Sex, drugs, violence (in no particular order)

Poems by Margaret Gunning

                                Gone west

It seems in my life I have always

moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,

the boardwalk behind the Quay;

it’s a left-handed sort of life

driving me heartwards, though never,

no never,

heartwise.

                                           that day

when I thought I saw you   on the boardwalk

my guts jumped:               it

jerked the hook in my colon

(you always knew about bait)

You know how it was:    I wanted to stand on my desk

on the last day of classes

and shout:  o captain!  My captain!

But you had your own rotation – I saw

it reel from view, and

(helpless to catch you)

watched your spiralling apogee

What is the remotest segment of an orbit?

Booze, blondes.  Too much of

a good thing.  But I did love you.

We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an

Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.

You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire

to my mind.

I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and

                                                                   down,

sleeping, walking the dog, in and out

and ‘round the world.

I knew you’d be back, like hounds,

like a cycle of blood, like black

fruit springing into tree.  When the

string broke, I hid my eyes, and

said, but it’s only a lute,

it will heal itself,

half-hoping I was wrong.

I don’t know why or how God looks

after you, beached like a Wellfleet whale,

stared at by the curious.  I don’t know

how God manages.  It was beyond me.

And so I kept on moving.

Stalked by surprise

 Part A:

Is Sprung the past tense of Spring?

Is the world (then) forever sprung

ruptured/like a

cosmic hernia?

Will I in fact (in spite of

Shelley Winters in spite of

everything) fall into the butter

again?

Part B:

If life is a puckered

Promise,

an orgasm

dipped in alum,

The dire fruit of an

(unsuspecting

(apricot,

A half-born bee,

then:  what are you doing

in my

coatcloset, HEY!

                          Einstein,

Get out of there,/Fondle me, man

Even with your subconscious

and  - even though God

doesn’t throw dice

                        (dead man)

I’ll throw you  (out)

Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of

Cortical surprise; a splendor

                                (golden fuzz)

Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee

being.  Such passion

in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)

Duction!  Bee

attitudes frighten me.  I will pick

the salacious hairs, the

haloed laughter of swarms

From my bee-blurred eyes. 

SPRING-LOADED

April’s where I live,

         the place my heart opens

                   rose-burgeoning, shinyleaf-new

a smell of bursting peonies,

           bumble-dizzy bees bumping

                       butter-and-eggs

swollen buds thrusting

          in the lovesick air.

Leaden, laden, leavened, lavendered, loaded,

one big quivering nose, a moist surprise

hatched out in the nest of my body

April Pegasus-leaps

        in my pulse,

sun-shot                    Pan-piped

       heady, relentlessly

tender,

recklessly

sweet.

                                               BIRD IN THE HAND

My bird in the

hand,

My bright dollar,

blonde head

Hard as a dime,

there in your

trench coat streaming

with spring, wet

as new robins

           or

Downy as stamens,

                          all

I would suck up/the

merry contempt in

your sleigh-bell

eyes,

Pepper my salt

with the wit of your

wounds,

Dive into the

iced-over pool

of your

voluptuous

disdain.

  

 

                                                            

 GINA

sweet shy

dark girl          I’ve seen her

here before

she always wore the best clothes

(silvery things/bangles

feathered skirts

necklace made

from the teeth of a wolf)

now I see Gina in the ward

kitchen.        Still beautiful

big-eyed

part Cree                            her hair tied back

she shows me the tracings of

partly-healed               gashes

sewn back together in

a gridwork

                                                                 hands/

on her arms,                                                 wrists.

She must be twenty or so

No one comes to visit

Once she had a boyfriend

but he got sick too

              

i)          Paul

(Biblical

spinning/verbs,

(so many gulled

fever

dreams swarming

in chaotic

blindness) a blueberry

moment --- Your

            (bees

hasty argument

My slant,    (arcing/jerked

dilapidated/heart

Your groin of sweated

     blood of the lamb

fire/Leo in a glass

snowstorm

 ii)  Cancun

      gusted

the             rustle

of a physics class

                                                                                                                                                aroused by the

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                clouded haste

                                                                             of a subconscious

                                                                             baritone door:If this

                                                                             were an opera

(a damp weeping

head as if just

crowning a gush of

birth) orgasmic aria

                                            

                                                 another                                                 

                                                /       

                                             dizzy commingle

                                                   /

                                                   

                                                fruitstone

                                                    /

                                             the  fingerings

                                            of florence

                                           nightingale

                                               iii) Small fish

                                                                /discharging

                                                 i may not get there in time

                                                 The minute darting

                                                            /disengaging

                                                 (all of a mind/marineswarm

                                                                             (salty

                                                          severalness(sequence

                                                  multiplicity of           minnows

                                                           stirring severance

                                                              /drowsy

                                                  dousing in          dowsing

                                                                dis/       dosing

                                                  Persal dis

                                                  Proportionate dis

                                                                /Persian

                                                  passion

                                                        (possession

                                                  saul’s      Slick

                                                                              silksliver

                                                   (Slippery                    purse

                                                :This is the ship that

iv)        a                                    launched a thousand

clitoris        pearl                                           tiny---briny

                                    faces; this/mollusc/heart

                             dampalternate being/trace of shellfish                                       

                                                                              /flesh

                          (repairing its innerdamage)

                             The princess and the pea

                          A glistening eye/(that never

                                  stops seeing

     Points of departure

What did intelligent women

do then?  When their brains

were squeezed together by

whalebone

prisons,

when sexual lust was still criminal.

Men breathed and heaved then,

full of leviathan waters

what did intelligent women do then?

did they get examined

by dirty doctors

with a velvet speculum?

Did they speculate

on the nature of existence

and give themselves orgasms

under the sheets?

What did intelligent women

do then?  

                                              

You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,

(moreover

                Gershwin’s

                                   (innocent

piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the

        (hot

very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-

morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)

                                                                 (all

then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call

the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you

daily,

in daily bliss, dally, bless blush        doily

in gaily, earthshivering

Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’

hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to

“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding

                                         (monument to

(hooting hyaena’s

                            laugh’s a plainsong to)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

Pong pong!

I TOLD you Disney was a ripoff!

From Murnau's 1926 silent masterpiece, FAUST

From Disney's FANTASIA:  running low on ideas, boys?

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

You were temptation

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

The Glass Character: synopsis

THE GLASS CHARACTER  

A novel by Margaret Gunning

Published in April 2014 by Thistledown Press

I would like to introduce you to my third novel, The Glass Character, a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. This was a time when people went to the movies almost every day, living vicariously through their heroes: Valentino, Garbo, Fairbanks and Pickford. But comedians were the biggest draw, and broad slapstick the order of the day - with one very significant exception.

Standing beside Keaton and Chaplin in popularity and prowess was a slight, diffident man named Harold Lloyd. He hid his leading man good looks under white makeup and his trademark black-framed spectacles. Nearly 100 years later, an iconic image of Lloyd remains in the popular imagination: a tiny figure holding on for dear life to the hands of a huge clock while the Model Ts chuff away 20 stories below.

With his unique combination of brilliant comedy and shy good looks, Lloyd had as many female followers as Gilbert or Barrymore. Sixteen-year-old Muriel Ashford, desperate to escape a suffocating life under her cruel father's thumb, one day hops a bus into the unknown, the Hollywood of her dreams. Though the underside of her idealistic vision is nasty and fiercely competitive, she quickly lands extra work because of her Pickford-esque ability to smile and cry at the same time.

When her idol Harold Lloyd walks on the set, her life falls into a dizzy whirl of confusion, attraction, and furious pursuit. Muriel tries on and sheds one identity after another: bit actress, waitress in a speakeasy, "girl reporter", script writer - while Lloyd almost literally dances in and out of her desperately lonely world, alternately seducing her and pushing her away.

While researching this book, I repeatedly watched every Lloyd movie I could get my hands on. I was astonished at his subtlety, acting prowess and adeptness at the art of the graceful pratfall. His movies are gaining new popularity on DVD (surprisingly, with women sighing over him on message boards everywhere!). The stories wear well and retain their freshness because of the Glass Character's earnest good nature and valiant, sometimes desperate attempts to surmount impossible challenges.

Introduction: Why Harold Lloyd?

The Glass Character is a fictional account of a young girl’s experiences in Hollywood from approximately 1921 to 1962, in which she develops a relationship with silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. Though I did extensive research in exploring the era in general and his life in particular, this story is not intended to be a biography of Lloyd. My main purpose was to communicate atmosphere: the excitement, exuberance and joy of these “high and dizzy” times.

Though I have the greatest respect for the memory of Harold Lloyd, who is in my mind one of the most charismatic performers in screen history, I did not wish to paint him as a two-dimensional figure or a saint. Though his behaviour is not always exemplary in this story, I tried to portray him as I came to believe he was: a human being of enormous complexity, phenomenal talent, and a basic midwestern decency that served him for a lifetime. This is not the Harold Lloyd, but a Harold Lloyd, a personal, fictional portrayal of a supremely gifted artist based on deep research and multiple (and very enjoyable) viewings of his remarkable films.

With his boyish good looks and appealing everyman persona, Lloyd was no less than the inventor of an entire film genre: the romantic comedy. These sample remarks from YouTube (all by women) indicate a charm and magnetism that reaches across generations:

I think he was and still is one of the most attractive men ever to walk the earth. I absolutely love him!

Each time I watch his movies I fall in love a little more.  He is sooooooo funny and the most handsome man ever!

Talented, funny, smart, creative and damn gorgeous!

I find him really attractive with his glasses on, and you can’t beat that half-shy, half-sly smile of his.

I don’t want to say it but he is in my fantasies. . . sigh.

I doubt if George Clooney could inspire such rhapsodic praise.

When I sat down to write, words often tumbled out at a fever pitch. Many of the scenes came to me out of sequence, as if I were shooting a movie. Inspiration had a timetable of its own and sometimes happened on holiday (can you believe I almost missed the Grand Canyon?). This had never happened to me before, and I had to take a few leaps of faith to believe I could ever piece it all together.

Plunging into his pictures to such depth, I experienced an immediacy, even an intimacy I had never known before. I was breathing in the gunpowder and the dust and the sweating horses and the she-loves-me/she-loves-me-not flowers and the white greasepaint. I could hear “roll ‘em” and “cut!” and “damn, we’ll have to do that again.” I was seeing that wonderful “half-shy, half-sly” smile of his in person. 

Though Lloyd’s work has been gloriously reborn through the medium of DVD, he is still too frequently seen as a bronze medallist after those two other legendary figures from the silent age: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. It’s time to throw away useless comparisons and hierarchies (is Picasso “better” than Van Gogh? And how about Rembrandt – why does the poor fellow always come in third?), and appreciate Lloyd’s movies for what they are. He is so much more than the “everyman” of popular description. His Glass Character is a subtle, slightly surreal, heart-touchingly brave and boyish silent clown, and if you don’t watch out, he will take up residence in your heart, perhaps for good.

This is Harold Lloyd the way I see him. I hope you enjoy this story.

It hurts to be in love

It hurts to be in love.

There is so much about it that hurts.

People don’t admit it, don’t talk about it. But I doubt if I am alone.

By "it", I mean IT, the need, want, passion, prayer to write. Often it’s lit inside you in childhood, after falling into the disturbing wonderland of books.

When I look back on it all, my “writer’s journey” (as so many of the more sickening how-to books call it) has been rocky in the extreme. Long stretches of struggle and hard work with tiny rewards, except for getting it down on the page. Brief upflashings of what can only be called inspiration. One sweet, almost unbelievable passage when I published my first novel and received the kind of reviews a writer can only dream of (only to be followed by negligible sales and quickly turning into box office poison).

Following that, I had a void. I had an abyss. I had a time in my life when I wandered strange. I don’t know what caused it. I had no way out, no compass. All I had were a few friends to wave at me as I stumbled by.

During this interminable time, I wondered if it was “all over”. It FELT over. I poured my feelings into a journal so self-absorbed that I would never consider showing it to anyone (though someone suggested I turn it into a blog – at a time when I barely knew what a blog was).

I can’t remember, except that I do, when the spark flared. I can’t quite find the end of the ball of string. Except to say I had Turner Classics on (which I suppose reveals my age, something around blltxyx years). It was a silent movie, black and white, and someone was walking away from the camera. I could only see his back.

His back was – what shall I say, jaunty? He was in character, obviously, and this was the way he walked.

After a few seconds, I said out loud, “That’s Harold Lloyd.”

I was not sure I knew how I knew, and this reaction was to come up again and again in the next couple of years while I beavered away at the novel. Yes, the novel: The Glass Character, a fictionalized account of Harold Lloyd’s life seen through the eyes of an obsessed fan who virtually stalks him for 300 pages.

Something happened then: I fell back in love with the process. Every day I approached the computer with excitement and joy. Surely THIS was the best thing I had ever written? If not, why did I feel that way? I spent a year and a half researching and writing about Lloyd, falling so in love with him along the way that I wondered if I had lost my objectivity.

During the writing, I would not talk about the project. I was close-mouthed. I knew if I talked about it, I’d kill it. I sometimes blurted things to my husband, just so I would not go insane with it, the isolation. When it was finished, I cautiously talked about it to people who asked if I had written anything lately (hoping, in that manner of people who hope you will fail, that I would avert my eyes, shuffle my feet and say, 
“Well. . . “)

Almost to a person, when I said it was about Harold Lloyd, I got a puzzled look. One of those “I really do think you’re out of your mind and are making things up, but I’ll iron out some of the crinkles in my forehead and tone down the gimlets in my eyes in order to humour you”. Then when I explained, stumblingly, “He was the silent movie comedian who climbed up the side of a building and hung on to the hands of a huge clock”, I almost always got, “Ohhhhhhh, THAT Harold Lloyd!”

And I’m sure they didn’t know how they knew.

My dreams were high and dizzy.  There would be a movie version, surely (which I cast in my mind: never mind who, I’m not that masochistic), or at very least a decent-sized book contract. I began the heartbreaking process all over again.

Every time I talked to anyone about trying to market a manuscript, they always seemed to say, “Just get an agent.” The “just” (which I am going to blog about, as I think it’s a casual form of sadism or at least dismissal) felt like a sort of “oh, quit kvetching, it would be easy if you did this the right way”.  One, two, three, and you’re in.

Oh yes, I tried! I tried. With my typical savage perseverance and propensity for running headlong into a brick wall, I tried. I did work with an agent in the mid-2000s, and at that time she actually approached me, a dizzying development. Of course I grabbed at it, even if it didn’t work out.

This time it was different.

Agents have to make a go of it, and I can see why taking on things like books of poetry and literary fiction won’t sustain them. They’d make next to nothing and starve to death, as would their authors. That said, it was pretty heartbreaking not to be considered at all: most of them would only look at non-fiction and children’s books, preferably series.

A few at least allowed me to send a sample of my work. The one that sticks out in my mind is the agent who asked for “the first two pages”. I had to blink twice before that sank in. The answer, based on those first two pages, was no.

That’s kind of like evaluating a speech by the intake of breath before the speech even begins.

I’m not crazy enough to get into the ins and outs of approaching conventional publishers, except to say that one submissions page currently says that it is permissible (though ONLY after your manuscript is accepted for publication) to mail it to them on floppy discs.  But along with this startlingly modern, Jetsons-like form, you must also mail the printed manuscript (typed on 8 ½ x 11” white paper, double-spaced, on one side of the page only and in 12-point pica type or larger) along with it.

And all on your own dime.

Am I complaining because nothing has happened? I don’t know, maybe. Have I just killed my chances because I quoted something from a publisher's web site, nearly verbatim? (To deal with the literary world is to be on permanent eggshells.)  Is this novel not quite as good as I thought? Hard to say. Did I lose my objectivity, fall in love with Lloyd to such a degree that I could never write about him with the proper detachment?

So what DOES sell now? Fifty Shades of Grey, bad soft-core Mommy porn. Maybe I should have had Harold Lloyd tied up and whipped.

Oh, and another thing I constantly hear (along with, "Wasn't the fun of writing it enough?") is: “JUST self-publish”. Or epublish, interchangeably. It’s a fast way to jump over all the barriers that “paper” publishers erect. It’s true, this new-ish form does open a gate that often seems permanently closed and barred. But the problem is that there are no standards. None.

I’ve been a book reviewer for 30 years, and I think I have some capacity to judge. It’s the Wild West: one big tidal wave of good, bad and indifferent. And the thing is, if your work really is good and worthy to be read, how will anyone ever pick it out of the flood?

People always quote an epublished success story, a “for-instance” like Fifty Shades or the latest Stephen King, but isn’t that something like winning the lottery? After all, SOMEBODY has to win, don’t they?

But unless you were born under a brighter star than I was, I can almost guarantee you that it won’t be you.

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

I'm agonizingly tired, but. . .

But I just wanted to say. . . my new header photo is NOT by that Painter of Light guy, whoever he was, the one who screwed around all the time. Now that it's up there, it looks just a little TOO phantasmagorical, though I seemingly spent all day getting it to look like that.

This is the original photo, and it's the house I grew up in, the house I spent the first 16 years of my life in. I am sure I had no idea how beautiful it was. It still exists, on 20 Victoria Avenue in Chatham, but it's a doctor's office now and I am sure has been gutted. No more terrazzo floors or gorgeous russet-colored hardwood (covered by WALL-TO-WALL CARPETS, the newest thing!). No more dumbwaiter converted to laundry chute, earth-floored root-cellar in the basement, or sculptured plaster fruit at the base of the chandeliers. And two bathrooms, by God, one up and one down, almost unheard-of then.

Why is this important? Do people think I am a total idiot? Yes, at least some of the time. I picked the name of my blog, a) to advertise my work (because why the hell else have a blog?), and b) because I wanted a rather silly, Barbie's House of Dreams-type title. So many blogs have clever titles, and for the most part I hate them. So I purposely picked a silly one, though up to now I never used an actual house to illustrate it.

This house, well. It was quite a house, painted sunny yellow. We used to climb up on the roof in the summer, up the TV aerial which was a huge power-station-type thing. We had a big thing with a dial, called a "big thing with a dial"(I guess), and you set the dial and it went "wah-wah-wah-wah-wah" and the aerial turned and you could get Cleveland.

There was also something called UHF. It was on the dial of the TV. I was terrified of UHF. I thought if I ever tuned in UHF, my head would explode. One day I timidly asked my brother, "What's UHF (pronouncing it "UHFFFF")?"

He laughed his ass off and said, "It's U. H. F., stupid. It's some broadcasting frequency that we can't get. Educational or something."

I still don't like it.



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

"I want Meow Mix, I want Meow Mix": it's Baxter!

"Don't get that, Frank."

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

WHAT, you're still using PAPER???

Revolution 9: I have a dream today

Dreams vaporize like snow sublimating on a sidewalk. More and more I remember mine, and see a thread in them. Maybe it has always been there. I always seem to be a hopeless outsider or have no idea what is going on, though I am supposed to be playing a crucial role in the scenario (i. e. the Wildwood Flower bride, and the Alice in Wonderland actress). Last night my dreams were bleak, and I hope did not predict anything except my own melancholy and chronic sense of doom.

It was as if I was watching one of those dystopia films, in which everything slowly but surely comes unstuck. "All is changed, changed utterly," to paraphrase Yeats (I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote). "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

This had several parts. Which came first? My husband was with me during a big part of this, which is unusual because I am usually alone. We were watching a stage play which almost seemed like a Gilbert and Sullivan comedy without the music. This was in an ornate old theatre like the Orpheum in Vancouver. One of the actors seemed particularly good and I intended to yell "Bravo!" when he took his bows. 

At this point I was sitting in the front row and Bill wasn't with me. Then I was about 1/3 or 1/2-way back in the audience, and there was a sense almost of an earthquake about to happen, though nothing was shaking. Without any words we received the knowledge that the ceiling was about to cave in and we had to get out of the theatre immediately or be crushed. 

I looked up and wondered if the ceiling was bulging and it played into my lifelong fear that heavy chandeliers in restaurants and theatres would fall on me. People began to leave, but in a fairly orderly, methodical way. I could not find my shoes and was upset. Bill said something along the lines of, you'll need them, which seemed ominous. I realized we had to leave only a few minutes before the end of the play and I would not be able to yell "Bravo!".

Then we were wandering aimlessly through a sort of wasteland, completely lost. Bill doesn't get lost easily, or panic about it, but I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that everything was about to end. At one point we were climbing up a tall tower like something in a power station, then we had to climb down again and Bill's legs hurt. I was sort of holding on to him through this. 

There were these vasts fields of dead grass and nothingness. A woman on a horse went by (and now I think of that futuristic TV show Revolution, where the power goes off all over the world and there are no cars). Then at some point I said something like, "Wait, my high school graduation is tomorrow, how will I get there?" "It will be called off. You'll have to phone the school about it." "But everyone will be calling in at once. The lines will be jammed." As we had this conversation, we were walking by the high school and it looked deserted. It resembled my school from Grade 5 (Queen Elizabeth II) where I had to be bussed all the way across town to attend the (quote-unquote) "smart kids' class".

In another part of this strange scene, I was watching TV and suddenly the program changed. It became totally nonsensical and obnoxious,almost like scrambled-up children's programming, and it was obvious that this wasn't part of the show. I realized (how?) that a woman had hacked into TV signals all over the entire world and disabled them all. I don't even know how I knew this. I just now think of the Emergency Broadcasting System and "this is only a test" announcements of my childhood, when I was totally freaked out and felt like it was the end of the world (which, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it nearly was). 

I think I have already lost chunks of this and would have forgotten it all by now had I not scribbled down a few details. The last part I can remember now is that I was listening to a radio broadcast, and it was about my friend Glen Allen, a journalist who committed suicide in 2005. He worked in radio and it was a sort of reminiscence about his life. I began to get very interested in it and thought, "Now they'll talk about his association with Peter Gzowski." But then it cut off. No explanation, it just ended. The radio had no signal at all - it simply went dead.

Easter terror: bunnies from hell

It wouldn't be Easter without a few of these. I've found some that look suspiciously doctored, so I won't use them. What stands out is the terror and dismay on the faces of the children. Why? Why would anyone be afraid of an old man in long pink underwear and erectile ears putting his arm around you, when you KNOW you're not supposed to talk to strangers? Why would you take candy from them, when Mom and Dad have jackhammered it into your little head that you are NOT supposed to do that, ever? I am sure this is why small children scream and cry at the Easter Bunny and Santa and all those other creepy characters, until custom and convention slowly wear down their natural instinct to survive.

Why must Easter bunnies look like Fascist dictators? Why must their heads be larger than their bodies? Would this scare YOU?

The Space Alien bunny is a genre unto itself. They're really here to harvest our children.

I'd like to know who would sit down and design a costume like this. There are apparently no holes for oxygen, so let's hope the guy suffocated.

This is my personal favorite. Don't be fooled by the frightened smile on the little girl's face. She's just trying to get it over with as soon as possible.