Fidel!

Fidel's death reinforces something I know personally of and about death.

Can you imagine Fidel living through the coming tourism and annexation to US business interests? no. i cant either. And that tells me something I have seen before.

Old people, when they feel and believe, know and choose not to continue contending to oncoming freight train changes, they just ticket out. I saw it with my grandfather when my aunt decided to rebuild his house. A sense that their time is over, passed, they are now irrelevant, of no good, that anything or time more would be stations they have neither bearing or direction. I think the same for Fidel. I wont disimagine that Trump probably sent him out. Look at the american men he outlived, his many comrades who were felled by cia ploys...and to contend with trump. . him having lived through obama, also tells us something in hindsight.

go through comandante. go through general. you are indeed large/ exce-grande

 

 

thank you Fidel
thank you for Africa
thank you for training so many black african doctors from around the globe. we wont mind that by the time I tried to come and get training, you had stopped that global free program. but i thank you for the thousands you created to fill the world
your legacy is beyond measure. let no man or woman say different

 SPatel":
 "That time in 1987 when Fidel Castro sent Cuban troops to help Angola repel apartheid South Africa's invasion. Viva Cuito Cuanavale!"


Africland Post:
"I wanna let all Africans and black people in general know the truth. There is no one single foreign leader in this world who have done so much for our continent like Fidel Castro. Castro single handedly helped Africa fight colonialism by donating both soldiers and medical doctors to help not just one country but over dozen countries in Africa, from Congo to Cape verde, from Angola to South Africa. Do not buy into the western media labelling him as a dictator, this man has done way way much more that those who are pretending to be our friends and allies but only here to fill their pockets. Same western media and western governments listed Mandela as a terrorists until 2004, those same governments supported apartheid in SA and to small extent Namibia. Let's pay our respect to Castro because the man did right by us and we are forever grateful. Also, under Castro, Cuba is the only western hemisphere country to treat it's black citizens with dignity and equality, with many Afro-cubans becoming some of the world's best doctors."

Fidel, if you were about black women i would put you up as my profile pic. but seeing as though i never saw nary a one in your camp or counsel...let me just be in honor comrade civilo.
epic life. epic leadership. epic tide. epic revolution
i might name a son after you though

Justice Sobion:

:"Rest in Paradise to the General, our Caribbean amigo, Fidel Castro."

 

IPO Wombmyn

{a few weeks ago I woke up with an idea for a tv show.
i sat on it for all this time. a few hours ago, maybe just minutes of one hour, I wrote the idea to someone on tv to see if their producers would bite the concept. what I did not tell them was that this was and is very much a part of my business model. "selling myself and revenue on different conceptual platforms. shares . access. services. brands integration.}


https://www.wired.com/2013/03/ipo-man/



[Marie-Elena, Hello I am writing you because of your TV presence, and because I am a transplant, dont really know the lay of the land. So thought I would approach a female presence...one to the other. I have an idea for a local reality show on my life, my presence, my interests, my riddles, mysteries and challenges. It is like taking an oxymoron to the public for their entertainment and to problem solve I wont tell you all the aspects of me that may make this tenable, unless you ask and at some point in the future of concept development...but I wondered if your shows, your producers, your outfits might have any interest to pursue this. Apart from solving my life dilemmas, the show aims to integrate the various status of life and living, i being one of the few people who have bridged almost all sects and sites. As well as promoting all the underground assets and artisans in the country. A show that integrates all aspects and faces of us, behind one character, a universal that blows to smithereens all preconceived notions. I look forward to your answer Maven]

Mysterious Gifts and Glad Tidings. IT is Thanksgiving 2016

 

 
 November 10, 2016 Freewill Horoscope:

"Do you know about the Lords of Shouting? According to Christian and Jewish mythology, they're a gang of 15.5 million angels that greet each day with vigorous songs of praise and blessing. Most people are too preoccupied with their own mind chatter to pay attention to them, let alone hear their melodious offerings. But I suspect you may be an exception to that rule in the coming weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you'll be exceptionally alert for and receptive to glad tidings. You may be able to spot opportunities that others are blind to, including the chants of the Lords of Shouting and many other potential blessings. Take advantage of your aptitude!"


November 17, 2016 Freewill Horoscope:

"Some spiders are both construction workers and artists. The webs they spin are not just strong and functional, but also feature decorative elements called "stabilimenta." These may be as simple as zigzags or as complex as spiral whorls. Biologists say the stabilimenta draw prey to specific locations, help the spider hide, and render the overall stability of the web more robust. As you enter the web-building phase of your cycle, Aquarius, I suggest that you include your own version of attractive stabilimenta. Your purpose, of course, is not to catch prey, but to bolster your network and invigorate your support system. Be artful as well as practical. (Thanks to Mother Nature Network's Jaymi Heimbuch for info on stabilimenta.)0 "

Aquarius Horoscope for week of November 24, 2016:

""No pain, no gain" is a modern expression of an old idea. In a second-century Jewish book of ethics, Rabbi Ben Hei Hei wrote, "According to the pain is the gain." Eighteenth-century English poet Robert Herrick said, "If little labor, little are our gains: Man's fate is according to his pains." But I'm here to tell you, Aquarius, that I don't think this prescription will apply to you in the coming weeks. From what I can surmise, your greatest gains will emerge from the absence of pain. You will learn and improve through release, relaxation, generosity, expansiveness, and pleasure."

Read about my coming building pleasure: my stabilimenta and looking for my lords of shouting angels of good tidings...It has begun...

my life continues to be weird. on steroids.

met a super duper appearing decent man, not even a male, online.

who despite all my caveats, concerns, doubts and call out of flags, has shown up at one hundred percent each and every time.

took me to a job stie as our first meeting

the man handsome and tall and black and business owner and decent. and clean and flush, like dat! and talking consciousness too.

what idle universe trick is this.

yesterday he took me to my aesthetician who i had not seen in ages, bought wine and we sat on a hotel balcony smoking the herbs of life, talking, listening to reggae, his favorite music.

then the time and earth stopped. I am telling you what i sensed. what i was told, and how he confirmed it by varying things he said, without me ever telling him what happened.

so i fell out, not out out but not able to sit. i had the sense to jump over the balcony. yeah. scary shit. but i did not get scared. I just removed myself. that balcony was five floors up i believe.

and I laid on the bed, across it not on it, so as to make company inconvenient. and faced my head in my arms and looking out to the balcony so I can see shade and darkness, see the time past, and watch myself.

well, my company came to the bed, laid on it sitting as a reclining, legs up, but sitting up at the pillow, and laid his hands on my back. for the whole time. unless he took phone calls where he went back out to the balcony.

and i proceeded into some kind of energy vortex where revelations of me and this person were coming to me. and any time i asked myself something or asked the universe and it was affirmed, my friend would shake, extremely, or even get up and always to do something punctuated like close the patio door.. or the phone would ring.

It was our energy fields that made a truth compression. I felt it. I saw it. I felt it when it moved, it seemed like he was bodily, physically responding to my brain waves. and those brain waves were specific questions I was asking.

that despite him saying he did not want anything , that he was just a decent guy, that he was not vanishing. that we would have something long term. that he came to save/help me. not me to him so much, but that he would care for me. That i would be provided for. And really and truly he had been doing that since day one. taking me to an interview. taking me to my spa. Not even my own people would have done that. Most folk would not. no matter how nice they say they are.

He had class and protocol and j'ne c'est quo, full of accoutrements. Money, exposure, upbringing, training carries you far, and brings a lot. What I am saying is i seemed to have met some dream blessing guy. Just as my freewill stated I would...and twice I tried to dismiss it under the guise of "too good to be true" and "flags" cause too good to be true, and not trusting, cause the world is crazy, leading him to tell me i am quite negative and doubtful. but how can i not be given my life and experiences, and trinidad in its current dispensation?

but what joy it brings when you discover that there are gems about.

they may not arrive as you prefer them, but they show up.

even here I hesitate to state all that the truth energy compression told me. the first thing was "to be quiet" do not speak these things to him. I think he would be scared. It would be upsetting the life he is trying to protect.

But children. connection. companionship. needs met. kind.

and did i mention this guy is not a bantu. tall. lithe. no belly.

but here is a big thing...he writes on line with one name, starting in the initial of my own. one of the flags I saw was his email address. I usually lock of crazy ones like that. then on the second time we met he tells me his "real name" also a name of a bird.

While I was out in my energy field, when time had stopped. I pulled myself up to ask him if he plays play whe. and to play bird. and parrot. he had focused on them flying overhead. and i realize the bird symbolized something for us...flight. freedom, coupling...like the parrots do...and the owl here of my wisdom and knowing, .

later on as we drove home we talked of it again, and he, not me, remembered three other references of us mentioning birds through the afternoon and evening, that I did not even recall. and to me it was him giving confirmation of those messages. So i await to see if it plays. When i tried to find numbers for that nothing came up

And it is now 1:11 pm

11/23/2016

I wonder if the bird number relate to one of our dates

when we met, when we wrote. of the days we encountered.

this week

then when i woke up this morning, i resisted writing him, sending any message., allowing him his comfort as he constructs it.

then I hear my phone bell: a text.

he writes to tell me he enjoys my company he wonders if he can have it again. it has begun. so it appears

on the way home he asks me if I am hungry and would like to eat. I could only think of chinese food. from a reputable place. he turns back around from approaching out of town to take me to kam wah.

i dont think i have ever met one like him. in my modern times.

 

Stars Without Rockets

MIrlande Jean-Gilles'

"How some folks get to the stars without a rocket"

Collage 2016

{the odd thing, that setting looks like the top of my mountain top home, so apropos}

====

i turn on the computer and it was 11:24 on 11/14
 this is now the second time I am writing this post.
the other one got lost in a wrong button press on fb
i hate when that happens. of all the changes they want to make, they need to fix the no save, no have button when you mistakenly cut or delete. the return button should take you back to all of it  intact. just like blogger

there is a :money building: so named in montrose

and i think how trump has created wonderful opportunities for writers around the globe \

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/aftermath-sixteen-writers-on-trumps-america]

i wake up thinking of a reality/adventure/spiritual journeys/transformation and personal development/travel tv show where I talk about life, explore trinidad, or at least take viewers back to my travels and movements in trinidad since I returned, that is all really a backdrop for my personal struggles, my individual life mystery, cosmic challenge to undo the stuck at fuck that I am and have been.

i think to call the show "it was"
for when i wrote it above, it struck me as a new opening line to a story, and a new novel form of conveying a story than the old fairytale mode of "once upon a time" and surely, this is no fairytale, or perhaps, it is in fact, and about to be, because of this public display of bringing and telling my story to the exact people I have been complaining about for the last thriteen years. So i bring them in and let them help me decipher what has happened. solve the problem. and maybe even doing so, shows the nation the pattern of problem solving and after we fix me, then we can maintain the show to fix other problems in the country...it would be a great exercise beyond me. and a phenomenal one. It is like saying, I have complained about you for all these years, and the experience I am having in your space, now is the time for me to turn the tables around and bring you into my space, my head space, bring my problems to you, let me allow you to screen and scan and analyze me/ to see what solutions you come up with.

then i think to call the show {it was guava season}
precisely because it has been guava season in my life for a long time. long before all the employment retrenchment currently going on. and i want people to see and develop a context for their experiences.
if it not to grand to understand how we can be indifferent and silent in the midst of other's persona; struggles because their story is not mine, but sure as night follows day, my day is coming, as is how yours is now here. welcome to sucking salt.

then the word regeneration kept occurring to me during sleep. i so need a regeneration . of my mind, my thinking, my behavior, its form, its lack of generation of income and productivity beyond personal satisfaction. money is necessary. and i was looking for another re-word. but the only thing that came up was repatriate. and when i think about it, this is all about just that. It is not about repatriating to a country anymore. that was the door, and the initial. but it is really about me repatriating everything personal: back to function, back to money making, back to what never was, even, like family, community, being socially functional. not living in a cocoon..not being secluded and an introvert. steve told me this week that I need to get out of the cocoon. this is nothing but an attempt to blast that to smithereen.

and since we are all learning the power of social media this rounds, I think i am taking it up as the power of my salvation

"Repatriate Regeneration and Salvation"

then after the work of myself, for public integration in my life can and is intended to be a means of counseling for me, and after I have resolved some issues, my own provisions, mainly, the show can carry on into national problem solving

I think beyond the road trips to show where i have been and the things I used to do, and where I used to be over the years, would be a need for a studio, and i would want that studio to be in my home. in the mountains, full of lush greenery

anyway, this writing is far more formal than the muse originally wrote
and i thought it disappeared as to protect it from evil eyes
but somehow i persist in the thinking that my life and pursuits will neither change nor manifest if i keep it all internal and private

you know the one thing that occurred to me last night about regeneration was the need for healing, and even as I write this i see my brain wanting to constantly have me write what i have already written, and it seems I am losing memory. i no longer effortlessly remember the time i went to bed. so it is like my life and body is telling me I need to capture something before it totally unravels and my life is probably erasing my future in minute increments.  time to regenerate. everything. even brain cells/ lungs if possible. i think to drink hot sea/. hot tea. and even one of my props in the show will be a fancy tea cup. or several. no matter where. I could be talking in the sea. say something and up comes a delicate tea cup i sip.

the dream i had two nights ago, about men bringing gifts, healing, opening doors, being part of community, good omens, my cousin kurtis showing up this weekend, are what are spurring these thoughts. being told that my bosoms are the source of all things bountiful for me. how i have no idea....but willing to make a reach for it.

Comic Messages and Omens

 Nov 14 Supermoon

this past weekend, i went to an event,

tickets at the door, with numbers..door prizes

despite not going alone, I end up in a clan of four

door prize time,

i was watching the concert going on, away from my seat on the dance floor, drink in one hand. so i put the ticket stubs in my bosom after reading the numbers.

after an interminable time and my company who pulled tickets for gifts, a man was called up. he pulls a few and then calls my number.

i hug him. as i thought he was some kind of luck

then more tickets get called. the second ticket in my bosom gets called. they wanted to know whose ticket it was, so i called either of the other two, to go and claim. the fourth was actually one of the celebrities performing.

i write that because it was mentioned that because i put the tickets in my bosom, they yielded. and it was as a symbol of all to come to me. i neither engaged nor queried these views.

i was in five inch heels for the whole night. seemingly comfortable, until i woke up yesterday morning. and i was dreaming too, but for the life of me I cant explain why the middle of my back is hurting/aching horizontally/ I consider it somehow an alignment issue but the orientation of the ache makes it peculiar. 

The Cosmic Council/Clan? Community?

then i also dreamt in the short hours i slept. something about living in a town home that seemed to be attached in a community type cluster, perhaps four or five homes to a platform huge courtyard , but the attachment merely meant platforms, there was air and space passing in between each unit. the implication was that one was mine. I saw people. more men than women. and i swear at some point i get a sense that a man stepped on my back, and yet it was not a means of violence, attack, abuse, or anything negative. unless i am not getting the whole event, but somehow remembering what occurred. I dont know.. but i write it because something about this whole few days, this ache I cant explain..the connection of men bringing luck, when i dreamt of men. I merely wanted to document the links, even if i cant make them

part of it too i do feel as if there is a hand in the mix somewhere...someone trying to limit and subdue my star, movement, blight me somehow and the need for me to heed and act accordingly, even if i am unable to do it enough. in a right sphere i would beam up and out/ totally

then in serious true to form in terms of my suspicion...a long lost cousin, the male twin to my female, as it was the first in the beginning, we are the first grand set to our grandparents. It was the two of us before any others came for five years...he has reappeared in my life this weekend. i have yet to see him. I was gallivanting when he visited to invite us to his son's pending nuptials....so this writing is to do nothing but to usher in, acknowledge, receive appropriately and call out onto what and all ever good tidings this way to me, comes/

 "Bring It"

Courtesy Photos:   the first: my photo of last night's Super MoonThe Other two: The Art of Mirlande Jean-Gilles.

Courtesy Photos: First : my own photo from last nightThree The Art of Mirlande Jean-Gilles.

the last, my photo from last night

imagine this post as a whiteboard

Social Justice Movements
Melanin Human Rights

how do you pursue that within larger generic posts and policy positions?

Intersectionality and Black Women
misogynoir
racism
white supremacy
allies or the lack thereof

What are the levers that leverage people to unify? bigger than the arbitrary buyins of identity politics

Identity Politics

Trump Chump Truths

i switch on the tv after a three hour nap and I just start a guttural laugh inside my head,

I guess I am not the only one:

Daniel Michael: "It's so quiet at the #hillaryHQ you can hear an email get deleted #electionday"

but all with caution cause, "I remember this before: we all went to sleep and al gore was president. woke up and found it was bush"

but, if we were to follow...the current apparent signs, I wish i had the space and company to do a vituperative subversive reading of this outcome for the moment. and even if these are not the final results, just imagine what it means for such a tight race given the characteriizations of trump, both candidates. ...we are living an amazing moment in time and oh the wonder to dissect and deconstruct that and explore the full karma that this all is, and not even for people who have been struggling at the bottom of the establishment shoe...not us first people at standing rock, not as black folk who delude to think we have allies. but the system. the system is reaping its rewards, its chickens are coming home to roost, the character of everything sowed is being magnified.

why would american not have an ex escort nude pinup for a first lady? when the kardashians are all the rage for how many decades now?

the amerikkkan nation has been running a kill raid on black lives and bodies for the last few years, how many of the white folks voting for hillary stood up standing rock and said that was not acceptable? so why are you all shocked that the kkk endorsed donald trump. the veneers have fallen is all. nothing new happening here

but i am still deeply bemused by the shock

i am just imagining hillary, bill, the obamas are in a daft stupor right now

it is deep to me too, because in some universe somewhere in the cosmos, these results also show that these two candidates were oh so similar as to have zero differences to separate them , their policies, what they stand for. see, you can do stuff either behind the curtain, in the basement, or you can make a parade out of it. donald is just the parade.

--------part two

yea. i remember when I too thought that competency and decency would win the day. that was sixteen years ago when i had still yet to realize the ugliness rules. and had overrode everything I had ever attempted four years prior.

i am also struck to realize how destabilized and stunned mute the clinton camp...where some unnamed random guy takes the stage and tells the folk to go home, with no comment otherwise except thanks. i wish i knew what state that was

there is a call to come to truth and folk will do well to heed the call and not bury their heads into another sand as they have for hundred of years.

and in the call to truth is the voice and embodiment of a lie leading : "make a america great again" the first truth is to excavate at which time america was great. cause the only time it might have been is when the ones echoing that statement , werent here, not even by first lineage.

oh what a day what a day.

good morning

-------part three

for a year or more now i came to the realization that some of us carry names of our destiny, purpose, mission, mandate or life deed...and as I close i think how we have all been trumped. we being the system we all bought into, we being all the people who thought him a clown and an idiot, and was there anyone who did not have the man as a walking caricature that he is: orange face, vanilla circled eyes, red flying hair mat, and the body shape of a barrel or pumpkin.....we being you who pretended you lived in a world different from the results of this election proves, we being lies and truth together,  either all or the same, we being the global population, not just the US.

trumped truth . 

trumped lies

trump trumped every establishment

and hillary too, embodied that mode/ ask bernie. ask the democratic party leadership.

you cant feed the alligators and expect them to let the chickens roost. or can you.

=====part four

there are some deep lessons here I think. something spiritual beyond the karma thing. beyond the disintegration of a world bought and constructed...
something about not being able to fight fire with fire.
something akin to more of the same is not going to get you far
something like you cant use the same tools of the devil to win the devil
kind of like be and come correct or stay home
i am still struggling to capture it

[Jessica Joseph: "Trump did not get the majority of American votes because the majority of America abstained from voting in this election. Trump won because the small base he was able to mobilize was bigger than what the Democrats were able to move due to choosing the wrong candidate. It should have been Bernie. They underestimated just how much Hillary was not liked and not trusted.

Maven Huggins: " i have yet to put the words to it but hillary in this election and in life has exhibited what it looks like for a white woman to be on a white male privilege steroids. and ironically enough, paid for it tonight"]


--------good evening.
part five -----------

Rebecca Solnit:

"By the way, she won the popular vote so far as we can tell. So maybe we don't need to argue about why she lost and think about why we have the nightmare of the electoral college. Brian Edwards-Tiekert wrote last night, "When the pacific coast states finish counting, it is highly likely that Trump will have lost the popular vote, but still won the presidency. Why? Because our country's political system was built to accommodate slavery. Slave states wanted political influence proportionate to their populations, but they didn't want to let vast swaths of those populations vote. Voila!--electoral college. So, remember: our country showed its ugly side today, but it did not give Donald Trump a mandate. Donald Trump was not elected by America's voters. He was elected by America's slave owners." 

And you know, we don't blame Hitler's election on weak rival candidates; a bunch of Americans, mostly but not all white, decided to vote for the overt liar and serial sexual assailant who was endorsed by the Klan after making open threats against immigrants and Muslims and denigrating Latinos and Blacks and who will go on trial for racketeering in 19 days because of his failed for-profit college. She won the popular vote despite voter disenfranchisement and suppression and the end of the Voting Rights Act, the best efforts of the FBI's director, Wikileaks, massive misogyny across the spectrum, and forty years of the Republican Party running attacks on her and her husband.

The ever-brilliant Aruna D'Souza notes: "At some point soon we need to discuss whether Sanders would have been able to win, but helpful hint: today, it just sounds like you're saying "the Democrats should have cut into Trump's lead in the misogynist vote and the whitelash vote by running a white man." Let's come to terms with the racism and the misogyny first, before analyzing the what ifs—because otherwise we're just going to replicate it forever. And if you think that the angry anti-Establishment vote won last night (hence Sanders would have fared better), let me remind you that patriarchy and white supremacy are the cornerstones of the Establishment."

Signs

talk about signs
?
i tried to stay home tonight. on my new program of closing three years of wandering.. only for my elder cousin to call me and tell me she passed by my watering hole and eh see me. so she came by, i got dressed and we went out to karaoke.
she shared with me a printed pic of me at her celebration party from last saturday. who prints pics again/? and then she tells me to show it to one of my haters. the one who tried to set me up last friday and i told her that if some shit had popped off the first bottle was for her and the next was the one she agitated. well that set off a whole myriad of responses on her part. what police partner she eh call, what crew of men she eh tell, the bartender and bar owner she tell. and then what made it bad, one of the cunts in her male crew rammed his car into my chair three times. reverse pull up. reverse pull up. reverse pull up. each time a hit. the weird ass mf thing? I never moved. never got up from the chair. never responded or reacted. and i think that is some crazy shit. the whole time i was watching him in shock surprise, confusion. but i know now i was spirit inhabited. that and i carry no fear. i may even have been transported. but the whole time i was steering him in his face, dont even know his name except by his brother, and even then, he could have had a different sire. these slave bred triflings. the look on his face. but the truth is, i blanked him years prior as the inconsequence he is so he was toting. it is a dangerous thing to take drama to people who toting.
but anyway..it took me a night of sleep to realize the next morning that the sixty four year old sow told them about the story and he as a cunt take up fight between women. and thought he was coming for me. i dont think he realize that he was caught on camera.
no one came to my aid. not the brother of my ex-lover. not any of the men in that cove, and i was stunned
beyond the first point of offense, I never even took it up with the bitch warring with me.. a sixty four year old woman. and it was this week i realize she is one of those creatures in competition with her youngers.. i also realize her man, one of about three, but the one she most favors, muches me highly. and i think that was the source of everything
anyway, to cut this story short. where i decided I would stop liming on the ground with these hoes.. my elder cousin comes for me. she too in her mid sixties. then she begins to regale us all of her celebratory party and shows what??? a video of her stickfighting at the party and taking getting the best of her oppone nt, though all in fun.
then she begins to tell them a narrative of the fight joust. pretense. and i was struck in the hearing. i realize. the ancestors sent this woman, my prime hater cousin to come get me. to show these fuckers I shall not be coward or bowed, even though I tried to be. not that i am. but i realized i cant fight them all. and with no back I cant see who might advance to me from the back. and having zero ride or dies, thought it best not to fuck with these bitches, so decided to cut it all off and stay home
and here she is/ my biggest hater. being sent by her ancestors. our priors. and i was stunned. I told her. tolder her three times. that despite her self and our living on this plane in this time...there are those and things that transcend. that i belong not to anyone currently living but all dead. my paternal grandmother my maternal grandparents, my maternal great aunt, her mother. my brother.
and despite herself she was sent to show up to these bitches. I am not fucking alone. fuck with me at your own peril. we got stick fighters living. women not men
i would be so intrigued to find out how them interpreted that dynamic. but it never me mind. i was so elevated. i am protected
then i went on to sing. and told no one believed, as quiet as I am, that i have all that talent
<3 span="">
i am a spirit child.
we have so many things to teach our children
their very hater might be the person the spirits send to protect and guard them
there are dynamics of identity, your privilege, your blessings, will earn the ire of many lessers....