Letting Them Slip

Of the things that get my goat these days, the conflict between art and duty is at the top of the list. I kvetch often when I cannot seem to find, or to make, the time to attend to the acts of creation that I claim I need to sustain myself. It would seem to be inconsistent with my goals. It makes me wonder when I truly am going to pull a carpe diem and satisfy my intention.

My peace of mind depends on it, don't you think? And if peace of mind is that important it would seem imperative to follow those notions and impulses that feed it. I had the chance today. Make that two chances. I failed to act on both, and now I am disappointed.

The chances were nothing earth-shattering. There was no flash of insight leading to the cure for cancer or ending world poverty. No, these chances were more humble, intrinsic to me and me alone. Well, unless you consider that the chances had potential for me to gather something to share with the extrinsic world.

I had an assignment wherein I had the opportunity to do something constructive with my camera and earn payment from the results. The assignment was in a semi-rural area somewhat south of my current abode. When I had left the house earlier, on impulse I put my film camera in the car, in case I saw something scenic or interesting out in the rolling fields and farms. So it wasn't like I didn't have any equipment.

The assignment took longer than I expected, and I was tired, hungry and hot when I finished. My thoughts turned to getting home and finishing the task. I was in a hurry, for what in hindsight turned out to be not so pressing reasons. So I get in the car and head home, thinking too much about what I needed to do.

I passed a concrete plant at an intersection of two roads and what seemed like four cornfields. The interplay of light and shadow on the industrial structures was fascinating. I thought about the black and white film I had, but shook my head and muttered to myself "No time, gotta get home." I kept driving.

Nearby and across the road the top of a slightly derelict silo peeped up above a deep cornfield. Next to it were some barn buildings, also in need of sprucing up. Peeling paint, an old tree, cornstalks waving in the foreground. The light was hitting it all just right. The mood was of opportunities fading away, hard work needing to be done, and the unsettling openness of the prairie sky above it.

Perfect photo op, right? Great shots to be had, yes?

I watched it recede in my rear view mirror. I didn't stop. The velvet shackles of duty, the sure thing, the chore to be done, all convinced me to keep going by laying on the old saw of "There will be other opportunities, move along." What really bothered me, the farther down the road I went, is that the creative soul in me raised hardly a peep. It just let it happen.

The question turning over in my mind and heart while I sped down the highway back to the "city", was one of "If not now, when?"

Indeed. Opportunities may exist, but to assume a guarantee is to take them for granted. The voice in my head told me to drive, to follow the call of duty. My artistic life is in danger of atrophy, all because sometimes I listen to the wrong voice.

Sleeping Dogs In My Head

Crash! Clang! Bang the lids
Warbling yelps, claws scratch hardwood
while bastard me laughs

Viewfinders

I am embarking on a trip today, a 'there-and-back' jaunt, same day service to back east. I was puttering around earlier trying to wrap up the last minute loose ends. I had to remind myself that I wasn't packing any clothes or travel gear...

...except I made sure I had a notebook and a camera.

I feel like I can't go on any travel anymore without one or both of those things. I feel something is missing if I don't have either with me. Will I use them? I don't know. But I'd rather have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. You know that is, don't you? Don't you?

Road Fell Away (Sunday Meditation #22)

October 7th, 2012. The Year of My Discontent.

It has been a year since it happened. 365 days around the Sun, back to where I started, only older. One year ago today, I was laid off from my job. The third time in as many years, a trifecta of monumentally dubious distinction. The honor is mine, but I would happy to have not been...graced...by its presence.

The preceding year has been one of growth and retreat, shock and joy, fear and contentedness. It has been singularly fruitless in the furthering of my career as an architect. Never have I expended so much effort in pursuit of work with so little return. The frustration and despondency have sometimes encased me in a portable sphere of emotional gel, on occasion. Thick, sticky and suffocating.

I am learning to breathe for the sake of breathing. Because I must. Because I exist independently of my education and training, my professional obligations and notions of self-worth appended thereto. It has to be that way, because I was myself before the world tried to define me.

Is there wisdom is this struggle of mine? Is there anything to be learned from this equinoctial year of professional disconnection? I hope so. But I cannot tell you yet what knowledge I have gained, my friends. I can tell you this: that moment when the wheels leave the pavement may well be one of the single most important defining moments of a lifetime, even if we don't recognize it.

Driving the straight and open path is easy, and not necessarily edifying. It is what we do when the road falls away that reveals so much more about ourselves. It may be time to let go of the wheel and trust I hit the pavement at the proper angle when I land.

Braving the Deep Wood - Where From Here?

A forest of noises, the great green wall within my head. Steam from the nostrils of my horse drifts lazily past my eyes. The sun is just cracking the sky, frost is on the grass, and I clutch the reins a bit nervously while staring into the trees. It is dark between the trunks. A darkness so thick I cannot quit the notion that it never goes away, even in the implacable white gold noon of a high summer's day.

---

I wrote that bit above a few days ago. My head was full of pressure and noise. That passage is what came out, and I must confess I was slightly disappointed. It started with such promise. It came to a crashing halt as I typed "...day."

The wheels fell off the writing bus. There was so much promise...

I seemed to have abruptly lost the thread. I was banging away on the keyboard, turned my head slightly to look out the window at a passing shadow, and the thoughts vanished like steam into the air.

I had such promise.

The paragraph suddenly became a metaphor for my forays into writing. Burst of promise, bright new idea, the words flowing...into nothing. This is most troubling.

There is something holding me back, dear ones, and I cannot get a grip on it. The specter of unfulfilled potential is shuffling around in the dusty closets of my mind. I am fighting the urge to look over my shoulder.

Specters, my friends. If anyone has insight in how to banish them, please let me know. It is the first day of September and harvest time is coming up soon. I need to be ready to reap what I have sown.

Me, Knife

This soul is not Pierre nor
Delphic queries on the tongue
of a dead French philosopher

Yet a day does not pass
without replacing the heart
or switching out the mind

Or is it heart every day
and mind every other?
Confusion, exhaustion

I know it happens, I feel it
reaching for the blade-mind
gripping handle of the soul

Ignore the whispers of Sartre:
blade, handle are distractions
I am the Knife within my reach

Billy Blaze Is Beating The Crap Out of Chuck Lumley. Maybe.

Monday, July 16th, 2012. 4:38 PM. Thirsty and nervous.

A problem with writing, sometimes and at least for me, is that there is an excess of voices in my head. Not in a "I've-lost-my-grip-and-become-unhinged" sort of way. It resembles a cacophony. A circus. The trading floor of a particularly eccentric, bizarre stock exchange.

Plus, there is the subtle yet pervasive odor of fear in the atmosphere. Fear makes me nervous.

The voices, they often make it hard for me to get anything done. Today is a case in point. I've been bouncing back and forth between trying to cobble together an effective job search, and attempting to suss out the thread of something my inner voice insists I write. Doing two complex tasks at once, and doing neither very well. I mean, just look at the drivel I'm putting on the page!

Gahhh. It is a first world problem that strikes at the root of my dilemma. I have been pursuing what I know how to do*, with unfortunately little usable results. I have also pursued what I don't know how to do**, with results even less impressive. All of this against a backdrop of a life in whirling flux. So many changes, so many things new and outside of the fragile snow globe I used to inhabit.

Well, that glass is broken now. A leap into the wild blue after years of habit broken by personal upheaval. It has affected my concentration. My creativity. My resolve to produce something worthwhile. The ideas come like stones skipping over the surface of the ocean. Tracking them all makes it own exhaustion, especially since I have aspirations to be more than just a hobbyist. As an architect, I should know more than many that in order to build anything, you need a solid plan.

So the joke seems to be on me. For reasons I have yet to understand, I have been unable to formulate a solid plan for any path I want to follow. I think about it, I make tentative steps in certain directions, and then I get distracted by the Stuff and the Things. I have lost focus far more times than I care to count. This is anxious-making, because I'm painfully aware I need to get it together.

The pragmatic, practical side of me, the one that is fond of structure and routine is banging heads with the creative, artistic side that is desperate to bloom and explore. There has to be a way to reconcile the two. All the more critical as I hope to find a way to make a living out of the beautiful mess of my life. I need my one big idea.

Remember the movie Night Shift which came out in 1982, with Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler? As some may know, Michael Keaton played William Blazejowski aka 'Billy Blaze'. He was the feckless numbskull, always carrying a miniature tape recorder so he could capture the big ideas that were constantly springing forth from his overheated mind.*** Henry Winkler played Chuck Lumley, the sad-sack, straight-laced guy who quit Wall Street for a low-stress job in a morgue. They both end up on the night shift, and hilarity ensues. The Creative and the Steward in comic tension.

Chuck Lumley and Billy Blaze are slugging it out in my head, cheered on by a crowd of reprobates, hangers-on and clowns. I'm not sure who is ahead in this contest, but I can tell you it is noisy, it is frenetic and it is exhausting. Chuck wants me to settle down and take the first, safest thing that comes up. Billy wants me to keep cranking out the ideas until we have that One Big Idea.

I want that One Big Idea, too, dear readers. I'm just not sure how much longer I can hold out.

---

*The wonderful if exceedingly frustrating world of architecture.
**In other words, writing and photography. By 'don't know how to do' I mean I was not formally educated in, nor do I have professional credentials in, either area of artistic/professional endeavor.
***My favorite is the one where Billy is eating a fast food burger. He stops to stare at the wrapper, then whips out the recorder to say "Idea to reduce garbage:edible paper!" The look on his face was hilarious.

Sunday Meditation #14: On Discarding the Noise of the World

How to walk in the woods without being in the woods?  This is the dilemma before me this day, a fine winter Saturday in this January.  I am feeling under the weather, and it has tempered my plan to walk down by the river to restore some balance to my inner self.  Perhaps I am a reverse Muhammad, seeking to have the 'mountain' come to me, just this once. In my current state, I may not have the energy to go to the mountain.

In the pursuit of balance, this walk may be necessary.  The noise of the world has been heavy on my mind in recent days.  The fault lies entirely within myself.  I opened the spigot far too much, as it were.  A strange intersection of necessity and idleness led me astray into the wilds of social media and Internet.  Useful tools and conduits I'm sure you would agree.  But shiny and seductive in ways that are not always good for us.

Paraphrasing a friend of mine, who was actually referring to F**eb**k, the Internet is like one long conversation that never ends.  So many thoughts, observations, quotations flying back and forth.  And like any medium of communication, besmirched with a lot of ignorance, misinformation, and wrongheadedness.  This environment can be mental quicksand for those inclined to tilt at windmills.

Those people such as this author.  Harrumph.

I have allowed myself too much traipsing about in the wastelands of social commentary.  I have allowed myself to be entangled far too deeply in the small-mindedness of consumer culture and politics.  Politics in particular.  Election years in specific tend to be time-sumps, and with the "facilitator of dreams" that is electronic media, the sump is in danger of becoming all-consuming.

Another wise friend of mine had advised me some weeks ago forgo tilting at windmills, and she was spot on in that advice.  This is a time now that I should let go, back up, and leave the windmills to their own devices.  I am only one man.  I have only one voice. That voice cannot sustain infinite conversation and fruitless dissipation.  that way lies weariness and stress. It behooves me to temper myself, my leaps into the din and clatter.

It is time to reacquaint myself with my center.  It is time for a walk in the woods, whether they come to me or I go to them, so I may discard the noise of the world and hear my own voice again.

Contender Blues

The bubble popped and I snapped awake.  Years, gone, and where did I wake up?

I had one of those moments today, of ennui spiced with dislocation, and a dash of mild anxiety.  It was induced by a chance encounter via email.  The email came from a professional networking website and it was chock full of catalysts and memory triggers in the form of "what-have-you-done-since..." blurbs.  The past come back to nag me.

The feeling of being underwater has been intense in the nearly four weeks since I was let go from the job.  Some days I wander around immersed in the sensation.  I put it aside most of the day, as I had my darling daughter  with me, and it was good.

But that email brought it all back.  I scrolled through the page, looking at all the people who had been somewhere and done something and it was at the end of it that the bubble popped.  I started as if awoken while sleepwalking.  It took me a brief pause to collect myself to remind me that I was on the couch staring at the laptop screen.  I was home.

Home, and wondering just what it is that I had been doing all these years.  Picking through the battered scrap heap of my career life to try and piece together that which I could point to and say: I Did This, And I Am Wonderful.  The pickings, it seemed to me, were too thin.

Leaning back into the sofa cushions all I could think was that I need to get my stuff together.  I need to do something worthwhile and soon, as I have metaphorically been sawing off the limb behind myself.  Its only a matter of time before that limb cracks.  I need to hurry.

I need to rev the engine, pop the clutch and damn the torpedoes.  I need to get somewhere, fast.

Of Axes and Impossibilities

This post wrote itself.  Not literally, of course.  I, me, the person who is at the keyboard did the work.  The central idea, however, was ready made.

I was let go from my job today.

Third time in three years.  I must say, it is a song and dance I am mighty sick of doing.  The timing is never good, but it is absolutely horrible for me right here and now.  I am quite short in a key resource, and the steady paycheck was necessity not nicety; no fat margins for me.  Hell, no real margin at all.

I say "was".  Reality? It is a necessity, a fact driven home to me when I sat down to take stock.  The stock, sad to say, was a bit thin.

So.

I don't know what the next step may be.  I've been an architect all of my adult life.  This is the sixth time in that span that I have been laid off.  You might think the universe is trying to tell me something.  The problem, the crux of this dilemma, is that I really don't know what to do next.

That's a hell of a thing for someone who is trained as a professional problem solver.

So.

Where now?  And did you know that, coincidentally, I began blogging three years and a day ago?  Interesting.  Trivial.  Useless, maybe, as a fact.  But interesting.

So.

Where do I go now?  I don't know.  I just don't know.  I'm fleeing axefalls and running headlong into impossibilities.  It's going to take some magic.

Ruben Finally Gets It

Raised blade against stubble
for the last time, he thought,
just like last time
agates of his eyes tracking
a leather mask, the map
of himself marked by rivers
in canyons carved by her

Blade scrapes the land
flattening hills and opening wells,
tungsten glare illuminating
the broken heart behind the eyes
that realized in all those years
of wanting to shave for her
she never once deigned to ask

Living In The Synapse

An odd phenomenon here on the People's Republic of Gumbolia.  I had approached the computer with vigor and purpose, certain I had a gem of story to tell, and when I sat down to write it, it disappeared.  This pleases me not.  I felt no need to reach for a notebook, because I was convinced the story would make it to the page.

I was wrong.  I should have known better.

This happens to me on a regular basis, that I have a great idea, only to have it vanish.  Well, who knows if it was great, if I can't write it down for all to see.  Not to worry, I suppose.  It's Saturday, the weekend is in full swing.  Perhaps I'll live a little...then come back to tell the tale.

The Tao of Harrison

I owe a very special thanks to my good friend Rich, who writes a column called 'Popular Forensics' over at Open Case .com, for giving me directions that lead to the following quote:

Shortly after Dave killed himself, I reread “How Men Pray,” and I remember wondering whether, in the midst of Dave’s torment, he might have found consoling Harrison’s belief that a writer is someone who “consciously or unconsciously takes a vow of obedience to awareness.” Perhaps he would have smiled at Harrison’s belief that the writer’s gift, and curse, is one of “excessive consciousness.”

It is from an article in OutsideOnline, written by Tom Bissell about one of my favorite authors, Jim Harrison.  The article is longish for online material, but its very good.  I recommend it for the curious.  I don't often buy into coincidence, but that last phrase of "excessive consciousness" made my jaw drop.

I read that, and for a few moments, I truly believed that I might, after all, truly be a writer.

It Ain't Easy Being Mahayana

Wasn't that what Kermit really meant?

Ah...probably not.  Maybe.  I don't know.  It could be that our little green frog friend was more prescient than he knew.  I was singing that song recently, but 'green' wasn't the word that I was looking for during my day.  The world, it seems, wants too much from me and I don't know if I can maintain my composure.

It may have been the cars on the road what made me think it.

Events in my life over the past decade have changed me, at least a little.  I have striven to be more patient, tolerant, understanding and compassionate.  The increase in this learning rate jumped when my daughter was born, and then increased sharply within the last three years.

But, still, I gripe.  I curse.  I question the motives and intelligence of my fellow human beings on a far too regular basis.  I cannot seem to break the habit.  This troubles me, because to maintain the cynicism and 'worldiness' that passes for social aptitude in this modern world is increasingly beyond my pale.  I can do it.  But it degrades me and exhausts me.

I know because of the irritation I feel at the idiocy I witness on the road, the overbearing demands of a service oriented industry (in which service sometimes is confused with 'servitude'), the numbing over stimulation of a 24/7 news/entertainment complex, the sheer restlessness of highly populated areas always under construction...

Increasingly I feel disconnected from that modern life, because of the crassness, vapidity and anxiety it cannot seem to do without.

Gah.  Look what I have written.  Sometimes, dear readers, I see my words, know them to be a reflection of my mind, and I cannot escape the notion that I am a foolish man.  Foolish, maybe, because I expect the world to be something other than what it is.  If only, if only, I could tell you what it should be.

Then, perhaps, enlightenment would be close behind.

Schlubs

I'll own up now, I am not a fashion plate.  Never have been, probably never will be.  I clean up well but sartorial endeavors are generally not on my screen for most of daily life.  So I'm not sure just how much credibility I have in this particular area of human interest.

This is not to say I am completely ignorant of how to dress, or what to wear, or at least how to put on clothes and not look like a dweeb when I leave the house.  Most of the time I do want to maintain a minimum standard of neatness and decorum, just by personal inclination.  What that means is that sometimes I even tuck in my t-shirts.  And I don't go grocery shopping in flip flops and cutoffs.

Which brings me to the subject of this post:  Schlubs, and the women they inflict themselves upon.

I took Wee Lass out for dinner over the weekend, after which we went for a stroll down the main street to window shop and have ice cream.  Something was bugging me, though, something that started during dinner and came into full bloom while we were out walking.  There were an unusual number of schlubs out that evening.  It started with the guy in the restaurant who was wearing a tank top and what looked like satin basketball shorts, along with bizarro black tennis shoes complete with red piping.  He looked like he had just crawled out of a hamper.

His wife (I assume she was his wife, they were eating together with two kids and behaving like a family unit) on the other hand was dressed casually, too, but so much more put together.  Simple black top with white capri pants and canvas deck shoes.  Maybe not knock-'em-dead elegant, but it looked good.  It looked like she gave a hoot about simple things like matching! and neat! and 'I didn't just get up!'.

When we left the restaurant I was sensitized to the phenomenon, as I really started to notice the walking fashion victims attached to arms of (for the most part) much more 'with it' lady companions.  Wrinkled t-shirts, river rat shoes, baggy cargo shorts, ragged jeans with flip-flops and far too many logos for beer and cars and drinking establishments.  All of these contrasted with nice summer dresses, well-fitting shorts, interesting shoes (I confess, my knowledge of womens shoe etiquette is sketchy), even just simple tops and intriguing accessories.  While it wasn't a top hat and tails evening, just a casual weekend night out, the ladies looked a lot better than the dudes.  Like they actually thought about it.  The guys, they made me wonder in some cases if they had scintillating personalities (or money) or if maybe they were just plain lucky to be in the company of the women with them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing a plain tan t-shirt (tucked in), off white shorts and canvas tan casual shoes with light brown laces.  I wouldn't have won any awards for world-class casual dress, no doubt, I felt I could hold my own against the Larry, Darryl and Darryls out that night.  My daughter was wearing a casual summer top over flower-patterned shorts, along with her favorite golden sandals

To paraphrase Al Pacino in And Justice For All..."Don't you care, guys?  don't you even care?".

I know it isn't earth-shattering, maybe even flirts with shallowness, but I bring this up because I didn't used to care. And now?  I do.  I don't know why, I just do.  While I'm not so much a block head that I would try to outshine the sun, I do want feel like I belong in the same part of the sky.  And that means, for better or worse, that I have to care about how I shine.

Sunday Meditation #2: On The Problem Of Weeds

I look out my kitchen window at the riotous growth of the crepe myrtle in the corner of the yard, the almost tree-like bush resembling a prideful lion's head with its spray of mane-like branches.  The branches festooned with magenta blossoms.  The wild roses, like lion cubs, crouch at its feet, peeking their little leaves out from the protection of the myrtle.  It makes me smile and remember G-maw, my maternal grandmother.  She had a crepe myrtle in her yard, a large one, and I always remember that one as a tree.

The weeds, too, that desecrate the planting beds ringing my house, they remind me also of G-maw.  Not for any direct resemblance, no, but only the absence of weeds in my grandmother's presence.  She was a gardener, with a plot behind her house in which she grew flowers and tomatoes and other beautiful, tasty things to eat.  She had little patience for weeds, mostly.  She often tended the large, impromptu garden that sprang up behind my boyhood home, on a patch of land bordered by the neighbor's houses.  Many good things came from that plot, and G-maw helped them grow.  She was formed in a time where it was necessary for you to grow the things you ate, because if you didn't you might not eat.

The garden of my youth, the flower plot of my grandmother's home, has begun to fade somewhat under the pressure of time.  Fade is perhaps not the exact word, as I sit here and contemplate the setting sun. Blurred or softened is perhaps a better choice.  A view through thick panes of glass abraded by sand on the winds of time, the memories achieve a certain glow on the screen of my mind.

I remember the weeds, also, as I look out the window.  The weeds have grown fast and thick this summer, fattening their stems and fleshly leaves while I wasn't looking, or was distracted by the noise and clatter of the modern world.  I see the weeds, and I feel unsettled, because I know I have let some things get away from me.  Weeds are something my G-maw would have taken care of, right away, as she often did when she was still of this mortal coil.

Me, I dither too much, crow mind distracted by the shiny things.

I stand at the window and sip my glass of tea.  Silently, I send up a prayer, a request, or maybe just an ethereal "hello" to my G-maw, asking her to come visit, offer some advice.

There are weeds around me, G-maw, and I want to know what to do.  You knew what to do, always.

Doppelganger

Raising the razor
revealing an odd stranger
staring from the glass

Bumblebee Blues: Sip and Gulp

So I'm watching out the kitchen window, where I can see this crepe myrtle bush (or is it a tree? What the hell is a crepe myrtle, anyway?  Sounds like it could be someones grandmother) and it finally dawns on me that it is bigger than it was back in the beginning of spring.  Which is probably not unusual, considering that it is a green, growing thing, and by their inherent nature they tend to grow.  And be green. In this case, what piqued my interest, what got all up in my grille as it were, was that it seemed a lot bigger.  Really.  Considering that I had cropped it back, given it the arborist's equivalent of a flattop fade, I was expecting that there bush to behave itself this summer.  So I wouldn't have to cut it back again.  Well, fuggedaboutit, paisanos, it looks like Gumbo the Gardener will have to engage in some more horticultural ass-whoopin' to get things under control.

So it is that I take on the natural world.  To be fair, the crepe myrtle doesn't bother me that much.  It has grown fast since I cut it back, but it also has a burgeoned with a thick layer of flowers on the branches.  Deep magenta or crimson, I don't know, but there are a lot of them.  As a consequence of all this floral exuberance there have been a plethora of bees flitting about on the bush.  There may have been a hummingbird, too, but I cannot confirm it.  But a hummingbird would be cool.

It was while watching the birds and the bees do their dance (no, sillies, not that dance), on a hot, sunny afternoon that I was granted an insight.  A brief glimpse of the inner workings of life.  The bees were lazily circling about, landing now and them to ravish their chosen dance partners, seeking pollen and being profligate with their affections.  I took to meditating on those bees, wondering if I had been doing the same thing with my life: sipping lightly from so many things and never really staying put with my emotions.  Never taking a break and drinking the nectar of life.  Never grabbing the cup with both hands and just sucking down a few huge gulps, for the sheer sake of knowing I could, and thereby drink deep.  The bees, whether they knew it or not, had just taught me a lesson about gusto.

From small creatures do great lessons flow.  I watched the bees sip from the flowers and considered that maybe, just maybe, I was ready to fill my belly with a few swigs of Life.  Forget finesse, forget being too delicate, too scared of it, I realized it is high time I grab a cup and drink my fill.

It really is too short, ignore the cliche and absorb the truth.  Time to raise a toast to life.

On The Importance of Knowing Where To Find Your Hammer

One of the most important rules of carpentry, especially that which puts the humble nail front and center, is to always know the location of your hammer. 

Come to think of it, that is good advice no matter you do in life.

Keep an eye on your hammer, no matter what form in which it manifests.

I Interrupt This Poetry Slam To Say...

...that gosh and begorrah, it seems that the Google Blogger Team's "Blogs of Note" page has gone and selected...

...Irish Gumbo...

...as the Blog of Note for June 7th, 2011.  Click on the link just to see, and to browse some other good things out there.

How about that?  Irish Gumbo: It's not just a blog, it's a digital Post-It!

(Poetry slam continues tomorrow)