Transformative Blogging: A Free Write on Pregnancy, Feminism, and the Internet

Three years ago, I started blogging.

I was newly married, working at a university, confronting my disdain for the midwestern common, and beginning to fall in love with photography.

Today I am 4 months pregnant, working at a spiritual center, combing through my complex relationship with geography and identity, and am a freelance writer and photographer. My dreams are more realized, I can humbly admit to myself.

This summer has been a fragmented blogging experience. I've loosened my ties with the online world after experiencing an avalance of its toxicity. But I know of the power of the internet, the power of online communication and exchange, and I know that I will never completely sever my ties with blogging.

The frequency of my blogging came alongside the confidence to speak my mind about mainstream feminism, kyriarchy, and the destructive practices of dominating US-identifed feminists in the field of gender, sexuality, and "feminism." Somewhere, in the Bermuda triangle of my mind, online expression became necessary strength-training for my feminisms. Online exposure - seeking external information from strangers and "experts" - became one of the most frequently visited gyms to exercise feminist discourse. Until now.

Pregnancy has taken me inward. Deep into the reflective tissue of memory, trauma, joy, and motherhood. It has taken me into these far off places of security and fear, health and death, responsibility and loss of control. I've retreated into my body, less focused on the rest of the world and simply in the world growing below my belly button.

This event, for lack of a better word, has transformed me again beyond any trip, research, or moving poet could ever shift me before. At no other time in my life have I walked more slowly, spoke less with more to say, and allowed to open my life to truly not caring about the world whilst still loving it deeply, wildly from my corner in Cleveland, Ohio.

Early pregnancy was very much like discovering the internet - information overload. There was story upon story of miracle (once infertile now fertile) to the heartwrenching (still born stories that made me weep for days) and more "advice" than I could handle. It left me staring at my ceiling in bed, convinced I was sick, was headed into an unhealthy pregnancy, and needed more medical attention than any other person who had ever given birth in the history of baby-making.

I harbored no trust, particularly for my own mind.

My early experience of feminism and the internet was similar. Three years ago, my blog was somewhat directionless. It was filled with thoughtful entries, some humor, and candid glimpses into my life, but it lacked any true identity. It lacked the substantial stamp of SELF. PERSPECTIVE. AUTHENTICITY. TRUTH.

The exploration of how to effectively use media, the internet, blogging, and feminism to transform ourselves and our pockets of the universe remains an unchartered course, a hike for which an infinite weight of rations is needed. This might take a lifetime. But I have learned that while blogging has been very much a gift - delivering relationships, realizations, connections, and insight - it is also a place that can sometimes take you away. Away from your body, away from listening to your own authentic creations. I realize one of the biggest differences in my writing over the past three years is that I write less reactionary pieces and responses than when I first began blogging. I was exploding like a firecracker to a zillion commentors and posts that led me nowhere except away from truly reflecting and moving within my own consciousness.

This gift of pregnancy has not only given me necessary reflection and work to emotionally prepare for a new role as mother, but it has deterred and sharpened my eyesight to be selective in who I choose to read and listen to. It has taught me that more is not always better and reading an endless parade of memoir writing about motherhood will never grasp what the experience means to ME. What is happening to my body, my brain, my bones right now.

It has been through pregnancy that I see "Feminism" with new eyes and I see much more red than I ever saw before. Red bias, red intentions, red discrimination, red narrowness...I see red. Reproductive health rights are arrows pointing to the majority of heterosexual, young white women. Sexuality and spirituality are rarely explored as an interlaced relationship. The conferences change names, but still move in their same agenda. "Liberal" and "progressive" are thrown around without much depth and review. Blog wars still flare from time to time, roaming from appropriation to racism, but after a few months of quiet, you'll still find the same bloggers rowing in the currents of mainstream thought and contributing to US-centric, heteronormative rhetoric that alientates and ostracizes "unpopular" issues like the fact WE ARE STILL AT WAR IN IRAQ, WE ARE NOT A POST-RACE SOCIETY BECAUSE WE HAVE A BI-RACIAL PRESIDENT, and the violence of poverty and rape still choke the life out of womyn everywhere in the world.

Maybe the point is not for the blogosphere to be transformed, but for me to transform according to my offline life, my quiet purpose. And just hope and pray that others are doing the same. Maybe if we all did that, our blogosphere, our world would change. Maybe we could all go through something similiar to a pregnancy where we witness new life growing in some way and we are drawn inward to listen to the new beat of existence, a changed way of being.

Maybe if we listened more, talked less, we could actually hear something other than the deafening needs of our egos and more of the muted chants of our yearning hearts.

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

Dedicated to Don Manual Montiello

My Nicaraguan father, who I had not seen in eight years, died this week. A man with a heart condition, he fell onto a street, his face purple, and died. He was walking the barrio, our home, Catorce de Junio, in Nicaragua where I used to live.

I don’t know where this piece is going. Like a storm, I sense something brewing. The signs are there: quiet moments (dark clouds), tears (rain), and fear (wind). A perfect writing storm. This time, though, I have no predictable end. Something is needing to come out and so I write. I write. There’s a lot that’s been thrown in the eye of my hurricane. I’m going to try and let it out…

* * *

In feminism, particularly the feminist blogosphere, the word “intersectionality,” is strewn around like a popular masthead. For those unfamiliar with this term, in a nutshell, it’s a nugget word of the third wave of feminism, a term to explain one’s ability/responsibility to see/understand the complex layers of oppression and severity. It is a theory by I don’t even know who that suggested we look at the varying intersecting locks of lived experience. To put it bluntly, it says that the middle of the wheel is braced together by several spokes. Look at the spokes, it suggests. Consider the spokes.

I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality. I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality because I was introduced to it in the feminist blogosphere and the way I have observed its lack of application – its sore failure – makes me a non-believer in the term. I just don’t see any difference “intersectionality” has made in the lives of womyn offline.

My momma raised me to see the soul, not spokes.

* * *

February 11, 2009
I am in a coffee shop. I see a sign: Imported from Nicaragua.

A small thump hits my gut.

* * *

March 2000
“Buenas dias, Dona Adelia! Como estas usted?” I called out to a neighbor while I was walking in the barrio. It is a hot morning in Managua.

My friend Julia who was walking beside me smiled as Dona Adelia opened her mouth and fired off a response so quick and urgent, I blinked in surprise.

Julia translated for me, “She said, ‘well, that depends. Do you want to know how I am doing economically, physically, emotionally, mentally, politically? It depends.’”

I’ve thought about Dona Adelia’s reply to my simple greeting for nine years. She is a woman, elderly in her seventies, who loves people with so much strength that I pray I am like her when I mature into my later years.

One moment. One response. To my face. And just like that. I understood “intersectionality,” or the multiple intricacies of being. Language, culture, soul. There are so many layers to people; so many things that affect how we perceive one another.

I didn’t need a theory. I needed a teacher.

* * *

The failure of intersectionality is not surprising. Most correlate the term as a method to measure oppression and study its affect on diverse individuals, as if there is a way to truly trace the insidious and camouflaged roots of societal and social demons.

What troubles me about this method is its obsession with oppression and lack of focus on liberation. From what I have observed, most feminists want to understand the surreptitious spreading and practice of oppression - they want to understand that justice is unevenly distributed because of skin color, race, ethnicity, physical and mental mobility, religion, citizenship, class, education, property, age, sexual orientation, gender, and sex – but they don’t want to listen when it comes to transforming the world for liberation.

If liberation means a radical, and by radical I am referring to the Latin origin of radical meaning ROOT, transformation of the world, we need feminists to become more visionary. And fast.

Intersectionality is useless if it merely raises your consciousness but does little else. Ok, so YOU’RE enlightened. Great!

Now what?

The life of intersectionality is brief. It’s a theory. Nothing more.

* * *

April 2000

Don Manual has a heart condition. Somewhere, in the maze of awkward translation, I learn his quiet demeanor cloaks a very gentle man. After a long trip to Bluefields, the eastern coast of Nicaragua, I return to my home in the barrio. Once in my room, exhausted, I begin unpacking.

Don Manual walks into my room.

Puzzled and a bit anxious because he has never entered my room before, I turn to face him.

Just a few pebbles of his words were caught in my translation. There are two things I remember, “Allegra. Muy allegra.”

He was happy to have you back home. He was relieved. Others translated the conversation for me later.

And then I remember that he covered his heart, his weakened and diseased heart, as he spoke. He softly tapped it as he told me he was glad I was home. Then he and his eyes smiled into me and turned away.

* * *

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I am nearing the end of my three month writing stint at Bitch magazine. The experience has taught me so much about writing and confidence, I find it difficult to translate it to those who do not engage in writing practice.

Recently, I wrote a piece about Nadya Suleman, the woman who recently birthed octuplets and is now a mother of fourteen. In my article, where I raised questions about the issue of choice outside the realm of abortion, I asked that we engage in critical and rich discussion but to do so without berating any one woman or a segment of population of women.

That didn’t go over well.

The feedback and comments ranged from, “I think this has nothing to do with race, I never even thought of the idea until people like you to inject race into the subject to cause controversy,” to suggesting that I “become a conservative,” to “What a goddamned shithead.”

Simultaneously, I received an email from Alex Blaze, the managing editor at The Bilerico Project, who let me know that there had been good news concerning a post I had written two months ago about Agnes Scott College, a private all woman’s college, allowing a degrading and anti-feminist movie film on its grounds. The update alerted me to heightened policies the college had adopted in response to the online noise generated by senior, Louisa Hill.

I learned about Agnes Scott debacle from Jess Hoffman, a visionary friend and co-founder of make/shift magazine, where I am a section editor. It was through her that I heard about it, connected with The Bilerico Project, and helped create some online shaking.

The result: not perfect, but improved policies.

While the situation at Agnes Scott College is not the most ground breaking news or the most inspiring story, it gave credence to the power of blogging and communities working together. As Blaze wrote in his email, “Blogging can improve the world!”

Indeed.

It can also destroy.

These are the opportunities before some of us. And there are many sides to align yourself with. What do you choose?

Do you align yourself with the offense, berating women like Nadya Suleman, defining what is right and good for a woman of controversy and poor decision, but nonetheless a women in the name of feminism and “liberalism”? Or the side that tries to outreach and make one corner of the universe slightly better than it was yesterday?

It’s not that simple, I know, and the situation calls for reflection.

But is calling her a “shithead” how we move forward?

* * *

Thursday, February 12
A friend is driving me through Cedar Lee, an area of independent theaters and coffee shops. A wide sidewalk is cleared for winter, but in the summer, Christina says, the restaurants have great outdoor seating.

Out of nowhere, a thought slips through my window

I haven’t talked to my Nicaraguan family in years.

And here is where they have five dollar theater tickets with all you can eat popcorn.

I haven’t even thought about them in months. What happened to when I used to think of them everyday?

You’ll love it here, Lisa.

Raquel would be…my G*d, twenty-one years old now. They wouldn’t want to hear from me. What would I say anyway? My Spanish has depleted so much. Let it go.


* * *

Both on and offline, it’s not our race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other spoke on the wheel of “intersectionality” that divides us. It’s our objectives. It’s how we measure liberation and what we are willing to do with our privileged lives in the name of transformation. The differences in our objectives are as transparent as our URLs. Some are here for fun and professional advancement. Those of us who are here for more than business are here to question the systems that contort liberation.

Is there any wonder that there is a divide?

For me, there is only one question: what are you willing to do for liberation?

If it begins and ends with blogging, then don’t bother reading the rest of this piece.

If you say you want a world without rape, what are you doing to transform binary definitions of sexuality, relationships, and love?
If you say you want a country of peace, what cost is paid by other countries?
If you say you don’t know the answers, what are you doing to rectify that?

These are the questions before us. What are you doing?

* * *

The face of G*d for me is the liberation of those in pain, myself included. My definition of feminism is not a worded explanation, limited by my westernized and elitist tongue. It is a drive, dare I write spiritual drive, to do what I can, when I can, and make one thing, or as many things, better for another human being born in my lifetime, on our planet, this place we all call home. With all the mystery and fear in my body, soaked in ethnocentric alcohol, I sober my life by sitting on the edge of my bathroom sink and pulling the bathroom mirror into my face.

I look up.

* * *
February 16, 2009

I open an email letting me know about a post raising questions about feminism and digital colonialism.

* * *

For the most part, generation X has been the largest population which the digital age has watered. We’re the first generation of this “new media” and its shifted the way we think, communicate, and organize. It’s even changed our dreams.

As little girls, I would bet those who journaled and dreamed about writing imagined hard cover books or putting pen to physical paper; their name in print.

Blogging has ushered in a new alternative to traditional publishing and while it has created this avenue for information exchange and sharing, it has also created a monster. We, privileged activists and writers with the most immediate form of communi/gratifi/cation at our disposal, gladly reap the surface benefits of new media and, I fear, are satiated by that. We’ve yet to fully incorporate a feminist energy and discourse to digital media. Bloggers, writers, web-users have yet to fully embrace the power and responsibility to transform knowledge, journalism, and expression and bring it to a feminist standard of acceptability and practice.

We’re working on that. We’re still debating and defending privilege.

There has been no sustainable on-going and consistent effort to confront the communication patterns of womyn/gender-centered/feminist blogs or dialogue ethos. Who has time to create that analysis, to write about it? To try and put a lasso on a thousand bucks gone wild?

We’re either too busy feeding our children, finding sustainable employment, caring for our ourselves and loved ones, and making ends meet to commit to dismantling the ways blogging and new media perpetuate the existing kyriarchal systems. It is, after all, a flick of a hand to turn off our screens or we can simply walk away.

Or we’re too busy maximizing our latest idea to utilize blogging as a means to further our professional careers.

There’s a pull in two legitimate different directions that leaves the middle empty. What’s left? The space of blogging. THIS space that we say is the resting pulse of the “women’s movement.” All of it goes unchecked, with no accountability, no rules. We can call each other out, but in the end, if you think it, you can write it. We obviously don’t want a hierarchy or limitations on our speech, right? It’s as if we have lost the capacity to freely explore options and conversation, we don’t know how to dictate basic premises of decency on how to relate to one another over lines of difference.

And so the cyclic, vicious feminist problems continue. The conferences are divided, the blog wars are revisited, the colonialism/racism/classism/capitalism/ everything-ism continues in its original score. Actually, I think this screenplay was written decades ago by our ancestors. We’re all just assuming their roles.

(Who wants to play Sojournor Truth?)

* * *

February 16, 2009
I receive an email telling me of Don Manual’s death just hours after he had passed. I read the words and am confused.

My emails are usually about the latest happenings in the activist world, listserves I love, writers I follow, blogs I cherish, and updates from friends. This message was nestled in the midst of RSVPs to my 30th birthday party. Requests from writers to blog about a spreading story. The message startled me, but not more than my own reaction.

My heart continues to audibly break with each letter I type to admit this: momentarily, I didn’t even recognize Don Manual’s name.

That is how removed I have been.

For a moment, I did not recognize the name of someone with whom I lived, had spoken, formed some of my brightest moments of life, embraced, and breathed.

* * *

That night I muster every strength I could to get over my own guilt and self-consciousness.

I call my family in Nicaragua.

With no fallback of translators, my mind rewinds itself to its rusted Spanish files, long put away.

I speak first with my sister, Lynette, who now has three children. When I lived with her, she only had one son. She is mopping and I can hear her smile into the phone.

Her father just died and she smiles at me.

“Necessitas, Lisa, regressar a Nicaragua pronto.”

You need to return to Nicaragua, soon.

Yo se.

I know.

I sputter out my condolences, whatever is left in my vocabulary and try to twist it, try to offer whatever G*d-awful limiting words that remain and tell her how much I miss her and will always miss her father. How grateful I am for all that they gave me.

All I can make out from her response is “triste.”

Sad.

She asks if I want to talk to her mother.

Dona Marta.

I remember why I was so afraid to speak to my host mother. She was soft spoken and that made translation even more difficult. I am shaking inside.

Unearthing itself after nine years, my intense desire to articulate the depth of my emotions runs again into the language barrier and I feel ashamed at my lack of Spanish practice.

It’s not just about language. Language, as once famously stated, is the house of being. It is a bridge of culture, a valor of heartfelt effort and humility. It’s not just about communication; it’s about respect and offering.

Her voice is barely audible and I want to weep in her arms. Or have her weep in mine.
Neither would happen.

I tell her that she and her entire family is always in my heart.

We have deep pauses of silence. I let them rest between us knowing the loss of her lifelong spouse cannot be explained in language.

We communicate what we can. We communicate love.

* * *

There comes a time to revisit our promises and commitments. We are forever in need of smoothing them over, enhancing the details for better fits.

I remember promising to write my Nicaraguan family. I said those words. In English. They understood.

I promise.

But I broke that promise, repeatedly.

I broke that promise to write when I decided to put it off and write about what I knew - feminism - instead of a what I needed to write, letter to my family. For every post on this blog, now past seven hundred, I allowed myself to slip away into what I knew was so dangerously easy about life in the United States: living individualistically.

Oh, I’ve learned how to be a married activist, a warrior poet salivating after Audre Lorde. I’ve written letters to lovers, biological family, posts, articles, and even begun book projects. I’ve collaborated with strangers who became confidants and healed broken relationship.

“Individualism” is no longer about singularity, it’s about living in a disconnected state, where we are accountable only to those who are like us, agree with, nod with us. Nuanced individualism is serving not just ourselves but only those we choose to be in our communities, those whom we deem supportive and relative, staunchly defining who we want and gives us what we need.

Gifts of baking pans, trinkets, and money mean nothing without connection and in some realms of life, attempted communication trumps clarity. I wanted to communicate safely, with a translator so they knew precisely what I meant and they understood me. I forgot that tapping one’s heart in gesture can convey more about concern and relief than words.

I waited for perfect communication. That day never comes.

In my subconscious fear of not wanting to be uncomfortable or reminded that I lazily let my Spanish subside, I never wrote a letter. Not one. I didn’t want to be reminded of my helplessness, the nightmarish panic I had of not being able to connect transnational experiences with my own damn life. I didn’t want to look at the clock and see that I had allowed so much time to pass.

And in the customary selfish rape of wandering foreign lands merely for one’s own enlightenment, I took my “enlightenment” and applied it to my own life.

I never wrote one letter.

I’ll set up a feeble social network online and write flip responses on the digital walls of high school acquaintances who have taught me nothing, but I won’t confront my own fear of inadequacy and contact a community, a family who gave me shelter and food.

Gringa.

And for those who do not understand the significance letters hold, paper that’s traveled the winds of ocean, just know that it delivers more than anything that can be conveyed in language. It conveys that they, the recipients of the letter, are remembered in a walled country that makes you forget.

* * *

Feminism is not about self-flagellation or “saving” the world, or even piping ourselves up by saying we have the capacity to do so. But I do believe it is about living an authentic existence that challenges our comforts, our talents, and agenda. I believe that we, those with unspeakable luxuries that we cannot put in context because few other nations can even compare to our excessiveness, must be held accountable to our neighbors. Not out of obligation, but out of love.

We are accountable. In our lives. In our letters. In our writings. In our blogs.

As I repeatedly learn in painfully elementary ways, “Not everything is about you.”
Your guilt. Your discomfort. Your understanding. Your. Your. Your.
“I don’t feel like engaging.”
“I don’t want to be attacked or misunderstood.”
“I don’t want to risk.”
“I don’t want to put myself out there.”
“I’ve earned this.”
“I already explained myself.”
“I need to defend myself.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

I. I. I.

If you can, unstick yourself.

Move beyond your self-consciousness.

We are accountable. To someone.

Without accountability, without liberating practices for all, there is no “Movement.”

Only noise.

Find someone to whom you are accountable.

Throw Your Shoe at Bush and Have Some Cake!

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, our favorite shoe throwing activist, celebrated his 30th birthday on January 17, 2009.

Mhm mhm mhm, what an act to do before your 30th birthday. What a statement to be able to say you threw your shoes at George W. Bush. Reports have come in that a few of the guards brought in a birthday cake. I hope it was in the shape of one large shoe. I'd eat the entire thing myself. A vanilla sole. Strawberry shoelaces. Swirls of icing for the knot.

Don't forget to wish Muntadhar al-Zeidi a happy belated birthday as you throw your shoe on Tuesday. (Original post and instructions here.) Get your shoe selected. Pump up your throwing arm's bicep because it's going to be a big day! Let there be cake!

For Whom Are You Throwing Your Shoe at Bush?

Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the original shoe thrower, sent his footwear into flight in the name of "widows, orphans, and those killed in Iraq." Hurling much more than his shoes at Bush, the shoes, I believe, carried the unfathomable pain of those who have survived eight years of Bush foreign policies. Not just in Iraq, but all over the world.

For whom are you throwing your shoe? Let the world know on January 20, 2009 when Bush officially steps down as the leader of the US government. Take a picture of your shoe. post of your site or blog. Link back to the original post for participation round-up. If you do NOT have a blog or site and still want to participate, send me your shoe (don't throw it, just hand it to me via email awecdysis@gmail.com) and I'll post (throw) your shoe on my blog. Don't forget to send in a small bit about you, your shoe, and for whom your throw is dedicated.

Having problems deciding for whom to throw your shoe? Mhm, I agree, it is a large task. Eight years of blowing up our fellow nations, instigating our violence in the name of anti-terrorism, basically handing our planet over to Darth Vader, and leaving our economy in the gutter leaves a shoe thrower with much to contemplate.

But be specific.

After all, you only have one shoe. Make it count.
Here is my dedication:

I throw my shoe for the poor who are living off garbage mountains, literally. I throw my shoe for the stranger who yelled in my face, after learning I was an American citizen in his land, that his garbage mountainside community has been terrorized and threatened by the Philippine government in the name of the "US charge against terrorism."

These people, who scour the mountain everyday for food or anything they can sell for a peso, have centered their lives on survival, not violence. They are the poorest of the poor - eating inedible food, trying to sell what is no longer useful - and yet they are repeatedly targeted and harassed, their youth kidnapped for days and tortured, under the blanket of "anti-terrorism" laws initiated by the US after 9/11.

My shoe will fly for this man who who repeatedly yelled in my face, "I am not a terrorist! Do I look like a terrorist to you? I am too small, too skinny to do anything but survive."

In essence, he is dying. And our president, our country's allowance of Bush's post 9/11 reaction, have quickened the death of his friends, family, and freedom. The re-election of Bush in 2004 continued the reign of terror in unheard, unspoken communities in the darkest corners of the world where no one dare visit or bother to know.

My shoe will be for this man who screamed his pain into my eyes and I, with the humble privilege of life and blogging, will throw as hard as I can.

How to Choose your Bush-Throwing Shoe

I'm going to keep promoting this until the 20th and I see some serious shoes flying.

If you're uncertain as to which shoe to throw, might I suggest a few tips:

1) Pick a shoe you have zero interest in. After all, you may not get it back after you throw it. Have no regrets when you throw it so choose one with which you have minimal emotional attachment.

2) Select a shoe that makes a statement. A stiletto, perhaps, sends a fine message to the world that not only are you crazy enough to wear those things, but you are of a generous heart - willing to forgo your style in the name of dissent. That sharp heel also communicates that you are serious about your throw. The aerodynamics of a stiletto can be lethal.

3) Throw the most grotesque and foul smelling shoe you own. 'Nuff said.

4) Throw a sneaker with a sock stuffed in it. The extra weight might carry the shoe further in flight, thus resulting in much higher likelihood of hitting target.

5) If you're still not sure if you're down with this shoe throwing event, well, I suggest go light. Choose your bunny slippers or whatever you schlep around in when in the privacy of your home. Their light, compact, and even if it hits the target, feels more like a brush of cotton in the face than the regular weight of a snow boot.

Prepare for the throw on 1/20/2009. Spread the word.

Throw Your Shoe at Bush on January 20, 2009

When two shoes were thrown at George Bush by a journalist who had seen enough dying children and blood spilled on his country, I watched in disbelief.

What stunned me further was how people debated - in detail - if this man should be imprisoned or punished. Let's see what would happen if we could turned the tables. Suppose another country invaded our land in the name of democracy and freedom, and through years and years of violence, shed blood on the bones of civilians and children who were never officially counted or reported about in the news. Might you, filled to the depths of your soul with death and injustice, throw your shoes?

His family maintains he did this out of frustration. Others report saying he was influenced by someone who "beheads people."

From my view, I saw a reporter, an alive being, but filled with death. He was filled with the death of his country and the violence inflicted upon it by the hand of George Bush and our country. For all that has been done to their people, a shoe - or two - seems hardly a reason to beat and imprison him. It was a gesture that, some have argued, is perfect.